Scotsman Fringe First Awards week 2
Scotsman Fringe First Awards week 2
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00:00 [Applause]
00:02 Welcome to week two of the Scotsman's Edinburgh Festival Fringe Awards.
00:08 It's fantastic to see so many people here, and not only because you're all wonderful people,
00:13 but also because it's tough! You've got through quite a long time, quite a lot of performances.
00:19 They're all fantastic and it's all wonderful that everybody can be here to celebrate them.
00:23 So let's give ourselves a huge round of applause.
00:27 [Applause]
00:35 There'll be a few of you looking at the stage and thinking, "Oh, Joyce Macmillan's looking a bit peaky!"
00:40 [Laughter]
00:42 Joyce would have loved to have been here, but this is a festival of transformation.
00:46 Things change from moment to moment on the stage, as many of you have been transforming our world for us.
00:53 Thank you very much for that.
00:55 Joyce is very, very sorry not to be able to be here.
00:58 She already had a damaged and vulnerable ankle, and she very unfortunately slipped and tripped and made it considerably worse.
01:06 But she has texted me, and I'll tell you what she wanted the world to hear from her,
01:13 which is that she's very, very sorry not to be back here, and she hopes to be back on the trail very soon.
01:21 And to give huge congratulations from her to all the week's, this week's wonderful winners and best wishes to everybody.
01:29 My name is Mark Fisher. I'm one of the panellists on the Fringe First Award panel.
01:35 And it's a great privilege actually to be able to do that in the audience today.
01:39 I've just seen Fiona Shepard and Sally Stott.
01:42 With us also is David Pollock and Susan Mansfield.
01:46 And of course Jackie McGlone, who was doing sterling work rescuing Joyce McBullin in the throes of adversity when she was falling over and so on.
01:55 And all of us have the great opportunity to go and see shows that have been recommended by, sometimes by among ourselves,
02:07 but also in particular from the other wider pool of Scotsman Fringe reviewers.
02:12 And of course that's a huge privilege to be able to see such fantastic work.
02:16 And then the tough, tough job of deciding who should win.
02:20 We had some fantastic winners last week. We're going to have some more, five more fantastic winners next week.
02:28 And just so that I remember and I tell you, everybody will be very, very welcome to come along to the Pleasance Beyond,
02:34 10 o'clock sharp this time next week when all of the awards and other awards around town will be celebrated.
02:43 So that's the big one. So do come back for that.
02:46 And every week we have a guest presenter. Again, things didn't go exactly according to plan.
02:55 Very, very sadly, Cora Bissett was going to be joining us, but she's been struck by Covid, which is terrible for her because she was falling.
03:03 I mean, it's just terrible for her anyway, full stop. But she was also performing in What Every Girl Wants,
03:09 which is What Little Girls Are Made Up. Yes, thank you.
03:16 Be careful from the front here. And it's a fantastic one woman show, a backdrawn from her own experience.
03:24 And one of the things that we'll be discovering in the seven awards that we're giving today is how much real life,
03:29 real experience has fed into the awards that we're going to be giving.
03:33 And it would have been lovely to hear from Cora from that point of view, because she has had a tremendous career specialising in real life stories,
03:42 such as the stories of refugees, the stories of people who've been sex trafficked and her own story about starting off in the indie music world and so on.
03:53 So our best wishes definitely go out to Cora, but even greater wishes go to Guy Masterson, who is going to be our guest presenter today,
04:02 who has had 15 minutes notice of that. Guy basically is fringe royalty.
04:12 Guy is the recipient of eight fringe firsts, I believe, and has had shows that have gone more or less directly from the Edinburgh fringe to New York, to Broadway.
04:26 He's currently just returned in the last couple of days from Broadway, where The Shark Is Broken is doing tremendously.
04:34 And that started off here. And let's welcome onto the stage, huge welcome, at last minute, and all the best to Guy Masterson.
04:42 [Applause]
04:52 Guy likes to remind me that the first time I saw him he was in pyjamas.
04:55 That's true.
04:57 And I've been watching your stuff ever since, Guy. What does the fringe and Edinburgh mean to you?
05:03 Well, you and a few other people in this room changed my world.
05:07 I was performing Under Milk Wood at the Traverse Theatre in February of 1994, and it was well reviewed, and I was invited back to the assembly rooms in August,
05:17 and I almost refused the invitation because I was scared of losing my shirt.
05:21 And as it turned out, Mary Shields and William Bledecourt said, "You're not going to lose your shirt."
05:26 And I didn't, because there's a lady down there who did a two-page review of The Herald of me, and I sold every ticket before I even came up to Edinburgh.
05:36 [Applause]
05:38 That lady is Jackie McClellan, and she is a legend in her own right.
05:42 I have been coming for 29 years. This is my 29th season. I've produced 150 shows in Edinburgh since then.
05:52 Produced and presented, not all my money, I have to say. And as an actor, writer, director, producer and presenter,
06:00 traveling all around the world, meeting like-minded performers who asked me, "How do you do the Edinburgh Fringe?"
