So we promised you announcements and announcements we will give you. In the coming days we’ll have a whole new website where you can swim through this programme to your heart’s content. There will be many pictures, and words from all these people about what they’re planning to do this summer. There will be a timetable you can download and though we are tempted to have written on it ‘JUST COME HERE AND DON’T LEAVE AND THAT’S YOUR TIMETABLE SORTED’, it will actually contain all the information you need to allow you to make more meticulous festival plans.
Before all that, however, we wanted to introduce this year’s programme in a more old fashioned way, with some words of introduction and a thank you to everyone who has helped us to return to Edinburgh having lost our old home at the end of the 2011 Festival.
Our new home for this summer is Out of the Blue Drill Hall in Leith, a beautiful building and a living space that is both run and inhabited by an incredible community of artists and interesting people. It’s a twenty minute walk from town, a chance to clear your head of the busy haze of the festival and slip into a more comfortable rhythm. It’s somewhere we hope you and our artists can find a bit of space and time, to think and talk and make new things happen. We want you to scratch a day or two out of your fringe calender and come and spend some time with us. We want you to see everything – the major shows and the intimate encounters and one-off events spilling out of the cracks between them. We think it is all pretty amazing stuff and hope that you will too.
Here are some the things that you will find there:
You’ll find a programme of new shows including:
- Action Hero’s epic new story of sports movies and small town America, Hoke’s Bluff
- Ross Sutherland’s hypnotic video-tape eulogy Standby For Tape Back-Up.
- Herald Angel winner Deborah Pearson’s The Future Show.
- Chris Thorpe and Hannah Jane Walker’s I Wish I Was Lonely, a follow-up to the fringe-first winning The Oh Fuck Moment.
- First full Edinburgh Festival runs for Ira Brand and Sam Halmarack and the Miserablites.
- And we’re delighted to this year be hosting the brilliant Tim Crouch and Andy Smith, with their new show what happens to the hope at the end of the evening.
You’ll find all manner of unusual and unpredictable encounters in every corner of the building:
- You could find yourself walking hand-in-hand with strangers through the streets of Leith in Rosana Cade’s Walking:Holding.
- You could end up lying in the back of a van with Sarah Jane Norman in Rest Area.
- Sharing a brief but beautiful experience in a darkened room in Jo Bannon’s Exposure.
- You can explore Brian Lobel’s beautiful Mourning Glory Trilogy about love, death and technology.
- You can remember forgotten Australian performance artist Barbara Cleveland with Sydney-based performance-collective Brown Council in Remembering Barbara Cleveland.
- You can receive debt counselling from Harry Giles or gaze through a viewmaster with Ryan Van Winkle and Dan Gorman
- You can contribute to installations by Invisible Flock and the Paper Birds.
- And you can listen to a whole microfestival of audio-based performance work from artists including Bryony Kimmings, Scottee and Andy Field.
You’ll also find a whole bunch of artists-in-residence making completely new work that we don’t really know anything about yet, including:
- Abigail Conway, longtime Forest Fringe friend and co-creator of the legendary Home Sweet Home
- Richard Houguez of The Haircuts Before the Party running a project on radical hairdressing as part of the Live Art Development Agency’s DIY programme.
- The remarkable Deaf and Hearing Ensemble bringing together deaf and hearing performers to try and make a shared vocabulary for themselves
- Australian artist Laura Delaney, who will be travelling all the way from Melbourne to be part of this year’s festival.
We’re also really excited to host a programme of intimate events in the Forest Cafe’s new Forest Centre Plus space, including work by Ella Good and Nicki Kent and Unfinished Business.
And alongside all of this we’ll have all manner of one-off events featuring artists including Michael Pinchbeck, Richard DeDomenici and including a day-long collaboration with the good people at Northern Stage called Make. Do. And Mend, involving a special co-commissioned work by Third Angel.
The aim in all of this is to create not simply a programme, but a different kind home at the festival. A place you can come for a whole day, seeing shows, encountering unusual events, talking with friends and strangers and becoming part of a community unlike anything else you might find in the city in August. And crucially all of this remains completely free.
We look forward to seeing you all at the Drill Hall very soon.
All of this is only possible thanks to the generous support of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation and the University of Chichester.
Full Programme
Deborah Pearson – The Future Show
16, (11am) 21 (2pm) & 26 (9.15pm) August
Chris Thorpe and Hannah Jane Walker – I Wish I Was Lonely
16 – 25 August, 12.15pm
Ira Brand – A Cure for Ageing
16 – 25 August, 2pm
Dictaphone Group – Nothing to Declare
16 – 21 August, 3.30pm
Ross Sutherland – Stand-by For Tape Back-Up
16 – 25 August, 5pm
Tim Crouch and Andy Smith – what happens to the hope at the end of the evening
18 – 24 August, 6.30pm
Active Inquiry – Taking Care of Business
16 & 17 August, 6.30pm
Sam Halmarack and the Miserablites
16 – 24 August, 8pm
Action Hero – Hoke’s Bluff
16 – 23 August, 9.15pm
Invisible Flock – Bring the Happy
19 – 23 August, 9pm (offsite event, meet at Out of the Blue Drill Hall)
Ella Good and Nicki Kent – Wild Thing I Love You
Dates and times to be confirmed (at Forest Centre Plus)
Unfinished Business – Only Wolves and Lions
19 – 23 August, 4.30pm
Michael Pinchbeck – The Middle
20 August, 7.30pm
Richard DeDomenici – The Richard DeDomenici Collection
25 August, 6.30pm
Brian Lobel – The Mourning Glory Trilogy
Installation, performance and publication
16 – 25 August
Rosana Cade – Walking:Holding
One on one performance
Dates and times to be confirmed
Sarah Jane Norman – Rest Area
One on one performance
21-23 August, times to be confirmed
Jo Bannon – Exposure
One on one performance
16 – 25 August, times to be confirmed
Brown Council – Remembering Barbara Cleveland
Performance and video
16 – 25 August
Peter McMaster – Gold Piece
One on one performance
Dates and times to be confirmed
Harry Giles – What We Owe
One on one performance
Dates and times to be confirmed
Ryan Van Winkle and Dan Gorman – ViewMaster
One on one performance
16 – 19 August, times to be confirmed
Paper Birds – On the Other Hand
Interactive installation
16 – 25 August
Scottee – Liam Gallagher is my Grandad
Audio performance
16 – 25 August
Andy Field – Motor Vehicle Sundown
Audio performance
16 – 25 August
Bryony Kimmings – Catherine Bennett: Behind the Music
Audio performance
16 – 25 August
Fuel – While You Wait
Audio performance
19 – 24 August
Invisible Flock – Bring the Happy
Installation
19 – 23 August
Abigail Conway
Residency
16 – 25 August
Laura Delaney
Residency
16 – 25 August
Richard Houguez
Residency
Dates to be confirmed
Deaf and Hearing Ensemble
Residency
19 – 23 August
Make. Do. And Mend. (with Northern Stage)
Discussion
19 August