Fringe First Awards Week 1
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00:00 And here we are at the first Fringe Firsts Awards Ceremony, Scotsman Fringe Firsts Awards
00:09 Ceremony of 2023. Let's give ourselves a round of applause.
00:15 Good morning everyone, and this is actually quite a special year for the Fringe Firsts
00:23 Awards because it's 50 years this year since our wonderful late great arts editor Alan Wright,
00:30 who was the arts editor in the 1960s and 70s, invented these awards in order to encourage
00:36 the presentation of new work on the Edinburgh Fringe. And there are various events and things
00:42 on the website and so on to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Fringe. And there's
00:47 also an exhibition, an outdoor exhibition at St Andrew's Square where you can sort of
00:52 walk around the railings and see wonderful images of Fringe Firsts winners from the past.
00:58 And if you want to know about all the Fringe Firsts winners of the past, then we now have
01:04 a comprehensive list of Fringe Firsts winners right from the very beginning. But in order
01:09 to see that, we're going to have to buy the wonderful book about the history of the Edinburgh
01:13 Festival by my colleague and fellow critic David Pollock, who of course is one of our
01:18 Fringe Firsts judges, but it's a fantastic list to read through and well worth doing.
01:23 So welcome everyone to this 50th anniversary round of the Scotsman Fringe Firsts. And it's
01:31 a real pleasure and as ever an honour and a privilege to be here to present our first
01:36 group of Fringe Firsts awards this morning. As you know, we always have a fabulous guest
01:41 star to help us present the Fringe Firsts. And today, our guest star is a woman who has
01:47 already been a, I think a double Fringe Firsts winner herself. She has had some fabulous
01:54 shows on the Fringe. She's a singer, an actress and a writer. And she's based here in Scotland
02:01 for which she's built a fantastic career in all three of those roles. So please welcome
02:06 Athia Campbell. Athia, talk to me a little bit about your Fringe story. When did you
02:20 first come here and what was it like for you? I came to the festival in 2014 and I came
02:27 with my show Black as a Colour in My Voice, which didn't win a Fringe Firsts award. It's
02:35 a show about Nina Simone's life and it follows her life as a child prodigy up until the Civil
02:41 Rights Movement. And this year I'm celebrating my 10 year anniversary of the show. And I
02:47 came, I was living in Shanghai at the time and I decided I wanted to come to the festival.
02:53 So I did like the massive, you know, resurgence of the festival. And it was quite daunting,
02:58 you know, like thinking about bringing a one person show into the Fringe. But I was able
03:04 to come because I ended up doing some fundraising in Shanghai. I did some concerts and raised
03:10 all the money to come here. And that first year, you know, I didn't really know what
03:15 to expect, you know, coming in. It was like 4,000 shows and I was thinking, how am I going
03:21 to stand out? And then I realized, you know, with flyering, you couldn't fly after 5pm
03:26 in the gardens because everybody invites you for a drink and you just end up getting wasted.
03:32 But will you come to my show? But, you know, persevering and figuring out like how to work
03:39 the Fringe. And I just love the festival. It's become like, you know, an annual, well
03:44 it's not a pilgrimage. It is a pilgrimage from, you know, the other side of Hollywood
03:48 Park to come over here. But it's my favorite time of year to come here and just see all
03:53 of the shows and be inspired as an artist as well. To be able to see what kind of work
04:00 I can use for my work, you know, new methods of telling stories. So, yeah, I love it.
04:06 Fantastic. And although you come originally from Florida, you're based here in Scotland
04:11 though. Yes, I'm based here in Edinburgh. When I came in 2014, I met my husband, as
04:19 you do in a festival, right? And I realized lots of festival love that happens. And then
04:24 I moved here. Yeah, I came from Shanghai about like 10 months later and made Edinburgh my
04:30 home. Oh, fantastic. And you're bringing Black is the Color of My Voice, your municipal show.
04:35 That's back this year. Yes, it is. It's back this year for five shows only. And it
04:41 starts next Monday at the EICC. Right. At the Pleasance at the EICC. So there you go.