06:07 And I said, "I can't explain it, so I'll help you."
06:11 And so I brought these incredible performers over, helped them do it.
06:15 They win awards, my name's on top of the posters, I look good.
06:18 So that's pretty much how I became an accidental producer, but I've always remained true to my roots as a performer and as a director.
06:26 And as you said, Mark, very generously, four years ago, 2018, or five years ago, my God,
06:32 I did a play at the Assembly called The Shark Is Broken.
06:35 We transferred to the West End after COVID, and we opened on Broadway last week.
06:40 And to me, that is pretty much a dream come true for anybody who comes to the Edinburgh Fringe.
06:46 And it kind of opens--there's very few productions that start that small and then get that big.
06:55 Six is another one, starts in a basement in Edinburgh, and it's now all over the world, which is incredible.
07:03 So that's what Edinburgh Fringe can do.
07:05 And as I said, I like to think that 30's going to be my final number, but we'll find out next year.
07:12 And the fact that it isn't--and I know it won't be your final number, because you do keep on coming back.
07:18 I was on trends good last week at one of the winners for their show, Funeral.
07:22 We were talking last week about the continued nourishment that Edinburgh gives you,
07:27 but even when you've got a show on Broadway, even when you've got a show on the West End, you still think, "Hmm, Edinburgh's there."
07:33 And we've heard, obviously, the terrible challenges that any Fringe company has in terms of raising the money,
07:40 paying rent, paying accommodation costs, paying travel costs, all the rest of it.
07:44 It's not easy in any particular way at all.
07:48 Don't get me started on that.
07:49 And yet--and I know you've been in hairy situations many times, but if financially--but if you--
07:55 if there is something that brings you back.
07:57 Well, there is, because Edinburgh is the greatest art showcase in the world.
08:01 We sell only a second number of tickets to the Olympic Games.
08:05 And I think that's a big thing to remember, is that it is so--it is our Olympics.
08:10 And if you're going to open something, if it's on your doorstep, why not take advantage of it?
08:14 It's actually cheaper to produce a show in Edinburgh, despite the spiralling costs, than it would be to do it in London.
08:20 And all these critics are here to support this Fringe.
08:24 People like Mark, who's got 70, 80 shows of Fringe, an attempt to write something cogent in the fourth week.
08:32 That's a depressing attempt.
08:36 I like to read those reviews.
08:39 But the Edinburgh Fringe has changed so much over the 30 years I've been here.
08:44 But the constants of Mark and Joyce and Jackie, it's quite extraordinary to me that literally your career during August has supported this incredible place.
08:56 As much as people like me and the artists coming to Edinburgh have supported the Fringe itself, where would we be without the artists?
09:03 First and foremost, we're the ones that pay for the festival.
09:07 We're the ones that take the risk.
09:09 And my dear friends, the venues, also take risks.
09:13 But ultimately, it's all paid for by the artists.
09:16 And the money we raise, or the money we lose, or whatever.
09:19 And that has to be accepted and understood.
09:23 And it's really, really tough.
09:26 But we do say that quality eventually shines through. It does rise.
09:30 There's only four weeks for the cream to reach the top, if you like.
09:33 But you've got to believe, if you're in the first week and you haven't got your Scotsman review and you haven't got this and the other, that you will.
09:40 That someone will be talking about you.
09:42 Because word of mouth is still the most powerful thing we have in this festival.
09:46 And the reviews, much as I love them, are secondary to word of mouth.
09:50 So that is the thing which gets things going.
09:53 And so the Scotsman Fringe Firsts, how important are they?
09:58 Well, they're kind of a mark of achievement, if you like.
10:02 I remember I didn't win a Fringe First for the first five years I was here.
10:06 And I was jealous as hell.
10:08 I said, "What do I need to do to do that?"
10:11 Well, I didn't do it myself. I brought a company in that won.
10:15 It was the first company from New Zealand that ever won a Fringe First.
10:20 And they went back to New Zealand as stars.
10:23 And they started touring their work. They became a big company.
10:27 And then we had a plethora of New Zealand shows coming in.
10:30 And lots of them won Fringe Firsts.
10:32 And it's just a remarkable thing for artists like us to get recognition from critics like Mark and Joyce.
10:42 And I believe Joyce is the finest theatrical critic in the world.
10:46 There is no one with a greater depth of knowledge than Joyce.
10:49 She's seen more shows than any living critic.
10:51 And she's able to compare them extraordinarily with this encyclopedic knowledge that she has.
10:58 And I can tell you that critics in New York are not as good as Joyce.
11:03 But, no, it's remarkable.
11:06 And so to receive recognition from the Scotsman, and to know what that does for you as a theatre company,
11:11 and this year in particular, it gives you the confidence to continue.
11:15 And I'm sure that most of the Fringe First winners here, if you haven't won before,
11:18 you'll be back next year or the year after with another show.
11:21 And that's what it's about.
11:23 Yeah? Yeah? Yeah?
11:27 My phone's off the hook, by the way.
