And so it's time for WoW's occasional summer attempt at a signpost to the great theatre supermarket that is Edinburgh!
But first, a little bit closer to home, Yorkshire Sculpture Park has a series of performances starting with
Helen Benigson's Breathe Harder on 2 August and coming up on 30 Aug,
Hester Reeves's YMEDACA, an experimental open air academy.Edinburgh all seems to be happening strangely early this year - including
Forest Fringe
- pretty much from the beginning of August onwards, so we're in the
middle of a slightly panicky planning process. Obviously if you aren't
planning on going that way then feel free to hit delete right now...
If
you ARE going - I'd be here all year if I tried to be comprehensive and
link to every show worth a look, so the easiest route in is to
pinpoint venues and plan from there. As a no-brainer, the easy, one-stop
shop is to head out a little way towards Leith and spend a day at
Forest Fringe (6-17 August at Out of the Blue Drill Hall, EH6 8RG) with the likes of Action Hero, Brian Lobel, GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN, Bryony Kimmings etc etc.
Escalator East to Edinburgh
is another easy mini-festival including Caroline Wright and Helen
Paris; Two Destination language; the vacuum cleaner; 30 Bird, etc at a
range of venues, significantly including
Summerhall, which also plays host to some intriguing Belgian work, Amy and Rosana Cade, Ellie Stamp and KILN (formerly Kindle Theatre).
Northern Stage has a new home at
King's Hall, and includes work by Selina Thompson, Geddes Loom and Chris Thorpe + Rachel Chavkin. Fans of
Aurora Nova can see various shows scattered around the Fringe;
Dancebase is definitely worth a look, with a truly international programme including some old friends like Volcano and Déjà Donné.
This year's handy tip for planning (or how I went about it) is to sign-up/log-in to the
new Edfringe website,
search by venue (eg Summerhall) then go through and save shows to your
favourites, then export them into something digestible (pdf or csv) from
there! Of course
Forest Fringe isn't
on Edfringe, so that one you have to do separately. Once more if you're
in as much as a hurry or 'dedicated' as us, I'm uploading my work in
progress spreadsheet planner with a long-list of 49 shows (inc Forest
Fringe) below.
Of
course we shouldn't forget the main Edinburgh International Festival -
I'd be intrigued to see Back to Back, Third World Bunfight and of
course, Tanzteater Wuppertal (but it's all happening I'm there!). I do
have to say I find their website tedious in the extreme, so try
downloading the brochureIf you're pressed for time or slightly phased by the list above then either head for
Forest Fringe and/or
Summerhall and settle in for the day! We'll be doing our own Edinburgh supermarket sweep next week - 25 shows in 36 hours between two of us!
Word
of Warning will be back towards the end of August with a preview of our
season to come. And finally, for the artists amongst you, the
Emergency call for proposals is now open -
deadline 5pm Mon 25 August, details at
emergencymcr.org.
best
Tamsin
