The Scotsman Fringe Firsts Awards week two
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00:00Good morning. Congratulations all on being here at this hour of the morning during the
00:09Edinburgh Festival Fringe and welcome to the Scotsman Fringe Firsts Awards 2024 for week
00:16two of the festival. Big cheer.
00:25As ever there are so many people to thank in relation to the Fringe Firsts but at this
00:30moment I want you to give two rousing rounds of applause. First of all to the team at the
00:35Pleasance who are our wonderful hosts for the Fringe Firsts Awards and deserve the biggest
00:41vote of thanks to Anthony and all the team here. So the Pleasance team.
00:53Secondly our new Fringe Firsts sponsors for 2024. Edinburgh's twin universities Queen
00:59Margaret and Napier University both of which work in the field of arts education of acting
01:07of theatre of film and who are collaborating to sponsor our awards and we're so grateful
01:13to them and so delighted to have them on board. It's such a perfect match for our awards and
01:18their spirit. So please thank Queen Margaret and Napier University.
01:29Thank you. Now as last week we've got six fantastic award winners to celebrate today
01:35and as you all know we always have a wonderful guest star to help hand over these awards
01:41and celebrate the winners. And today we've got someone whose story on the Fringe is an
01:46incredibly special one. This year he is celebrating 30 continuous years on the Fringe as a performer,
01:54as a maker, as a writer and above all as a producer. His record of producing successful
02:00shows on the Fringe is fantastic. His show The Marilyn Conspiracy which began life here
02:06has just had a successful run in London. His show of a couple of years ago The Shark is
02:11Broken ran successfully in London and on Broadway and on top of all of that he tours
02:17around the UK with his own solo shows. He produces and directs new shows every year.
02:24He is the amazing, the legendary, the great man of theatre, Guy Masterson.
02:44Right okay Guy. Yes. It's wonderful to have you here. What is your earliest memory of
02:50the Edinburgh Fringe? It was probably just... You can't remember it. My earliest memory
02:55was actually arriving here in 1994 absolutely terrified that I was going to lose my shirt
03:01with a show that I'd opened at the Travis in February of that year which you actually
03:05reviewed and very favourably and the brilliant Jackie McGlone had prefaced my arrival with
03:11a two-page spread in the Herald and I'd actually sold out before I arrived at the whole Fringe
03:18and so I didn't lose my shirt and it made me confident to come back and I came back
03:23the following year with a very unready show as you know. I did the same thing with Animal
03:28Farm and the Travis had brought me forward by a month and so I lost a month of rehearsal
03:36time and if you remember that night the show lasted three hours and Joyce was very upset
03:45with me that I had to go to the book six times which I had on a pedestal on the side
03:50and one famous reviewer in Edinburgh who I have since forgiven wrote in his review one
03:55act of bad no act of better. But thankfully I learned my lines by the end of that week
04:03brought it back for the Edinburgh Fringe and the same thing happened and that launched
04:06me and here I am 30 years later and I'm bringing back those two performances for a 30th anniversary
04:13edition if you like and the final time I'm ever going to bring those shows back he says.
04:19So there's one final performance of Animal Farm this Sunday at 6 o'clock in the Pleasance
04:24EICC.