11:30 Thank you very much for that, Guy.
11:33 I'm going to swap places so that you can be back with the awards.
11:36 And let's have the awards. There are seven of them today.
11:39 I'm going to try and trot through them as quickly as possible.
11:43 And I've just given a brief introduction.
11:46 If everybody involved in the production comes up to receive them from Guy.
11:51 So another round of applause for Guy.
11:53 [applause]
12:00 As Guy was saying, he enjoys the fact that there are critics coming here.
12:05 And it's also tremendously, tremendously nourishing for us to get the opportunity to see all this fantastic work.
12:11 And the first work that we're going to be talking about, and as I say,
12:14 there's this thread of real life coming through all of them.
12:17 This one is called "Choo Choo!" Open brackets or dot, dot, dot.
12:22 Have you ever thought about, and there was a lot of asterisks about three times, question mark, in brackets,
12:29 because I have closed brackets.
12:32 Can I just say, for those of you who are thinking about your titles for next year,
12:36 there are those of us who have to write this down.
12:40 I must interrupt you. In 2002, we had the longest title on the Fringe history.
12:45 And it went like this. It went, "The complete lost works of Samuel Beckett,
12:49 as found in an envelope in Paris, partially burned, labeled 'Never to be performed, never, ever, ever, or sue,
12:55 or sue from the grave.'"
12:59 I'm going to have to word count right there.
13:02 But this is a fantastic show. One of the couple of shows that we're going to be talking about
13:05 that uses the idea of television and the distortions of television,
13:12 the sort of glossy world that television provides as a metaphor for the darker things in life.
13:20 It's written by, written and performed by Nye Russell Thompson and Duncan Hullis.
13:26 And Stammermouth is the company set up by Nye to draw attention initially to the idea of encouraging people
13:35 to feel what it is like to have a stammer.
13:38 So the company has a very profound interest in disability, in sharing problems of mental health,
13:46 and making good art, interesting and entertaining art, out of serious issues.
13:53 So there's a huge amount of joyfulness and entertainment in this production with gags,
13:58 but as this sort of world of television and daytime froth goes on,
14:05 the more we see the darker side of things coming through,
14:10 and the idea of people having something that they want to get out,
14:14 and they're not feeling as though they're allowed to get out of it,
14:16 but they're going to keep themselves just about in check before the darker things emerge.
14:22 Sally Stark, writing in The Scotsman, said that it was an original and audacious exploration of mental health and theatrical form.
14:29 So that combination of theatrical form and a serious subject is one of the things that drew it to our attention as a show.
14:37 And so I would like to bring out, did I mention Noreen Bradley as the director?
14:42 But the company from Stammermouth, who put on a show in collaboration with Sherman Theatre in Cardiff and the Pleasants,
14:50 is here at the Pleasants Dome, 1.15pm until the 28th of August.
14:53 So if the company for that long show, choo-choo, could come out.
14:58 [Applause]
15:16 Thank you so much. I just want to say it's so mad seeing the entire show title printed on there.
15:22 It is all there.
15:24 I'm slightly woozy, I do apologise if I start talking completely out of this.
15:29 But yeah, no, we just wanted to make a show about intrusive thoughts,
15:34 and raise awareness and solidarity for people who have experience with it.
15:40 So yeah, for us to get this award is just so lovely.
15:44 Thank you so much. Thank you.
15:46 [Applause]
15:51 We should also say as well that one of the joys of our show is that it is BSL interpreted for performance
15:57 and audio descriptions integrated, and that access has also been provided by Laura, our amazing interpreter for this run.
16:04 [Applause]
16:06 And also our assistant director and co-writer Tassila Khan, who can't be with us at the moment,
16:11 but she consulted and integrated the audio description.
16:14 So we should say a massive thank you to them.
16:16 [Applause]
16:34 Another show using the idea of television in a subversive sort of way, and real life in a subversive way,
16:41 is called The Last of the Soviets.
16:43 And this is a piece going on at Zoo Playground.
16:46 It's on every day, 5.45 until the end of the month.
16:49 And it's created by Inga Mikshina-Zotova and Roman Mikshin-Zotov,
16:55 and directed by Peter Bohac from the Spitfire Company in Prague, in Czechoslovakia.
17:02 And the two actors are themselves Russian exiles, and they use the work,
17:08 they've been inspired by the work of Svetlana Alexievich, the Nobel Prize winner laureate,
17:15 who has written from the point of view of Belarus, but of true stories of the experience of people in the Soviet era,
17:26 of Chernobyl being one thing, of the war, the Russian war in Afghanistan, and other conflicts that the country has gone through.
17:34 So they've used this as this raw, real, lived experience of people who have gone through these very great traumatic events,
17:43 as inspiration for a show which sort of tells two stories simultaneously,
17:48 using this similar technique about using live video.
17:53 And so what we're seeing is, it could be a food program, it could be a news program,
17:57 two very slick Russian newscasters telling one story, but in front of them is a table where there are plates and bits of food.
18:10 They actually hand out vodka to the audience, which is one reason for going, if you sit on the front row.