04:48 Another Pleasance venue doing a terrific program this year. And we're about to move on now
04:57 to the excitement of today's ceremony, which is to make our six awards for this first week
05:06 of the Fringe. The first one goes to an absolutely wonderful company, which has played a role
05:12 at the Edinburgh Festival and on the Fringe for many years, perhaps even decades. A company
05:19 which has been a feature of the South African theatrical landscape for many, many years
05:26 and which this year brings to the Fringe its wonderful show, The Life and Times of Michael
05:34 Kane, based on a beautiful novel by J.M. Coetzee, which won the Booker Prize back in
05:41 1983. The Life and Times of Michael Kane is a story about a man living in a kind of fictional
05:50 version of South Africa. He's a humble guy, a gardener with the municipal parks department.
05:57 And he suddenly is called away from work one day and he hears that his mother, who he's
06:04 not got a particularly easy relationship with, that his mother is very, very ill. And the
06:10 two of them set off through this landscape of this fictional South Africa, torn by civil
06:15 war and lots of passes and permits and bureaucratic difficulties to try to return to the place
06:23 where she grew up, a farm in the Kuru in the uplands of the Cape province. It's an astonishing
06:30 journey. And during that journey, something happens to Michael Kane. He becomes a different
06:37 man. He's been an isolated and humble man all his life, often socially shunned because
06:43 he has a hair lift. But during this journey, he learns all sorts of truths about struggle,
06:51 about his own strengths, and about resistance to the oppression that he's just kind of quietly
06:58 tolerated all his life. So that by the time he reaches his mother's home place, although
07:03 by that time he's lost his mother, he finds the kind of system and pressures that he used
07:11 to live with as a black man in South Africa no longer tolerable. And he moves further
07:16 and further away, both from that society and from the civil war, which is trying to end
07:21 that society, but is really just further tearing this beautiful country apart. So it's a staggering
07:27 story of crises. And this realisation of it on the main stage of the Assembly Hall on
07:34 the mound by the Baxter Theatre this year is one of the most exquisite pieces of theatre
07:40 you're ever likely to see on the fringe. The parts of Michael and his mother are played
07:46 by two magnificent puppets. There's a great tradition of puppetry at the Baxter and in
07:51 South African theatre, but these are two of the finest stage puppets you will ever see.
07:57 Their beauty and their humanity and the complexity of the characters expressed in these figures
08:04 is absolutely staggering. And of course it's supported by an absolutely wonderful company
08:10 of actors who act both as actors and as puppeteers, taking us through this absolutely crucial
08:17 story of the struggle against apartheid and against all forms of fundamentally intolerable
08:24 oppression that just fail to recognise the humanity of everyone. The writer and director
08:30 of that fabulous show, which is sadly preparing to go on stage now so the actors can't be
08:35 here, is the wonderful Lara Foote. And I'm going to invite Lara on stage now to accept
08:41 her fringe first for the life of the show.
08:48 Thank you Joyce for those very kind words and you have no idea how much they mean to me.
09:09 I have several thank yous to say and the first is to William Baudet-Coutts. William has supported
09:18 South African theatre for several years. This is the third time in the last ten years that
09:25 we've been at the Assembly Rooms and it's also our third fringe first. So I'm very proud
09:33 of that. And when I spoke to William about this production and I explained to him that
09:40 it was so complex for a fringe production and technical, he said as he always does,
09:45 just cut, make a cut. And so thank you for that William. I also want to thank our original
09:54 producers, the Teatro del Veld Festival and the Lisbon-Bovchanski House, who are our collaborators
10:01 for that festival of 2020. It was a long journey not to swim with Father Michael Kay and they
10:07 had so many challenges and cancelled twice because of Covid and finally did a live stream
10:15 to the festival as we all did over those years. And so we decided that it would be a very
10:21 good thing to take the risk and come to Edinburgh and share the work internationally. I also
10:28 want to thank Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler for Hansgrohe Puppetry. They are just such
10:35 masters at this craft and it was such a delight and a blessing to work with them. I watched
10:43 Adrian carve the puppets, conceiving the puppets. We spent days and months together working
10:49 out what these puppets should and shouldn't do and what they should look like and their
10:54 fragility. And then the company who worked for nine actors and puppeteers who worked
11:00 with the puppets are just unbelievably dedicated and specific and talented and they breathe
11:07 life into Michael and his mother and they imbue that puppet with such enormous humanity.