04:25In the EICC, no it's been an extraordinary journey on this Fringe and I think one of
04:35the things which it did for me apart from anything else as I said I'd had so many friends
04:40who had lost so much and they said don't go to Edinburgh you lose everything but if
04:45you do go only go to Assembly or the Traverse and at that time I didn't know anything else
04:49so I was lucky enough to be at Assembly and I was lucky enough to do well and it brought
04:55me back and it toured me all around the world with these two solo shows which are very transportable
05:00there was nothing except a black box and me and the text and I met like-minded performers
05:06who sort of said well how do you do Edinburgh and I said well it's hard to explain but I'll
05:11help you and I brought them back they were brilliant they made me look good and I became
05:20an accidental producer and I've called myself an accidental producer and I've been wondering
05:25if I'm ever going to write something about these 150 shows that I've produced since then
05:31the 30 years what I'll entitle that book and I think it's good travails of an accidental
05:36producer and how I've lost more than I've earned but I think what it what it has done
05:43for me and it has done for us and everybody the kind of people that I've brought over
05:49have gone on to many people have gone on to great great success some people are household
05:54names I'm not taking credit for that by the way just because of their talent I'm very
05:59attracted to talent and and I and I want to get involved with it and and I and I kind
06:05of try to enable it or have tried to enable it and and some of those shows have gone on
06:11to huge success and Morecambe which won an Olivier Award in London and Bill Bailey on
06:18stage in 12 Angry Men I mean this kind of stuff it just it's it's the stuff that dreams
06:24are made of and I think that's what Edinburgh can do if you if you get it right and and
06:32and you enchant this incredibly diverse audience in Edinburgh you can you can take that around
06:37the world and you can make a career fantastic so in other words you won't make money but
06:42some of your dreams might come true sometimes you can make money I have to say about the
06:48fringe first term as a creator I I didn't win one for several years and I was always
06:55jealous of the acts that I had brought up that were winning them even though my name
06:59was on the top of their posters and sometimes on the fringe first I hadn't won one as a
07:03creator until 2009 and I was fiercely jealous until that day and it was so wonderful to
07:09be called up by Joyce to receive this this mighty award and it's still mighty and it's
07:16still important and you win one you take it back if you're from not from Britain you take
07:22it back to your country and actually it's celebrated hugely outside of outside of this
07:26country it's it's celebrated hugely here but I'm just saying for an international attraction
07:30winning a fringe first is a real prize and I congratulate everybody who's done it thank
07:36you so much guy and thank you for being with us today that's wonderful my honor right let's
07:41get to it great so six winners today and we're gonna start with three shows that deal with the
07:58patriarchy and with toxic masculinity but in three very very different and all very thrilling ways
08:05the first one is a show playing at the wonderful pains plow roundabout in Summer Hall and produced
08:12by the wonderful Francesca Moody which is called VL and some of you in the room will know what
08:19VL stands for because you've seen the show or because you just know and some of you won't and
08:24what it stands for is virgin lips it is the worst insult that boys of a certain teenage age could
08:31chuck at each other in an ordinary Scottish secondary school inhabited by kids who are of
08:37course like all kids of secondary school age interested in fierce pecking orders and strictly
08:42enforced and social norms and disciplines and VL is the subject of a terrific new play at the
08:50roundabout by two of Scotland's leading playwrights Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair and in in VL these
08:57two little kids called Max and Stevie and have to somehow prove that they are not virgin lips
09:03and Stevie thinks that he isn't a virgin lips because he kissed a girl during a drama thing in
09:09his drama class and his friend Max says that doesn't count Max is a virgin lips and is absolutely
09:16desperate to suggest that he isn't and is reduced to sort of strange suggestions that he kissed a
09:21girl up at his grands and whatever else is going on in virgin lips it is a fantastic piece of
09:30comedy theatrical comedy and it's fast-moving it's very very funny the dialogue is lethal and it has
09:37two absolutely stunning performances from Gavin John Wright as Stevie and Scott Fletcher and as
09:43Max it also has terrific movement every aspect of a really fine theatre production beautifully put
09:50together and directed by Orla O'Loughlin with movement by the great Janice Parker of Edinburgh
09:56so let's celebrate this fantastic show and everyone from the team from VL please come up
10:03and accept your fringe first 2024
10:33who's gonna take the fringe first
10:51congratulations you can get another one reprinted
11:21everyone you've just seen Janice, Orla, the guys, Gav, Scott, Simon, Francesca who took part on us with a