18:16 And using a small camera with a screen, these miniature events take place that are contradicting the stories that they're telling.
18:29 So they're telling, in that work Pravda, a famous newspaper, the truth.
18:33 This is sort of fake news before we use the phrase "fake news,"
18:37 and the reality of people living in the nuclear fallout of Chernobyl, for example, is told through a very, very bleak set of jokes,
18:51 which are so bleak, you're wondering whether, the gallows humor is so dark, you're wondering whether you can laugh or cry at this thing.
19:00 It's one joke that's so dark and untranslatable that they just stop midway through trying to translate it, because it just doesn't work.
19:09 But the various experiences are all interwoven and mixed in, in a way that is fascinating.
19:19 Theatrically, again, it's the same sort of thing, it's not just the bold political facts, but a theatricalization of these ideas.
19:27 Two fantastic performers, and as David Pollak said in The Scotsman, it is as captivating as a disaster happening in real time.
19:37 So if the company from The Last of the Soviets could come up and receive their award.
19:41 [applause]
20:09 Thank you very much. We would like to say thank you for everybody who made it happen.
20:16 It's the Splitfire Company, it's Bara and Peter who helped hold the company together.
20:24 Then there's James Mackenzie from Zoo Venues who was so kind to allow us to perform,
20:33 because it's really, truly not so easy, for example, to get the voice heard, especially in the contemporary situation.
20:42 Because we experience ourselves living in Prague that we are being cut in some places.
20:50 So just standing here and/or playing there and just saying whatever, it's already a great opportunity to have.
21:01 So, yeah, thank you very much.
21:05 [applause]
21:12 Yes, and we hope from the depths of our hearts, we hope that this performance, The Last of the Soviets,
21:21 will help us to reflect these evil events that are happening in the world.
21:27 So thank you very much again.
21:29 [applause]
21:43 Again, one of the fantastic things about the festival is the variety that it brings your way.
21:48 Again, we're talking about true life, but in this case, in the case of club life,
21:55 we're talking about the real life experience of people in Edinburgh in clubs in the 1980s and the 1990s,
22:02 many of which, many of the best of which, were run by Fred Deakin,
22:06 who tells his own story in an unusually long fringe show, which is all the better,
22:15 involving memories and dancing. It actually involves dancing.
22:21 There's a fantastic team of dancers in the show, but they also encourage audience members to join in as well.
22:26 David Pollack in The Scotsman described this show as a very odd jukebox musical,
22:31 which is a fantastic description of it, but it's part autobiography, part monologue,
22:36 it's part dance show, part performance art. It's all of these things.
22:40 It's Fred Deakin, directed by Sita Arayona-Piranchini, and I'll give them credit for the dancers,
22:47 Price Jones, Abbey Kane, Hannah Nadir, Lily Smith, Ben Standish,
22:54 give a tremendously evocative and memorable trick back to a time that was formative for so many people,
23:05 and for Fred himself for going through those experiences.
23:08 So it's a great novelty to see a show that's pushing boundaries and finding different ways to tell fresh stories.
23:16 So if Fred and the company would like to come out and accept their friendship...
23:21 [Applause]
23:37 Yay! Oh, thank you so much! Woo!
23:40 The bags are all here! It's unbelievable!
23:42 Thank you so much! A real amazing moment.
23:45 Again, I want to bring up the cast of actors. I just want to be super clear, they are acting.
23:50 The show's different every night. They do this incredible thing called acting,
23:53 which is a whole new ballgame for me. So thank you so much, cast, you've been incredible.
23:58 Sita, I took a really basic idea and you turned it into a dramaturgical wonder.
24:02 It's up-nuanced style. I'm not a theatre guy, you know, so I had to get someone in to help me,
24:08 and you nailed it, so thank you so much.
24:10 David Miller, who's a producer who knows everybody in Scotland. Cameron on the visuals.
24:16 Cameron Gleeson, some incredible visuals. Check out our Insta if you haven't seen the show.
24:20 Unbelievable. Takes you right back to the club.
24:22 Dan Mitchell, Chief Twerk and BJ. Love you, mate.
24:26 Laura Lees did the costumes. We've got original 80s, 90s club costumes in the production, which is amazing.
24:31 Simone, put her behind her, the casting, thanks so much.
24:34 Nick Roberts on the PR, love you. Izzy Joss, thank you so much for the support.
24:40 Tom Forster and everybody at Summerhall. Edinburgh venue, here all year round.
24:44 Not just doing a smash and grab for the Fringe.
24:47 Who else would have given us a pop-up bar in the theatre space,
24:51 so you can get a drink in the middle of the performance like you would in a real club?
24:55 There you go. We've got seven shows left, it's not sold out yet.
24:58 Thank you so much, really appreciate it.
25:00 [Applause]
25:14 It feels like the party's still going, doesn't it?
25:16 [Laughter]
25:19 Brilliant stuff. More work inspired by real life in the case of Blue.