11:15 And then J.M. Pucer, of course, a very difficult writer, a very dark writer, but holding his
11:25 darkness and leaning into the darkness with such eloquence that he cannot but shine a
11:30 light on humanity. And so finally thank you to the Baxter Theatre. I came to this festival
11:38 30 years ago as a young and aspirant theatre director, theatre maker, and it opened a window
11:47 to the world of international theatre for me. It made me, it inspired me, I still remember
11:52 every play I saw that year, it inspired me. It also made me ambitious for my future and
11:58 when I got to the Baxter Theatre I was intent on being part of this festival and bringing
12:05 the best of the Baxter work to this festival. So I'm very grateful for this opportunity.
12:11 Thank you very much.
12:13 Thank you, thank you Mara and the Baxter for a wonderful show and good luck to the rest
12:25 of the cast. The story of colonialism is big in the festival and fringe this year. It's
12:34 a huge subject in our cultures at any time now as we try to face up here in Europe to
12:41 the colonial history that we have had and what that has meant for people across the
12:48 globe. The complex story of South Africa, of course, that we see in Michael Kay is a
12:53 particularly complicated and fraught example of that involving both Dutch and British colonialism.
13:01 And there's a particularly interesting reflection on the way that the violence of that whole
13:09 period kind of reflects back into the colonising society, into England in this particular case.
13:17 In Mark Thomas' monologue for this year written by Ed Edwards which is called 'England and
13:25 Son', it's a wonderful portrait of a man who starts out looking like a rather sort of chipper
13:32 English cheeky chappy, you know, working class lad, not averse to a bit of crime, fond of
13:37 his old dad who was also a bit of a rogue, sort of vaguely enjoying a life of crime with
13:44 his mate Paul. But as the story evolves over an hour, and we all know from his wonderful
13:51 previous work on the front, what a wonderful storyteller and performer Mark Thomas is,
13:56 we see that story darken until we see the extent of the violence that shaped that character's
14:06 childhood and we see how it relates also to the history of England itself. It's a profound
14:14 and beautiful text by Ed Edwards which also involved memories of both Ed Edwards' childhood
14:21 and Mark Thomas'. And Mark performs it with an intensity and a passion and a commitment
14:29 to the story he's telling that is truly moving in the little space of the roundabout at Summer
14:35 Hall. So Mark Thomas, please step up.
14:48 Thank you very much indeed. These are great. These are great, you know, they're just brilliant.
14:56 I think the great, thank you, because when you do a gig you can get home and look at
15:01 these and you can go and play the role. And I genuinely am thankful and I accept this
15:09 on behalf of Ed. Very, very quickly, thank you to the team, thank you to Bex who are
15:15 part of our team, the rest of our team can't be here, that is MJ, that is Richard, that
15:19 is Ed and that is Press. And thank you to them for, you know. This is why the tour is
15:25 famous, because it's a collective endeavour. It really is, because it's us working together,
15:32 that's why they get f***ed, the tour is, that's really what we're here to say. And that's
15:39 why they like us, because it means that we actually treat each other as equals, we respect
15:44 each other's efforts, we respect all the various parts of work that comes in to create something
15:49 that's bigger than all of us. And that's, that for me is proper socialism, so you know,
15:54 hooray for that. Also I wanted to say, Edinburgh University, you need to stop behaving like
16:00 a landlord and start behaving like an educator, right? You need to stop doing that. And the
16:06 other thing to say is the Friends Society, you need to start putting pressure on venues
16:11 to make sure that all the staff, all the people who actually work in these places, the people
16:17 behind the bars, the people who are actually kind of like doing the door, the people who
16:21 are sweeping up, the people who are collecting tickets, all the techs, we've got to make
16:25 sure they get paid a living wage. It's absolutely outrageous, we've got this liberal festival
16:30 and yet we treat the workers in it like shite. So the Friends Society has got to start putting
16:34 pressure on all venues to pay the living wage, and if you don't pay the living wage you don't
16:40 get in the programme. Thank you very much.