11:28precursor to this play called Square Go and then was mad enough to do it again
11:33thank you so so much for this when we when we're writing these characters me and Gary are mostly
11:58just trying to make each other laugh and we're trying to make each other laugh as a way of
12:01sharing something about the mad toxic crazy absurd environments that we both grew up in
12:07in ordinary Scottish high schools and so sharing that with other people and finding out that it
12:12lands with other people is it's like the greatest like feeling ever yeah like writing days with
12:19Kieran are just the best writing days they are the days that you know you're in the middle of
12:23that you'll kind of look back on like I know that feels like a bit cheesy or whatever but we're
12:27always saying like whatever happens with this you've got the companionship to go we can look
12:32back and go we enjoyed making this and that's what's important and then to then ride through
12:36and then build the team and have so many many amazing people then make that happen and have
12:41people enjoy it further still my god we never we nearly never asked Orla to direct it because
12:47everybody should be out of our league so it's the luckiest thing ever to get Orla and writing
12:52for these two is just the the biggest like the privilege absolutely amazing they are all around
12:59the room in a way that I can't quite describe and I thought it would take me a long form of time to
13:04work out the balance of just fun and skill and care and excellence that drives through that
13:11radiates through everyone and it's exceptional she's one of the magic people of this world
13:16and these two guys here are just like their talent is unbounded and I think you know that if you see
13:22them work but what you don't see on top of that talent is the work that goes on top of that to be
13:27graced with their talents and still work so hard is something that is just like a joy to see and
13:36you can't really put into words to younger actors how you do that thing of realize what you've got
13:43to share and realize the level you have to work to and they said that they remind me of that every
13:48time I see them do it it's not a hard rule they're just they care they care about what you see and
13:53they're just one of them we just finally we heard a bit earlier from Guy about losing a month's
13:57rehearsal these guys these guys were taken after two weeks as standards from everyone to get that
14:04up on its feet so we couldn't be couldn't have asked for a better
14:07thing he's an ecclesiastical thank you
14:29what a company of stars every one of them involved in that production just people without whom
14:34theatre in scotland here and theatre here on the fringe would just be so much poorer fantastic
14:39gary by the way is now on in his show dear billy um a letter from the people of scotland to the
14:44big in about billy connolly um which is now on um at the assembly rooms every afternoon um um for
14:51the next um 10 days so please see that if you can if you haven't seen it wonderful national theatre
14:56of scotland production starring and written by gary okay fantastic now more toxic masculinity
15:03because while max and stevie while max and stevie are having a bad time in um a school
15:10an ordinary secondary school uh in scotland um the two kids in the latest show from the wonderful
15:17chloe and natasha are having kind of similar trials although a bit more self-imposed maybe
15:23um at summer campus a boy scout summer camp um somewhere in the united states of america
15:30they're called ace and grasshopper the time is the 1960s and ace and grasshopper are trying to
15:38grow up to be real men ace knows that he can make it grasshopper thinks he'll never make it um and
15:44both of them of course brilliantly played by these women chloe and natasha um and so um and so ace
15:51and grasshopper uh test each other um and go for adventures get into some sort of minor forms of
15:58danger and all the rest of it but behind um their kind of uh sometimes very funny and always as in
16:05all chloe and natasha's shows so beautifully executed physical theatre of their relationship
16:12just perfect and one single piece of a prop which is like a big rubber tire just brilliantly used
16:18throughout this short but absolutely telling show and behind the story of their youthful
16:25struggles as boys there is something darker because this is the vietnam generation and all
16:32through the show there are pledges to the flag that gradually descend into ever more disturbing
16:38kind of gobbledygook you know they start off with a pledge you know and then and then it becomes
16:43weird it becomes uh weird and strange and then there are these flash forwards to the two of them
16:49on a very different kind of journey and on a completely different continent and one that
16:54entails the possibility of real death there's fantastic um use of beatles music in this show
17:02because that was the beatles generation and what that reminds you of is not only the sort of
17:08history of that generation and of the working class america that was hardest hit um by the
17:13death toll of the vietnam war for that country um but also the the extent to which that music
17:21that the beatles generated out of liverpool in the 1960s depended on the working class traditions
