ALL EVENTS | 12 August, 2014 Order by:Date / title
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Duck, Death and the Tulip
Little Dog Barking Theatre
A duck strikes up an unlikely friendship with Death. Magic and puppetry allow us to deal with this difficult subject in a way that is elegant and thought provoking. A story for adults and children!
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Our Teacher's a Troll
Paines Plough / Half Moon
Two terrible twins rule their school until the arrival of a headmaster with scaly skin and a spiky tail. An outrageously entertaining comic caper from Dennis Kelly, the writer of Matilda The Musical.
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The Worm - An Underground Adventure
Eco Drama
Join Wilma and William on a journey underground as they discover a family of friendly, musical worms. The Worm is guaranteed to make everyone giggle, wiggle and love the squirmy wonders beneath our feet.
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Nothing
Barrel Organ
Join us in an exploration of nothing; from stalkers to cupcakes, pooing to daydreaming, as we ask what constitutes nothing? And what constitutes something? Nothing was the winner of four awards at NSDF 2014.
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Jolly Jungle
Summerhall Kids
Throughout the festival Summerhall's Yellow Room Children's space will host Jolly Jungle, a drop-in play space for parents and carers to explore with their child. A perfect way to escape the festival fever and take a breather between shows, Jolly Jungle is brimming with toys, soft play, art and crafts and a story corner too for tiny tots, toddlers and pre schoolers to enjoy.
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Chalk About
Curious Seed
A playful, funny and sometimes moving look at how we see ourselves and others, featuring dance, chat and one perfect scene containing everything you could wish for... ‘Brave, honest and delightful’ (The Scotsman). ‘Utterly engaging’ (The Herald). Part of Made in Scotland showcase.
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Landscape with Skiproads
Pieter De Buysser, Margarita Production, Richard Jordan Productions and Theatre Royal Plymouth
On stage, a collection of objects. They were there when we became who we are today. With these, a boy and his horse are on a search for a lost future. A joyful journey’s taking off.
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The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland
Ridiculusmus / Jon Haynes, Patrizia Paolini, Richard Talbot, David Woods
A family drama simultaneously staging the first onset psychoses of a mother and son as they navigate stress and change with fantastical results. Performed to separate but adjoining auditoria, audible but unseen.
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Every Brilliant Thing
Paines Plough / Pentabus Theatre Company
You’re six years old. Mum’s in hospital. Dad says she’s ‘done something stupid’. You begin listing everything that’s brilliant about the world. Everything worth living for. 1: Ice Cream. 2: Rollercoasters. 3: Me. Written by Duncan Macmillan.
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KlangHaus
Neutrinos / Norwich Arts Centre / Escalator East To Edinburgh
KlangHaus is a 360° visceral, enveloping experience challenging conventions of the live gig.
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Birdwatchers’ Wives
Caroline Smith / Escalator East to Edinburgh
Meet Rita Grebe, a seven-foot woman who thinks she’s a bird. ‘Deliciously dark’ (The Guardian), Smith’s latest alter-ego is in plumage, hell-bent on turning the twitcher archetype on its head but things are never quite what they seem...
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Hand Made in China: Moons, Migration and Messages
Hua Dan - Dumpling Dreams Theatre and Migration Project
Night of the Moon Festival, a time of transformation, reunion and secret messages. Come share in a bilingual show of mythical and modern migration tales, with music, mooncakes and a rickshaw.
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Kid Box
Feng Dance Theatre (Taiwan) / Performance Infinity
Kid explores the relationship between mother and kid through lighting, sounds effect, shadow and extraordinary movement. Box breaks the barrier of dream and reality, bringing the world into this magical box. Where dance transforms poetry into body language.
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Leaving Home Party
Catherine Ireton/Farnham Maltings/Harlow Playhouse/Escalator East to Edinburgh
Catherine never left home. She took a one-way Ryanair flight to Gatwick in 2005. Now she's got a flat, a job, a Tesco clubcard. Tonight she's having a party, to mark all the moments of letting go.
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Head in the Clouds: The Peregrinations of Marie Marvingt
Broken Spectacles
Come on an odyssey of the sky with the Fiancée of Danger. The true story of one woman's yearning for the limitless skies.
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Lungs
Paines Plough
Lungs by Duncan Macmillan. A couple are deciding their future. They want to have a child for the right reasons. But what exactly are the right reasons? 'The most beautiful, shattering play of the year.' (Sunday Express).
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Factor 9
Dogstar Theatre Company
A ‘furiously skillful’ (Västerbottens-Kuriren, Sweden) performance about the greatest medical disaster in the history of the NHS, the infected blood products scandal. Starring Stewart Porter and Matthew Zajac, multimedia theatre from the creators of The Tailor of Inverness.
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Domestic Labour: A Study in Love
30 Bird / Escalator East to Edinburgh
War, bicycles and the withdrawal method. A love story: man and woman, east/west, the mundane and the monumental, the dust behind the bed and the Iranian baby boom. ‘Rich inventive theatricality’ (WhatsOnStage.com)
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Invisible Walls
Teatri ODA
An artistic journey based on real life situations of isolation - impossibility to freely move, threats of existence to being trapped because of bureaucracy, prejudice or fear leaving invisible walls, if not created for us, created by ourselves.