16:43 Thank you Mark. Terrific show from a terrific performer, campaigner, writer and star, Mark
16:58 Thomas. Thank you Mark, as everyone I'm sure will agree with your comments, it's a struggle
17:04 but it's ongoing and trying to make sure that everyone on this bridge is properly paid,
17:09 certainly a hugely important one. We move on. There's always plenty of love on the fringe,
17:18 but you very rarely see young love celebrated on the fringe in such a straightforward and
17:26 yet utterly inventive way, as in Isabel MacArthur's new play at the Traverse, The Grand Old Opera
17:35 House Hotel, which is part farce, part opera, part gorgeous boy meets girl rom-com, and
17:44 part very shrewd and sly, as we would expect from Isabel MacArthur, political and social
17:51 observation. The action takes place in a beige hotel, you know those kind of hotels where
17:57 everything is a bit beige and there are strange pictures on the walls which are also a bit
18:01 beige, and it really strongly lacks personality and the first character we meet is a young
18:08 guy who is joining as a member of staff and he's about to be trained in how to sort of
18:14 talk corporate bullshit and work long hours for very low pay and wear a uniform all the
18:19 time with a name badge, although nobody really cares what name is on the badge because you
18:23 know it doesn't really matter what your name is as long as you're wearing your name badge.
18:27 So most members of staff have several and use them interchangeably, it's one of the
18:31 very good jokes in this very funny script. So we meet this guy and he hears ethereal
18:37 music in the Grand Old Opera House Hotel and a passing chambermaid, brilliantly played
18:41 by Anne Louise Ross, tells him that the place used to be an opera house before it was reduced
18:46 to this sort of beige corporate architecture and that ghosts of the opera singer still
18:51 patrol the place because it burned down in a fire and some of them lost their lives.
18:55 So he concludes that he's heard most singing opera, but he hasn't. It's actually a lovely
19:00 girl who just loves opera and works under exactly the same conditions as him with the
19:04 result that they never meet. So you can see that everything is set up for a fantastic
19:09 rom-com. He hears this voice, she tries leaving mixed tapes around for him on opera and so
19:15 on and so forth and the whole set which is by Anna Inez of Alice Peter is a wonderful
19:21 sort of farcical set of slamming doors and shifting perspectives and this room which
19:26 serves for all the rooms because they're all the same which keeps appearing in the
19:29 middle of the stage and it is all brilliantly put together and timed and performed by an
19:36 absolutely fantastic ensemble of actors and directed by Gareth Nicholls of the Traverse.
19:43 The couditeatre of the play comes at the moment when the opera sort of intrudes fully into
19:50 the plot and we begin to hear just the supreme beauty of some of the great love arias of
19:56 world opera being sung by these actors who are so multi-skilled and so multi-talented
20:03 and really lifting the whole thing onto that level of magic that only the most fantastic
20:09 operatic music can. And to see a company achieving that, doing farce, doing rom-com, singing
20:16 opera and timing everything so perfectly where there's never a dull moment is just an absolute
20:23 treat. It's a terrific ensemble produced by the Traverse Theatre with Dundee Rec and I
20:30 think that Linda Brooks from the Traverse is here to accept the award on behalf of the
20:34 company who are recording a version of the show for me. Linda.
20:39 Thank you.
20:41 Morning everybody. We are the Traverse. I'm an exec producer and this is Ian, Cecile and
21:03 Gillian who are the unsung heroes who manage the bonkersness backstage of what goes on
21:09 with Grand Opera House Hotel. Thank you Joyce, Andrew and the French First team, the Scotsman,
21:15 Funders Creative Scotland, Embers City Council and a bit of shout out for Culture Ireland.
21:20 Thanks also to all the artistic directors, exec producers, exec and producers who have
21:29 led the Traverse throughout the last 60 years. It's our 60th birthday which I know we also
21:34 share an actual birthday with Athéa Campbell. You're not 60, I'm not 60. Just clarify that.