17:27of american music whether it was bluegrass whether it was blues those cadences are there
17:33and playing that music on two little harmonicas chloe and natasha really make it count so chloe
17:39and natasha please come up and accept your french first 2024
17:49and the show is called a letter
17:57a letter
18:10the show is called a letter to lyndon b johnson or god whoever reads this first there you go
18:18chloe and natasha thank you so much this is so amazing yeah it is an understatement to say that
18:24this is beyond beyond our wildest expectations for what we thought was possible here at fringe
18:30yeah and i guess beyond our wildest expectations to like that the title could fit on the plaque
18:35we hope to serve as an example for how a very small independent diy company there's three of
18:44us total uh can gain this level of recognition and especially to stand in such wonderful company
18:50yeah yeah so we would like to thank um everybody who made it possible for us to even return to
18:55print because as you all know it's no small feat uh we want to thank annabelle and elise lauren
19:00nick richard charles and the entire space uk team and of course the scotsman uh yeah and we'd
19:06also like to thank our parents who let us move in with them and most importantly we'd like to
19:14thank our incredible wonderful lighting designer angelo stagnelli who is serves as the third and
19:22only other member of the company yes we are so grateful but we did hear that comedy comes in
19:27breeze so i think we have to stop now we quit now thank you so so much we are truly so grateful
19:47so now there is a toxic patriarch also in the next play um um which which um is a superb piece
19:58of writing and performance by anna morris possibly best known um for her comedy but now writing and
20:05performing um a fantastic show which is fundamentally i think about the ambiguity of
20:11motherhood and about the pressures that women still face to tick that box to become mothers
20:17and often without really thinking through whether it is um the right thing for them in son of a
20:24bitch our heroine and it is a solo show uh beautifully presented in the demonstration room
20:29at summer hall um um our heroine uh marnie uh has a child who is about four and a husband who has a
20:40quite high powered job and finds herself on a plane not sitting next to her husband because
20:46he's been upgraded uh but with this fractious child on a long long flight um and um and uh
20:55something happens um she drinks a few bottles of wine because she's a nervous uh little bottles i
21:00mean because she's a nervous flyer and she snaps and during a kind of incident in the aisle she
21:07shouts something unforgivable at her little boy she calls him all kinds of names and tells him to
21:13basically f off and and calls him the c word which of course is a dreadful thing and unfortunately
21:20someone on the plane films this and it goes viral on social media so marnie becomes the most hated
21:27woman and the worst mother on the planet briefly her life falls apart um and of course during that
21:33whole process she has reason to reflect on how she got there and how she ended up living a life
21:40that she was never sure she wanted and hurting the person she loves most her little boy and it's a
21:47magnificent piece of writing it's a simple story arc but it's absolutely perfectly executed all
21:54the language all the characters that are evoked and contribute just perfectly to the tale that's
22:01told so please come up um anna morris and accept your fringe first award for son of a bitch with
22:07your director madeleine if she's here that's wonderful thank you madeline
22:32um first of all just want to thank summer hall for taking a chance on the show i emailed them
22:36in january cutting it fine slightly um and they got back to me wanted to have a chat about it
22:41and they'd actually read the play which is amazing some venues don't um offered me the slot i didn't
22:47have a producer or a director so i started asking around and i was very lucky to find madeline more
22:52who's an amazing director who's also part of the thelmas an incredible production company so
22:57madeline and glorana who's here and in association with josie underwood took on the show
23:02and it was a bit of a scrabble to get there um i had several breakdowns during the rehearsal process
23:08um in the middle of the rehearsal process i said to my director um
23:11this show is a nightmare there's 20 characters it's ridiculous and she was like you wrote this
23:19hi i'm the one to blame i just want to say thanks to my dramaturg dave jackson who went
23:23through it with a big red pen and and was very brutal but it worked um and also to the lighting
23:29and sound designers the whole team have just been incredible um and i also just wanted to say uh
23:35this is my seventh solo show at the edinburgh fringe i did six in the comedy section i'm so
23:39glad i moved to the theater section um i took a risk i'm 44 i don't have children um this this
23:48is my baby um this came from i didn't have the choice to have children um so this play came from
23:56a place of dealing with that um so i can i can do this play and use the c word without worrying
24:02about damaging a child which is great and as a childless cat lady a very proud one i'm very