25:25 I think Guy might want to join in this one, because he was only there last night watching this fantastic show from the US,
25:31 written by June Carroll and starring June Carroll with John Colella,
25:35 and directed by Michael Matthews for Rode Machine Theatre.
25:40 June, for this play, was deeply troubled, as so many of us were,
25:46 by not only the riots around the start of the year when Donald Trump was contesting the vote,
25:56 as he still continues to do in the US,
26:00 but the double thing of police officers in that situation being themselves under threat,
26:06 but also then the later revelation that some of the rioters who had made an attack on the Capitol building
26:13 were themselves off-duty police officers.
26:16 So those questions, and also thinking about things like Sarah Everard in our own country,
26:22 the questions of reliability, with how much we can rely on the police,
26:27 the people that we turn to for support, can themselves, not obviously all the time,
26:32 but on occasion can be part of the problem.
26:36 So a very, very serious show, raising loads and loads of issues,
26:40 but using quite a familiar form in the sense that it's a police interrogation.
26:44 So it's an officer who's investigating an officer.
26:47 So they appear to be very chummy, very friendly, they know the score,
26:51 they know each other's modus operandi,
26:54 but gradually it starts turning that there are more questions to be answered,
26:59 and unresolved questions that need to be answered.
27:03 The, I think it was actually Charisma Millip in The Scotsman, said that
27:09 "it crackles in the air like a thunderstorm about to begin,
27:13 with all the naturalistic potency of twelve angry men condensed into the form of one woman who's had enough."
27:19 Oh no, it was David Pollock who said that, sorry, misattributed.
27:22 It's a tremendous show. Guy, do you want to say one thing more about it?
27:26 I'd like to say, I'd heard about the show, and obviously it's an assembly company,
27:30 so I ran into them in the bar, and we had a good old chinwag,
27:33 turns out we know a lot of people, and they'd seen my show,
27:36 a couple of them had seen my show on Broadway, so we had a lot to talk about,
27:39 and I desperately wanted to see it, and I saw it last night.
27:43 Now this is a show which is a much bigger performance than we're seeing in The Fringe,
27:48 but what was remarkable about last night was that we were less than four feet away from these actors.
27:53 There wasn't a moment where I felt that they weren't entirely the characters they reported to be.
27:59 I felt I was in their world, in their angst.
28:03 The script, the words are so intense, powerful, brilliant.
28:11 Just to be right there in the crucible with them was special.
28:16 That's what Edinburgh can do. You can take it out of the context that you designed it for,
28:20 back in wherever you've originally produced this, put it into a little box in Edinburgh,
28:26 and you've got an entirely new energy.
28:29 I think that's a brilliant thing that The Fringe can do as well.
28:32 It can give directors and producers a whole new outlook on the piece.
28:36 But what this did, it survived whatever that was and made it even more intense.
28:41 It was just a remarkable experience, and you can't get away, of course.
28:45 Not that you want to, but it really was one of the most powerful experiences I've had on The Fringe in 29 years.
28:54 So thank you.
28:56 Thank you for that, guys.
28:58 I think I need to give you this first.
29:19 I'm so happy.
29:22 [applause]
29:30 Yeah, I still don't have words.
29:33 This team of people, along with Gingerbread,
29:42 I don't have words for this. There are not words to say how incredible this is.
29:47 This whole experience has been so welcoming, so heartening, so beautiful.
29:54 And I...
29:56 Thank you?
30:00 That's all. Thank you.
30:03 [applause]
30:17 Thank you.
30:19 On to a slightly smaller scale now with a show called Square Peg, which is at Paradise in Augustine.
30:27 It's at 25th 6th until... is it tomorrow? Today? It's about to finish, so you've only got a limited amount of time to catch.
30:34 Simeon Morris, which is his debut acting piece.
30:37 And it is about a strongly autobiographical tale, again, real life experience, about getting to a point in life where,
30:47 it's often used, the phrase "middle life crisis" is often used, but trying to make something positive and creative out of that moment
30:55 of wondering whether you've used your life in the best way possible.
31:00 In real life, Simeon has a background as working with his hands, dressmaking, working with leather,
31:10 and this fantastically, very unusually, gets used as part of the show.
31:15 It's not every time you go to a show where someone's making a dress within the show.
31:19 And he uses this as a metaphor for creativity, positivity, doing something good in your life.
31:25 As I understand it, Simeon went to drama school after having established a successful career as a designer of fabrics,
31:35 and uses in this show physical theatre, music, poetry, birdsong, and, as I say, dressmaking, which makes it all the more special.
31:45 As David Pollock said in The Scotsman, "It's a frank and perfectly rich and involving piece,
31:51 but one which surely presents a more nuanced look at the contradictions of masculinity than almost any other on this year's fringe."
32:00 So if Simeon and anybody else from the company would like to come up to receive their award for Square Peg.
32:05 [Applause]
32:23 Hi, thanks. I did not really believe this was happening even this morning.
32:27 I had to be here to believe it. Thank you very much.
32:30 I guess there's just me here this morning. Obviously I didn't do this on my own.