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MacBheatha
White Stag Theatre Company & David Walker
A powerful new adaptation, translated into richly atmospheric Gaelic. A two-person format throws fierce emphasis onto the blighted and deteriorating relationship between Macbheatha and his wife. Superb, passionate and driven performances, sexually charged and blazing with ambition. (The Scotsman). Part of Made in Scotland showcase.
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Shakespeare, His Wife and the Dog
Bated Breath
William has retired but all’s not well. In fact, Will’s losing it. Ann’s already lost it and what’s happened to the dog? A sleepless night in Stratford, the one hour traffic of our play.
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ViewMaster
Ryan Van Winkle and Dan Gorman
A personal slideshow for your eyes and ears only. Poet Ryan Van Winkle and musician Dan Gorman lead you on a playful, sometimes surreal, journey to a distant land and bring you back in under 15 minutes. Part of the Made in Scotland showcase.
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Elvis' Stardust
Teatro Delle Moire
Elvis lives! He has not left the building!
Elvis' Stardust is a short,melancholic rhapsody of small gestures, hidden glances and distant rhythms. Comical, poignant and ghost-like, amessianic star whose swift destruction left only stardust.
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Raymondo
Annie Siddons, New Wolsey Theatre, Escalator East to Edinburgh
A dark, tender, and funny lyrical narrative about brothers, escape, survival and love from playwright/performer Annie Siddons (Kneehigh, BAC) with an atmospheric live score by Marcus Hamblett. 'Wonderfully involving, witty and emotionally potent.' (Independent on Siddons).
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Where the World Is Going, That's Where We Are Going
Big in Belgium, Theater Aan Zee, Richard Jordan, Drum-Plymouth, Summerhall
Louise and Ans Van den Eede started off with Diderot’s novel, ending up writing a whimsical conversation between a man and a woman, 'who need to go somewhere else, urgently'.
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Guinea Pigs on Trial
Sh!t Theatre / Escalator East to Edinburgh
Sh!t Theatre are trying to sell their bodies... to medical science. Delving into the murky ethics of Big Pharma, award-winning Sh!t Theatre ask: is guinea-pigging a good cure for an empty bank account?
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The Hibrow Comedy Hour
Hibrow TV in association with JV Productions
HiBrow and comedy curators Jilly Burnet and Van Keeling AKA JV Productions team up to storm the civilised environs of Summerhall with some of the festival’s finest comedians. ‘JV have an eye for comedy’ (Ian Hislop).
Please see full web entry for a list of contributing comedians!
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Show 6
By Mark Ravenhill
A provocative new thriller from award-winning playwright Mark Ravenhill written for the Lyric Hammersmith’s Secret Theatre Company.
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Made in ILVA - The Contemporary Hermit
Instabili Vaganti
An international multi-award winning masterpiece of physical theatre, an innovative example of “contemporary bio-mechanics”, a perfect combination of physical actions, music, live voice and video, exploring the condition of alienation of ILVA steelworkers.
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Theatre on a Long Thin Wire
Future Ruins
No actors. No technicians. Just you. And a phone that might ring. This is the theatre you don’t see. 'The level of risk-taking is staggering' Total Theatre on Exterminating Angel.
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Touring work for young audiences internationally
Paul Fitzpatrick (Catherine Wheels); Christine Devaney (Curious Seed); Chaired by Imaginate.
An Imaginate discussion panel talking to theatre and dance makers in Scotland who have toured their work for young audiences internationally. What are the opportunities, what are the issues and what should you know?
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How does a Snake Shed its Skin?
Slip of Steel / Susanna Hislop
Margaret Thatcher is on a diet. Virginia Woolf is in a bucket. Marilyn Monroe is reading the dictionary. A show about making a one-woman show when you are not one woman.
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Little on the inside
Clean Break
On a patch of green nowhere to be found here, two women provide a little comfort for one another. But how can they stay in a place that doesn't exist?
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A Walk at the Edge of the World
Magnetic North
Landscape, memory and change explored in a performance starting with a short silent walk for the whole audience. Text Nicholas Bone, design Sans façon, performer Ian Cameron. ‘Works beautifully...’ (The Scotsman, on Walden).
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Klip
Livingstones Kabinet
Award-winning theatre from Denmark combining performance, dance and live music. A tightly choreographed and exquisitely orchestrated descent to chaos which has reduced audiences to both laughter and tears. Funny, provocative, disturbing and visually inventive with moments of great beauty.
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Misa-Lisin
Langasan Theatre (Taiwan)/Performance Infinity
Misa-Lisin means ceremonies in all seasons. Imagine the blowing wind stirring the grain, the mud wrestling from our childhood memory, the healing received from the ocean... Misa-Lisin, a performance shaped by the power of humanity and motherland.