21:40 Unfortunately, Isabel and the team are currently doing a radio so Isabel has given me a few
21:46 words to read out in response to her first French First Quint. The Traverse told me I
21:54 could write the play I wanted to. What's extraordinary about the Traverse is summed up in that offer
22:00 from their AD. This theatre encourages boundary pushing experimentation and radical creativity
22:06 and it's only thanks to them that I was able to write something so audaciously gender spanning,
22:12 mind bending and frankly back-breaking for the tech team casting creatives. I couldn't
22:17 call this a play or an opera or a bedroom farce because they suggest the work of one
22:21 mind or a handful of creatives. It's a spectacle and without Gareth's direction and Anna-Mia's
22:27 design, Michael-John's arrangement and the jaw-dropping talent of every individual who
22:32 made this fever dream come to life, most especially those who cook up and then take down the set
22:38 every day. It wouldn't be anything at all. Thank you for this and it will mean chopping
22:47 into some 60 pieces to honour all those who are responsible for it. I would also like
22:53 to add our special thanks to Dundee Rep Andrew and Liam and our joint line producer Anne
22:59 who have been brilliant collaborators on this production. The entire brilliant team at the
23:03 Traverse and the other artists and partner companies who make our programme. Particular
23:08 thanks and congrats this morning to Jim and the Fish Apple team. I would also like to
23:12 thank our audience, most importantly, who are back and giving us the love. The message
23:18 within Isabelle's play is that art and imagination lifts the heart to be better creatively, creatively
23:23 enriches and connects us and giving and sharing the kindness that nourishes us. The themes
23:29 across our programme hopefully reflect many lost and roaming human beings but there is
23:34 hope. I feel compelled to take this moment to press the need for us all to find kindness
23:40 towards one another. We're all a bit broken and the artists in particular who have made
23:45 their heart and soul in the midst of this crazy bum fight, who have had to put their
23:49 passions and dreams on hold for some time and therefore there's even more riding than
23:53 ever on this festival. Financial outcomes, yes, but there's the potential to crush our
23:58 artistic souls. There's no beauty, moral or intellectual high ground, no redemption and
24:04 no beauty. Please, please, please be kind and have fun. Thank you.
24:11 Yes, a great play about the radical power of opera as a form of resistance to corporate
24:25 bullying and beauty in general as a form of resistance to that kind of subtle bullying
24:34 that is just so common in British life just now, just conformed to this or basically in
24:39 this sect. Anyway, okay, let us move on because the quest for meaning in life often involves
24:48 love and that can be as true in middle life as it is in the kind of youth that we see
24:55 from the two leading characters in that play, just beautifully played by the way by Ali
24:59 Watt and Karen Fishwick in the Garden of Opera House Hotel. But another show at the Traverse
25:05 this year from the much loved company Fish & Moe, who like the Baxter have played a terrific
25:11 role on the Edinburgh Fringe over the years, is a play called Heaven by Eugene O'Brien,
25:18 which is about a middle-aged couple in the midlands of Ireland who are each other's best
25:23 friends who get on really well, Mariette and Mal. But at a family wedding one weekend,
25:31 Mariette encounters her old love, her first sort of teenage lover, and she really fancies
25:38 a big play with this guy. And because of the sheer beauty and quality of Eugene O'Brien's
25:45 writing, that situation develops this wonderful sense of kind of wit and energy and reach
25:54 and wider humanity that is just an absolute joy to see unfolding on the small stage of
26:01 Traverse 2. Mal is also having a quieter at first midlife crisis. In the background he's
26:09 Mareid's rock, he's always much the less spectacular of the couple, but he too has a secret life
26:16 of gay yearnings which he's never really expressed since the days he first felt them as an altar
26:23 boy, and needless to say, given that situation, they have a certain religious edge which is
26:28 both funny and poignant. And so both Mareid and Mal are struggling through their intertwined
26:34 monologues with the need for kind of passion and a new lease of life and meaning in the
26:40 middle of life, but also with the ties that bind them to the life that they've built together,
26:45 their affection for each other, their obligations to their daughter, and the wider networks
26:51 that everyone of that age has picked up. So it's a situation that almost anyone, any human
26:57 being can recognise, that tension between the need for passion and meaning and joy and
27:02 new life and the need to honour the commitments that we've made in the world. And it is so
27:09 beautifully executed in this production by The Shamble, directed by Jim Carlton and just
27:16 beautifully performed by Andrew Bennett and Janet Moran, and I'm delighted to say that
27:21 all three of them, Jim, Andrew and Janet, are here to pick up their award for Eugene
27:27 O'Brien's Heaven.