32:35 One could, I think, mainly wish to thank Andrea Brooks, who was my tutor at East 15.
32:41 She helped mentor me and direct me to where it's here.
32:44 Also Charlie Bassett, my stage manager.
32:46 And also the kids at Chaos Collective, which is another theatre company doing stuff at the Free Fringe.
32:51 Quick plug.
32:53 A lovely kids' show at 10.30 in the morning called Down the Hatch and Thorns at 5.30.
32:58 They've been helping me get my show in because I'm the one person who shows at the company at 3.
33:03 So that's great for me.
33:05 [Applause]
33:10 I think you need to say something about green shirts. They didn't get the message.
33:14 [Laughter]
33:16 I don't know what I'll say about that.
33:18 [Laughter]
33:27 As long as it's a still designer, we'll make a choice. I'm fine.
33:30 [Laughter]
33:32 I couldn't decide if I should keep the button done up or not.
33:34 [Laughter]
33:39 Oh yes, going to talk about Paradise Green. Thank you very much, guys.
33:43 Especially Emily Ingram, who I told her about the piece and she said, "I want to programme you."
33:48 And I said, "Would you like to see some footage from the previous iteration?"
33:51 She said, "No, I want to programme you."
33:53 I walked away and I spent my whole life ignoring the woman who wants to date me and chasing the ones that didn't.
33:59 I nearly did that with that.
34:01 I was like, "Why don't you just go hang out with a person that said yes?"
34:04 [Laughter]
34:05 So I learned.
34:07 [Laughter]
34:09 [Applause]
34:22 Real life can be about today's stories, but they can also be about historical stories.
34:27 One of the shows that's creating a tremendous buzz at Summerhall is a show called Gunter.
34:31 [Cheering]
34:33 That's on 10 past nine until the end of the month.
34:37 It takes us back to 1605, but with such a modern, contemporary energy that there's no sense in which this is a show about some sort of historical faraway event.
34:50 It's very much a play about time.
34:52 It's created by Julia Grogan, Rachel Lemon, and Lydia Hickman.
34:57 Actually, we've just had somebody who's making dresses.
34:59 This is a show that has a real life historian in it, and there can't be many of those on the fringe.
35:04 Also, not only a real life historian, but also a very, very accomplished musician whose work, Lydia's work, as an academic, is interested in the areas of sexuality and political thought.
35:19 You can see already just from knowing that the kind of richness that this story emerges.
35:25 Starring Nora Lopez Holden as Anne Gunter, who gives the play its name, Hannah Jarrett Scott as Brian Gunter, and Julia Grogan playing other characters.
35:36 [Laughter]
35:39 The company's called Take the Dirty Hair.
35:41 This takes us back, as I say, to 1605, and it's a very troubling case, true life case, whose ending is unresolved because of the uncertainty about the historical record.
35:53 Two boys get murdered quite callously by a local landowner who doesn't like them playing football, bashes their heads together, kills them.
36:04 And then when their mother complains, as you can imagine she might, he turns the tables on her and accuses her of witchcraft.
36:11 Witchcraft being this kind of unresolvable, unprovable, desperately unjust kind of accusation that you can have.
36:22 And the story takes us with a tremendous amount of energy and anger into that world of history, so that brings that sense of the past into the present.
36:35 It's small-scale, total theatre about patriarchal bullying, social inequality, and outright lies.
36:42 And it has, as I say, tremendous music involved in it.
36:46 And as Joyce Macmillan said, I am correctly quoting her here, "Rachel Lemon's brilliant cast, dressed in the kit of a modern woman's football team, deliver the tale in fine Brechtian style,
36:57 never allowing us to believe for a moment that the attitudes that shaped the story of Gunther and his victims are not still present in our world 400 years on."
37:06 So for that contemporary blast of relevance, let's have it from the company from Gunther.
37:10 [Applause]
37:37 Wow, thank you so much. Thank you to the Scotsman for coming to see it so many times and approving us.
37:46 I think it feels particularly special because I just love so many artists who have won this award, and their work really inspires me.
37:53 So to feel that in any way we're near the same category as those people just feels like magic, it's so cool.
38:01 I also think it feels particularly special because if you'd seen us in the Somerville courtyard in the first week after loving our stuff for the 16th time across the country,
38:11 and missing our tech, which was all my fault, and being like, "We're going to have to cancel the whole thing, let's just go home,"
38:17 I don't think we would ever have believed that we would ever get here.
38:21 But we really only have because of all of these makers, and yeah, I just love you guys.
38:30 It takes a village to raise a company, I think.
38:34 And, oh, sorry. So, Nora and Hannah have been unbelievably instrumental to the making of the show.
38:43 Your patience and your, I'm going to go, you've just been amazing.
38:47 Letty Thomas at the back, you've been a part of the show from the start.
38:51 Storytelling PR, you just had our backs when we didn't have our own backs.
38:57 Oh, both go to my front.
39:00 And who else? Amy Daniels, lighting tech, oh my goodness, when we missed our tech, Amy was in there straight away doing her bit.