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Dead To Me
Gary Kitching and Co in association with Greyscale
Disturbingly funny story about a man and his troubled relationship with a psychic and her spirit guide. Living people can be cruel. The dead are easier to deal with. ‘Very funny for all the wrong reasons’ (WhatsOnStage.com).
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The Object Lesson
Aurora Nova presents Geoff Sobelle
With boxes stacked to the ceiling, actor-illusionist- inventor Geoff Sobelle unpacks our relationship to everyday objects - a hilarious, heartbreaking meditation on the stuff we cling to and the crap we leave behind. 'Entirely unique....thrilling’ (EdgePhiladelphia.com).
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Hymn to Disappearance
Theater Santuoqi
The ancient Chinese game of passing the flower leads to the telling of nine surreal tales which each reflect a moment in which people get lost within their own lives.
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Charmolypi
Studio Matejka
Loosely translated, charmolypi means “joyful sorrow”. In Greece, elderly people possess this quality due to life’s experience. “The water has to fall. Time passes drop by drop. World is in chaos. A minute of silence for the waiting ones...”
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The Flood
Badac Theatre Company / Escalator East to Edinburgh
Set in the unspeakable nightmare of WW1 battlefields, switching between the visceral horror of war and an increasingly passionate and ultimately tragic love affair. An intense portrayal of the emotional and psychological effects of wars past and present.
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Light Killer
Charioteer Theatre and Vxx Zweetz
This is the story of a Faustian Pact. Mikail and HotCal, two young people with a peculiarity: they irradiate light. They are recruited by The Greek, a mysterious artist who wishes to steal their light by promising eternity.
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Maria Addolorata
C&C Company
Winner Jury Prize HiverÔclites 2014 Avignon, France. Suffering has no linear narrative: it hits us unexpectedly, unforeseeably, unstoppably. A two- person investigation on trying to survive this tidal moment, when pain becomes the driving force behind physical reactions.
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Beats North
Company TSU in Association with Curious Monkey
Is this a man’s world? Beats North explores the soundtrack to our lives through the eyes and ears of two northern lads who are still trying to figure it out. By Luke Barnes and Ishy Din.
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A Journey Round My Skull
KILN (formerly Kindle Theatre)
A beautifully wrought tale of a passionate affair, operating on the ears as well as the heart. A playful dissection of the pathology of who we are. A sonic experience of neurosurgery. ‘Wildly imaginative’ (The Guardian).
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Blood Orange
Electric Theatre Workshop
Theatre at high octane speed, based on real events. The SDL try to shut down the local mosque, ending in a full scale riot. Blood Orange examines the turbulent rise of the new far right in modern Scotland.
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Anatomy of the Piano
Will Pickvance
Part piano recital, part fantasy lecture, Will Pickvance returns with his sell-out Edinburgh Fringe 2013 show of virtuosity, dissection and surreal humour. 'Very funny, this man is the Will Pickvance of his generation' (Dylan Moran)
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Sirens
Ontroerend Goed, Drum-Plymouth, Vooruit, Richard Jordan, Big in Belgium, Summerhall
We are the weaker sex. We can’t control our feelings; crying, sulking and suffering inexplicable mood-swings. We are either whores or saints. We’re good liars, using our bodies to get on in life. We’re sirens. The stage is ours.
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Standby for Tape Back-Up
Ross Sutherland with Show And Tell
Sutherland takes an inherited videotape and remixes it live onstage, transforming old television into a dialogue with his late grandfather. ‘One of the stand out shows of the Fringe’ (Stage). ‘Touching, funny, linguistically thrilling’ (Exeunt).
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Lady GoGo Goch
KILN (formerly Kindle Theatre)
A playful and mesmeric exploration of music, voice and cultural identity. Part cabaret, this show examines the lineage of one woman, with live music creating trance-like atmospheres. 'Fox's humour and passion, and Rocha's virtuosity, are unmistakable' (The Guardian).
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Wuthering Heights
Director: Peter McMaster Performers: Gary Gardiner, Nick Anderson, Murray Wason
Award-winning, all-male interpretation of Bronte’s seminal text. Four men explore masculinity as they sing together, full-throated, on the dark expanses of the Yorkshire moors and dance optimistically to the howling tones of Kate Bush.
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Biding Time (Remix)
Tromolo Productions
Musician Louise Quinn and Grid Iron's Ben Harrison's immersive silent disco remix of singer- songwriter Thyme's journey through the fame- factory. '...a vital piece that's musically compelling throughout' (The Scotsman). Part of the Made In Scotland 2014
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Sleep Sound
Fiona Rutherford
Originally a Celtic Connections commission, Sleep Sound is new music inspired by the structure of a night's sleep. Lose yourself in this beautifully vivid soundtrack from an eight-piece ensemble. Part of Made in Scotland showcase.
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Song Noir - The Director's Cut
Pumajaw
Pumajaw intensify their unique musical journey into the twilight zone of cult TV and film noir, with spine tingling vocals, evocative soundscapes and mind-bending imagery. 'Bewitching'(Scotsman). ‘Wonderful’ (BBC 6 Music).
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