27:28 Thank you so much. It's such an honour to receive this French Frost Award. Thank you
27:49 so much to Joyce MacMillan and the whole team at the Scotsman for this great honour. We're
27:54 so thrilled. We tried to get Eugene back, he was over here for the opening and he's
27:58 got other commitments so he wasn't able to make it today. But thank you first and foremost
28:02 to him for writing us such a beautiful and stunning play, which we absolutely love. And
28:07 then for it to be performed by two stunning actors, two of Ireland's top actors, which
28:10 I have to say, obviously they're standing right beside me over here, Janet and Andrew,
28:14 it's such a pleasure. They're amazing to work with and that's been a real joy. We've
28:18 had a wonderful design team on the production, Zia, Sinead, Salome and Carl. We've a great
28:24 production and stage management team, Ronan and Steph and Pius and Dara and Laura. They've
28:30 been running back and forth between Heaven and Fish Amble's other show in the Fringe,
28:34 King, by the double Fringe first winning Pat Killam of the Giselle in Dance Space. So thank
28:37 you to our crew for running up and down and making all that work. And to my wonderful
28:41 teammates in Fish Amble as well, an amazing team of people, Eva, Callie, Laura, Freya,
28:45 Rachel, Ronan and Gavin. Thank you so much to them and to our brilliant board. And we
28:50 wouldn't be here without our partners in Edinburgh. It is such a pleasure to work with the Traverse
28:55 Theatre on this production. Thank you so much to Linda, Crookes and to everyone at the Traverse.
28:59 We feel really at home there and are loving being there with this production. No problem
29:04 is too much. You mentioned Kevin and his team changing the sets. They're in the middle of
29:09 changing sets in both venues, Ronan and Frieda, and nothing is too much of an issue to sort
29:13 out and resolve. So thank you so much to them and thank you also to Miriam and Emma at Storytelling
29:18 PR who are great to work with. And finally, thanks to our funders, people who made it
29:23 possible for us to be here. Thank you so much to the Arts Council in Ireland and also to
29:27 Culture Ireland. We're delighted to be part of the Culture Ireland showcase of fantastic
29:31 Irish work throughout the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this year. Thank you very much to them.
29:36 I think in recent years one of the good things among many negative things that has happened
29:40 in Ireland is that support for art and culture has really increased substantially and the
29:46 sense of the importance of art and culture in Ireland has really been appreciated and
29:50 acknowledged. So the long may that continue. In terms of that, it's not really a surprise
29:55 to us in Ireland, which maybe wouldn't have been the case in previous years, that we've
29:59 had a message of congratulations from the Minister for Arts, Catherine Martin, already
30:04 this morning. And today we're joined by the Irish Consul General to Scotland, Gerry O'Donoghue,
30:09 and also by the head of the Scottish Government in Ireland, Katie McNeill, to help us celebrate
30:13 this award. So thank you for the government and diplomatic support for the arts in Ireland
30:17 and the long may it continue. Thanks very much.
30:19 We weren't even going to come up because we're such nerds. Joyce insisted and he's just left
30:31 me here to do the... I don't know, it's very boring to hear people say thank you, but like
30:36 all the performers at the Fringe, I'm sure I'm just so grateful. I just feel so privileged
30:41 to get to make a living out of doing this and have audiences come. And also, I'm sure
30:48 most actors and actresses will know that good parts for us don't come along that often and
30:54 when they do you really jump with them on. We're very, very lucky to have such a great
30:58 part and Eugene's brilliant playing. I'm just so glad for these guys and for Eugene that
31:02 they're getting recognised and I'm sure they're all great.
31:05 What a voice. I'd love to hear more of Janet's wonderful voice. See the shorts. See the shorts.