24:08happy to accept this and um and also as a 44 year old woman um who's not had many auditions
24:14recently has felt a bit invisible i thought i'm gonna write it myself
24:34thank you so much anna for a terrific show and and you know write more that was absolutely great
24:41um the next show is also a solo show um um playing at summer hall um and the woman who
24:49speaks to us in this show stacy um has certainly encountered her share of toxic patriarchs
24:55um in her life because she works in the media in america um but stacy's focus in this um in this
25:04wonderful and really searing monologue is different because stacy is a weather girl
25:10and stacy is um therefore as part of her job expected to bob up every night smiling widely
25:18fantastic smile beautiful blonde curls you know bright um cherry colored clothes you know all of
25:25the things that we expect of television uh weather girls and to tell people that there is nothing to
25:31see here as the temperatures in california soar and soar and more and more parts of the state that
25:38she loves are affected and particularly at this time of year by wildfires um and after one
25:44particularly tragic incident where she's reporting on a wildfire and she realizes that the very scene
25:50she was reporting on um um involved the deaths of a family of five she cracks and the whole facade
25:58of the weather girl begins to fall apart she begins to look for the mother she lost many years
26:03ago she owns up to her alcoholism the water bottle that she carries everywhere is full of prosecco at
26:09least and um and um and she begins to tell a different kind of story and to listen to it after
26:18she re-encounters her mother to listen to a different kind of story about the relationship
26:24uh between um the earth and the humans that live on it and the way in which california particularly
26:31as a state and as a community uh demonstrates all the contradictions of that so sharply it took me
26:37back actually to when i first saw the wonderful film chinatown back in the 1970s which put its
26:42finger then on the acute and strange water politics of california and the fragility on which that
26:49whole hollywood and caliber you know such an influential civilization is built and this is a
26:55fantastic play uh written by brian watkins um and wonderfully wonderfully performed by julia
27:02mcdermott which goes right to the heart of that same dilemma but 50 years on and in much more of
27:08an emergency situation it's brave it's beautiful and it's richly deserving of its fringe first
27:142024 uh brian julia and the whole team for weather girl please come up and accept
27:33thank you
27:35wow this is uh this is kind of remarkable uh to be up here um thank you for recognizing our
27:53our little love letter to the west to california um to the places we're from um
28:01it this place started with me wanting to write something for a small audience for an intimate
28:07audience um that was about our detachment from the environment and i wrote a first draft of it
28:14and sent it to uh francesca moody and she took a chance on us in a huge way and uh fostered and
28:24shepherded the development of it um i'm going to thank everyone that is on our team because
28:30this was a remarkable uphill team effort um and i want to start by thanking fmp
28:37francesca moody is just the best uh the best producer player i could ask for honestly um
28:44i've never really experienced that kind of support and that is it takes guts to make
28:50something original it takes trust in an artist to make something original and um she and her team
28:55have that in spades so thank you to francesca grace christabel angel everyone there that has
29:01helped us um our incredible director tyne raffaelli who couldn't be with us today because
29:06she's back in new york um her work on this was so um she's just this master technician of a director
29:14and she was constantly curious and investigated the piece with us and was always asking questions
29:20and always making it better always refining it and um driving this play forward um in such a way
29:27that she believed in the play always even when i didn't even when julia didn't um she did so
29:33thank you to that isabella bird our incredible lighting designer who also conceived the sort of
29:38uh concept of the set of our meteor set um you know she had come from doing cabaret on the west
29:45end in broadway and said yeah i'll do the french next and she dove in and brought us these bizarre
29:51alien lights and figured out how to um make something that could go in and out quickly and
29:56and her her genius is on full display and we thank her for that rachel daner best our incredible
30:02costume designer who never got to come out here but did created this iconic costume for an iconic
30:08character um kieran lucas our incredible sound designer who is with us in the room uh constantly
30:14refining and coming up with great new ideas and it was just such a joy to work with this team
30:19um and uh finally the woman i wrote this play for
30:30who who is giving a performance of a lifetime i think and um believed in this play from the
30:36beginning and when the seeds for this thing came about um really encouraged me to write it um and
30:43then also rewrite it and rewrite it and there were several times throughout the process where
30:49we turned to each other and we said we've never made anything like this we've never seen anything