39:07 And you two, you're the fastest friends in the world. I guess being peers is off the chain. So amazing.
39:15 Thank you guys.
39:17 I just wanted to say, you know, what a profound challenge it is to try and reconstruct a story of a person that actually existed and a thing that actually happened to them.
39:28 And so I just wanted to, for me, dedicate this award to Angus. I hope you found your proud babes.
39:34 [Applause]
39:51 Thinking about this thing about real life and talking about real issues, it wasn't, we didn't set out this week to give seven awards to shows that had serious themes.
39:59 But when these real themes occur in the Fringe, you sort of get a sense of what the world is like around you.
40:06 And the opportunity that the Fringe, particularly when you're seeing show after show after show, to give us a reading of the time and a feeling of what's going on in the world is just much more rewarding, nourishing and exciting than shows that might be, you know, perfectly entertaining but less weighty.
40:26 So I'm very delighted that the seventh show definitely ticks all of those boxes. It's called Everything Under the Sun. It's at Army at the Fringe venue and it's great to see members of the Army, Army at the Fringe, out in full uniform there at the front.
40:39 And 6.45 until the end of the month. And this is a show that's sort of astonishing in its, I'm going to say, try to say the word perspispacity.
40:50 I can say the word. But in its ability to look forward into what is going to happen. An actor, he's whispering lines into the air.
40:58 The ability to look forward and project what is going to be relevant now. Apparently Jack McGregor, who wrote this play, wrote it two years ago.
41:06 But it's about events that were even unfolding in the run up to the festival, June 2023. It's a play that's set in Mali. Three actors fantastically performed by...
41:22 Sorry, I've badly made my notes here.
41:30 You're in bold. Oh yes, they're in bold. I'm confusing characters and names. I don't think it's good if I'm adding it up properly.
41:37 Jerry Mabonga does a fantastic performance as the translator in the show.
41:48 He plays a Malian who finds himself in this awful situation. He wants to bring peace to his home country. But he also realises that the British Army in the form of Rebecca Wilkie, who plays the part of Kelly,
42:08 also wants to bring peace to the country, but has orders from above that the British presence within Mali is about to come to an end.
42:18 When that does, and this is a really gruesome turn of the story, particularly in light of what's going on in Ukraine at the moment,
42:26 when Bartsas Pol, playing the role of Kolia, who's a nurse, he represents the Wagner Group. We've all heard of the Wagner Group because of their presence in Ukraine.
42:40 And the idea that a private army might move into a vulnerable country with the aim not to achieve peace, but the aim to earn money from the war.
42:56 For a private army, it has a vested interest in keeping the war going, not in keeping the peace going.
43:03 So for all the good intentions of the conventional forces that are in the country, the danger is that the whole place is going to disrupt into local fighting, but also internationally galvanised fighting.
43:20 So all of this stuff is going on, factually true at the moment, and brilliantly dramatised by Jack at the Army at the Fringe venue.
43:30 So I would like to invite, I've seen Jack, I've seen some of the company members already, as many of the company members to come up and accept their award for Everything Under the Sun.
43:39 [Applause]
43:59 I'm not an actor, so I wrote my own stem. I'm going to give it very quick though, you're going to get the very enriched version.
44:05 But thank you to Joyce, to Mark, to Jackie, and David and the rest of the panel.
44:09 I'd like to thank in no particular order our producers, Harry Ross, Helen Scarlett O'Neill, Annabelle Lovie of O'Neill Ross Productions.
44:17 [Applause]
44:20 And I'd also like to thank the Army at the Fringe for trusting me to write something true and honest, which is often brutally honest.
44:26 I would also like to thank my amazing actors, Dario Mbonga, Rebecca Wilkie, Bartosz Paul.
44:31 Their efforts make the words real and better.
44:34 [Applause]
44:38 I'd like to thank everyone who I spoke to in the long process of writing this play, so folk with the United Nations Task Force who agreed to be interviewed, those with the UN in particular.
44:47 I'd like to thank Johnny McCready who's here today.
44:49 [Applause]
44:53 I'd like to thank Johnny who's with us throughout the rehearsals, and Johnny served in Mali, and now he has to suffer being around theatre people, which he deserves another medal for that.
45:03 [Applause]
45:05 Thank you to Larissa and Mia who helped make the wider program possible, and our tech team, and the cadets and officers who run the drill hall on East Claremont Street.
45:12 And finally, thank you to Megan and Martin at Tartan Silk PR.
45:15 There's only one person who thought this was possible, and his name is Chris Hadow, and he's not here today.
45:20 He's a playwright, and I stayed with his flat in Partick while I was rehearsing this thing.
45:25 So, yeah, thanks to Chris.
45:27 He said, "Oh, I'll get it out of the fridge first." I thought he was joking.
45:30 Festival's a bit of a nightmare for a lot of people.
45:33 I think I have to mention that it's brilliant, of course, but it's also increasingly unaffordable to sluggish artists, especially folk like myself who are early career and don't live in the Central Belt.