31:19 Fantastic. Now, there is a lot about death in this year's Fringe. Strikingly large number
31:28 of shows trying to confront the fact of death, the fact that we're all going to die, and
31:33 how we handle that. And I wonder why, you know, I mean because death has always been
31:39 with us and I wonder why it's so much in our minds now. And I think the cream, if you like,
31:46 of the shows confronting death on this year's Fringe comes from one of the most wonderful
31:54 and much awarded companies that this Fringe knows and loves so well, Antweren Goed of
32:00 Ghent in Belgium. Antweren Goed first came here, I know, 15 years ago and their work
32:07 has ranged over a whole field of interesting subjects. But in this phase of their work
32:17 they have become, I think, almost as much celebrants or kind of philosophers of the
32:23 time we live in as actors. We all know that there's a historically close link between
32:29 theatre and religion or religious ritual. And of course we now live in a secular society
32:36 where religious rituals are relatively in the background of our lives, maybe only appear
32:42 around the time of a wedding or a funeral. And what Antweren Goed have done in their
32:48 show this year is really to construct a new ritual for the time that we live in. It is
32:55 a funeral, it has an audience of maybe 40 or 50, you come in, you shake the hands of
33:01 everyone else in the audience as you take your place, so you have to look everyone in
33:06 the eye and kind of be with them. And then this wonderful Antweren Goed company leads
33:11 you through this ceremony of sort of thought and recognition which goes from the most personal,
33:18 you're invited if you like to contribute the name of someone that you want to remember
33:22 to the ceremony, to a really cosmic sense of the transience of everything, perhaps as
33:30 a species we're beginning to face up to the possibility of our own transience, that we
33:35 won't be here forever and that we have to decide how we want to celebrate our existence
33:41 and remember it and talk about it. So that's what happens in this wonderful show, funeral,
33:49 this light touch in the sense of not being heavy on words. There's some beautiful movement
33:55 which involves the whole audience, we all take part in rituals of scattering and remembering
34:02 and at the end we all sing a simple song together, just raising our voices as people have done
34:10 throughout the whole of human history. It's a beautiful addition I think to the world
34:16 of ways in which we think about our own mortality and about transience and mortality in general,
34:22 about the fact that every single thing of our universe as the script says is as much
34:27 more and more of an event than an object. Everything is a collection of atoms which
34:33 will eventually dissolve and if you want to celebrate that and recognise it in the company
34:38 of one of the most wonderful companies of artists on the fringe, in funeral at Southside,
34:44 in Zoo Southside is where to go. And I'm glad to say that although the company are on stage
34:50 we have a director and co-creator of the show Alexander De Vries and I'm sure he was producer
34:57 David Bowie is here to accept the award for funeral.
35:19 Thank you. Some of it will be lost in translation, English is my second language so I won't find
35:27 the words as Joyce does. Thank you for those words. We taped them to show them to the whole
35:33 cast because they're performing the show right now so I'm taking your word for all of this.
35:38 And I cherish your words and you say that, like you said that the show is maybe more
35:47 a ritual than a show but also being here and inviting you and coming to Edinburgh almost
35:55 feels like a ritual. A ritual that changed a bit at the border. I feel less a visitor
36:03 than somebody who wants maybe to invade. I have to answer more questions or justify being
36:10 here. So the ritual feels even more important to come. And Mark Fisher just asked me, there's
36:18 so much stories about how difficult it is to come to the Fringe or some financial pilgrimage
36:25 you almost used the words. For us it always felt like essential because for us the Fringe
36:33 is a window to the world. We make connections here from all over the world, from Shanghai
36:42 to America to just have a conversation with somebody from South Africa. For me crossing
36:48 boundaries is essential and not only geographical boundaries but as a metaphor traversing a
36:57 white male Flemish gaze is a boundary and by traversing these boundaries you learn.
37:04 Especially shows where the experience is so mutual. We also learn from people being in
37:11 the show and what they get back and what we share. So thank you for that and your words
37:18 are part of that. Everybody thank you for the jury and the aim of the outcast. We'll
37:23 be back.
37:24 Thank you.