30:55like this how do we do this um and that hasn't really stopped so um this is thank you to you
31:04you have beautiful words about what it's like to perform
31:14no this has been the most beautiful magical little engine that could and um thank you for writing
31:24a love letter to my home and my family and um and yeah i'm gonna cry but uh yeah i
31:33love this team it came out of such specificity and um love and uh i've read almost everything
31:45brian's written and he is always asking questions he's not trying to tell you things he's trying to
31:52ask things of us and his specific specificity of place and and humans uh mixed with his uh
32:04curiosity about the things we can't touch or feel or see but like love or miracles or god or time
32:12and mixing that with a california weather girl who has a bunch of makeup on and is like dealing
32:19with tech bros and everything it just became this like whirlwind of something so special
32:25and um it's like a terrifying joy to do every day um but i wouldn't have wanted to do it anywhere
32:33else and the fringe has been incredible so thank you so much wonderful
32:38performance
32:45the show would also be impossible without our stage manager yes
32:53you make this thing great
32:58so much well that is some show that really cuts to the heart of where we all are now but oddly
33:10on the same day that i saw weather girl i saw a show that somehow although it could hardly have
33:19been more different contained some of the same thoughts some of the same ideas it was marie
33:27campbell's living stone at the scottish storytelling centre now those of you who are
33:33around in scotland will know that marie is a wonderful gaelic singer theatre maker musician
33:39composer performer um and um in this show she tells the story of a stone a stone that one of her
33:50uh family dug up on the island of lismore just off oban a place of very ancient human settlement
33:58and it's an old millstone made out of very ancient rock and like some of the characters
34:05that the weather girl encounters towards the end of her story marie listens to the earth
34:12that gave up this stone and to the stone itself she tries to hear the messages that come to us
34:19from the earth that we all live on and depend on and in her interaction with this stone over a
34:25couple of years she's produced a wonderful exhibition of responses to the physical because
34:30marie also draws and illustrates a wonderful exhibition of her visual responses to this
34:37and also this terrific show living stone full of beautiful songs and full of storytelling
34:45full of elements of laughter of contemporary observation it's not all about the ancient
34:51world or you know it's it's a story that's told absolutely now and just beautifully presented
34:58um at the nether boat and marie's it's one of these shows that is a solo show but is supported
35:03by a huge team and her director kath burlinson and composer and musical producer dave gray
35:12and roddy simpson who's responsible for the wonderful projected images of some of
35:17marie's drawings that kind of merge her and her costume into this sort of landscape and the stone
35:24that she's talking about and julia feingroon who's also responsible for some of the video
35:30um in the show all produced by kate taylor it's a wonderful show it's at the nether bow until the
35:36end of the festival marie campbell and the team from living stone come up
35:57well this is an absolute thrill thank you so much uh this is kate my director
36:07i'm sorry how long has it been this has been a long journey but it's an absolutely beautiful
36:13fine uh end to sort of trilogy of shows which we've been making for the last nine years
36:19and living stone has uh finally found its feet um yeah and with a lot of
36:29as you said a lot of support behind behind the scenes i'd also like to thank creative scotland
36:35and chris and to dave and olivia and the team who have the broader team that have supported
36:41this all the way through and the community unless more uh who are by right behind me
36:47and the scottish dance band that we've established there everyone's very excited yeah
36:54about what's happening so um yeah anything you want to say i would like to say that like guy
37:03i've also had a fringe journey that's gone on for many many decades and has its
37:07illustrious highs and it's desperate disappointments and and crushing defeats and
37:12so on and so what what i feel today is just to for a moment in our hearts feel all of those people
37:19who are just outside of these walls the hundreds of people who are struggling to get people in to
37:26you know there's something always so vulnerable as we all know when we put our work out onto the
37:32stage and sometimes it goes gloriously and sometimes beautiful work remains unseen or
37:38unreviewed so just a kind of shout out for everyone out there all the artists whether
37:43they're triumphing or whether they're struggling you know we're all we're all a community so
37:48thank you
37:54i just want you to hear a very little of marie's voice she's a great unaccompanied singer and she'll
38:00she'll give you just well here's a couple of lines from the show so i'm addressing the stone
38:06oh holy stone how you shimmer and shine is there a sign oh holy stone
38:28from our earthly shrine
38:36oh