45:41 There are only a few surviving avenues left for new writing in this country, and sadly that list is getting shorter.
45:46 So it's very important that both our governments give money to the arts, and we reject arts austerity.
45:53 [applause]
45:57 So it's a great honor to be here, standing here, accepting this.
46:01 Actually, I'm very surprised. Oh, I'm very--it's very nice to see you, because I'm a big fan.
46:05 [laughter]
46:07 But yeah, it's a great honor to get this from the--
46:09 [laughter]
46:11 From the Starskill and from the panel.
46:13 We've had all sorts of conversations, and let's be generated from the show.
46:16 I'll just remind you that theater is the form of a living idea.
46:19 It helps us cross cultures and continents, and it should be better funded.
46:23 Everything Under the Sun is a play about peace, about peacekeeping, about what that means, what it stands for.
46:27 We are living in a peaceful world today, I don't know if you noticed.
46:30 So how can you keep what you've never had?
46:34 But it's important to try, because the world is only intolerable because folks try.
46:38 So there's a saying in Mali, and it's in the play, and I think it's really true about theater,
46:43 which is, "It takes more than one finger to lift a stone."
46:46 And I think that's true of the team, and so thank you to everyone in my life,
46:51 and everyone who was here to help me get here, to help me lift a stone.
46:54 Thank you, we did it.
46:56 [applause]
47:03 I also want to thank Jack, and I want to thank all the writers, as well as directors.
47:10 When you're a writer, especially in an early career, writing something,
47:15 you go through so much struggle, so much doubt,
47:19 and I just want to tell you, Jack, may this be an affirmation of your brilliance.
47:23 [laughter]
47:25 So, you know, a big thank you to everyone who dares to write, and keep writing,
47:31 and even if you don't get an award, you know, these are for whoever's watching.
47:35 [laughter]
47:37 It's really not about awards, it's about the text, it's about being honest to your vision.
47:41 And when people like Mark and others see that, they just affirm that.
47:45 So thank you to all the writers, but thank you to Jack.
47:48 [applause]
48:07 Those are really lovely sentiments, and they very much encapsulate the spirit of the awards.
48:13 Thank you very much for all of you, well done.
48:15 One more round of applause for each of you.
48:17 [applause]
48:31 Guy, I started off talking about, and continue to talk about that whole idea of real stories, real events.
48:35 Is that something that you're drawn to when you bring stuff, and see stuff, actually, as an audience member in Edinburgh?
48:43 Yeah, I think so. I'm drawn to any story, really.
48:47 And if a writer has a great idea, and they're completely committed to this idea,
48:52 I'm committed to them to get the idea to the stage.
48:55 If it's real, it makes it even more immediate, and topical, and stronger.
49:01 I'm a bit more conventional in the sense that when I write, I need to see it on a page to make it happen.
49:10 But if someone could just talk it, and has a clear vision, we can bring it to a stage, we can make it happen.
49:18 And I think it's important for writers to remember that anything you imagine can make it to the stage.
49:25 Anything. And we've proved that over the 50 years of the festival.
49:29 And we're proving it every day here with 3,000 shows. That's what it's about.
49:34 And how did it feel, because you're only in town for a few days before you go off to Australia in your glittering post-Cringe career,
49:41 how was your reaction to hearing about those fantastic seven shows?
49:48 Well, these sound remarkable. Firstly, I'd love to be able to see them. Obviously I can't.
49:53 But I think immediacy is a very important thing.
49:59 I love the way that the story from 1906, 1606, which is the year my house was built, is fascinating.
50:08 To remember that the laws of the time and the beliefs of the time can affect those people,
50:16 and you can make a contemporary, modern story based on the laws of the time, which is as topical today as it ever was.
50:23 We're lost in these contradictions, and June's play is about contradiction and value and not having an understanding of oneself.
50:36 It's important to hear those stories. We're all locked in huge struggles at the moment, not just in our own selves,
50:43 how to survive within a capitalistic world, within a world that's possibly exploding on us with war and torment.
50:51 But it was ever us. So stories from 400 years ago are as topical now as they are,
50:57 as topical then as they are now. I think immediacy is a very important part of that.
51:04 Yeah, and as you're saying that, I'm realising as well, another connection of all these shows is the idea of the legacy of the past,
51:11 how that affects our lives today, and these shows are very much aware of it,
51:15 whether it's clothing in the 80s or court cases from the 17th century.
51:19 So fantastic work. Thank you very much for entertaining us all so brilliantly.
51:23 Do come back again, 10 o'clock in the morning, Pleasant's Beyond, this time next week.
51:28 But once again, thank you very much. And we have to thank Pleasant's and Edinburgh University for supporting the Scotsman for their first awards.
51:34 Thank you to Andrew and Roger for keeping the Scotsman arts page going despite the odds.
51:41 And thank you very much for coming and listening to us. Enjoy the shows. Go and see each other's shows.
51:45 Talk to each other. Have great ideas for next year. And hope to see you next week. Thank you very much.
51:51 (audience cheering)