37:34 And now our last show for this week, another funeral but this time a company, there are
37:41 many, a company making their very first ever appearance on the Fringe. A funeral for my
37:51 friend who is still alive is playing at the Space on the Mile only until tomorrow. And
37:57 it's a show which like some shows that we saw last year and some that we see this year
38:03 is reflecting on the impact of the crackdown, the absolute loss of human rights and freedoms
38:11 in Hong Kong on a generation of young Hong Kong people and of course on the societies
38:17 to which many of them have had to flee in order to escape that crackdown and of course
38:23 are still living under some degree of threat and surveillance wherever they have gone
38:28 because of the power and surveillance power of the Chinese state. So this is one of those
38:34 shows but giving it that political introduction doesn't even begin to explain what a wonderfully
38:41 playful and varied and enjoyable show this is. It charts the story, the story of the
38:49 relationship between the woman who's speaking and her friend who has had to leave Hong Kong
38:54 in the end but with whom she went through all the experiences of going to demonstrations
39:00 for more democracy, of being tear gassed, of running around, of just being an ordinary
39:05 student, of talking about the future, of planning for the future, of visiting the park, of you
39:11 know all the things that young people just do you know on campus, off campus in their
39:18 normal lives are kind of captured in this lovely piece. It's only 45 minutes which kind
39:24 of combines reflection and meditation with physical theatre and with political observation
39:31 and at the end, at the end, the friend is gone and the tragedy is that the whole city
39:39 and society that supported that friendship in which it took place has gone too and this
39:45 is the thing that is really being mourned in this really memorable and beautiful play.
39:52 It's co-written by Cathy Man and Cass and Sui and it's performed by Cass and Sui in
39:59 the most wonderfully engaging and thoughtful and varied style that really draws you in
40:06 to its very serious conclusion and she has just been on stage. I don't know if she's
40:11 made it round here from the space in Midway Street but if she has, please come up.
40:17 [Applause]
40:29 Hello, welcome to the British Press. Thank you. I just finished my show so thank you
40:37 so much. My director Cathy, due to some personal reasons that she can't attend the ceremony
40:44 so I give the speech representing her. So we want to thank the Scotsman for giving us
40:54 this award. We also want to thank our core, the Space UK, the Living Grace Alliance Church
41:03 and our families and friends for all their support. It is this support that has allowed
41:11 us to bring this work to the Edinburgh Bridge. When we bought a funeral for my friend who
41:18 is still alive to Edinburgh, we came here wanting to tell the story of Hong Kong. We
41:25 never thought we would get any awards. Receiving these awards means a lot to us, especially
41:33 since this is the story about every Hong Konger who shares the same collective memory, the
41:40 same trauma. Therefore we want to dedicate this award to all Hong Kong people, to those
41:47 who chose to stay and those who chose to leave Hong Kong. No matter what choice they make,
41:54 through this play we hope to bring love, recognition and hope to them. Well, not only people from
42:02 Hong Kong, but we hope that everyone who for any reason is forced to leave their home will
42:13 receive comfort from this play. Thank you.
42:17 Last but not least, we will attend our show till next week. So please come and support
42:28 the story from Hong Kong.
42:32 And that's it for this week. Although I think you can tell by the kind of mood and energy
42:49 of the awards we've seen today how much more there is to come on this amazing Fringe 2023.
42:55 I hope it was not for you. Oh, it was amazing. I love listening to you describe the show
43:00 as well. You just have a wonderful way of describing them and I'm like, I want to see
43:06 everything. So that's great. Congratulations to everyone who got all the awards today.
43:13 And it's like Mark says, I remember I got my Fringe first award actually when I got
43:18 it for "Woke," but I wasn't here. I had to fly to America for my sister's wedding. But
43:22 it is that one thing I look up and I'm like, can I still write? Oh yeah, I could. Yeah,
43:27 I got the award one time. And so, yeah, I'm just so excited to see more of the shows that
43:33 are out in the festival this year and just make sure you see lots of stuff too, right?
43:38 Like it just encourages you to get out and see all kinds of different things. Yeah, if
43:41 you possibly can. It's fantastic. Thank you so much and all the best for the run of "Black
43:46 as the colour of my voice."
43:55 That's it for today. Enjoy your coffee. Enjoy this beautiful morning in Edinburgh. And do
44:03 join us again, the same time, the same place next week for the Scotsman Fringe First 2023
44:09 50th Anniversary Special, week number two. Thank you very much.