38:49in one of the songs at the end of that show um maria's uh sitting by a well on lismore which
38:56has been dug out you know it's a disused well and she sings this song which has the line
39:02the old ways are leaning in as if if we listen uh closely enough we'll hear
39:10some of the wisdom um that has been acquired on the earth over the generations among um you know
39:17peoples that we don't listen to enough including i think the people of the western isles of
39:23scotland so thank you so much marie that was absolutely beautiful show and thank you for the
39:29song and our last show also digs deep into a folk culture a folk tradition in order to confront
39:41some of the themes that are pervasive on this year's fringe and death and grieving is a pervasive
39:47theme on this year's fringe and so of course as we've seen throughout this is is a kind of
39:55toxic form of patriarchy that blights the lives around it and it's wonderful on this year's fringe
40:03um to welcome the company um from pulpo arts of mexico city and new york um who are performing
40:12at zoo south side in a show called komala komala which is a show about a village of the dead
40:21in mexico now we all know of course in the kind of tourist sense about mexico's great tradition
40:26of the day of the dead and of the much more sort of earthy tradition of talking to and communing
40:31with the dead taking them food even partying with them on that particular um day of the year
40:37but this show is based on a novel called pedro para paramo and by a writer called juan rulfo
40:45and pedro paramo is a truly evil patriarch who has blighted the life of this village
40:51of komala komala where he um where he presided um over the community um and in this show
40:59one of his illegitimate sons comes back um to komala to try to wreak some kind of vengeance
41:07or at least find out some kind of truth now this show is presented by a really remarkable company
41:14of seven artists with quite a big set made out of kind of traditional drum shaped um instruments
41:21and with with seven musical or at least seven musical instruments um on stage with big songs
41:27with big drama and with a big narrative and it is all crammed in to the tiny studio at zoo south
41:34side and where it sometimes feels as if it could do with a little more room to breathe but it is
41:40absolutely stunning the acting and the singing is haunting and beautiful the story is mysterious
41:47but always gripping and it uses an ancient tradition of communing with the dead because
41:53in this place when the sun arrives there the dead are walking alongside the living it's hard
41:58to tell which is which and they all speak to each other in strange ways and all of this is
42:04conveyed through pablo jemor's uh terrific uh music um and all of the wonderful performances
42:12of this company which is led among others by concha leon who also wrote the adaptation of
42:18the script and by maria penella who plays many of the women who have been victims um of pedro's
42:25patriarchal violence and who have been sent down to dusty death um by his cruelty so this is a
42:32fantastic show which is a wonderful to welcome onto the fringe and if you can all make it up
42:38onto our tiny stage here please the company from um
43:02um well there it is thank you so much we are so thrilled to be here this morning
43:20uh thank you to the scotsman and um i'm pablo i'm the composer of the music and i couldn't be
43:29more uh proud of our team and i would like to just say a couple of words about that um
43:38when alonso and his colleagues at pulpo invited us to write this invited conchi who wrote the
43:47adaptation and me to write the music one of the first things they said was like you know we want
43:53take this classic novel from the 1950s and uh kind of give emphasis to the stories of the women
44:01in the book and uh in mexico we all read this book when we're in high school and when i re-read it
44:06for this i realized i never understood anything about it it's a very complex book but really
44:14amazing you can get lost in it and a little bit like in our show i guess and um and when i re-read
44:20it i was like hang on this is what the book is about it's about the women and patriarchy and
44:28so it felt very relevant and when we had most of the music written and the text written and
44:35this amazing team put together we had to find someone to direct us we were like who are we
44:42going to invite to direct the show and um and we thought it'd be fun to try to direct ourselves
44:51what if we direct this collectively it's cheaper it's cheaper
44:57and uh and it was a really really beautiful process of getting to know each other uh and
45:04just like putting things on the table and learn a new way of working very respectful very loving
45:11all these people that you see on stage completely horizontal and the really beautiful thing and the
45:16reason why i mentioned this was um we realized at the end that it really made a lot of sense
45:22for the story that we were telling it's a story about the fall of patriarchy uh the last scene
45:27in the book and in the show is literally the patriarch crumbling like a pile of stones going
45:33back to the stones and uh and we were like what a better way to honor this than horizontally
45:44looking at each other in the eye and doing this together so i would like to thank um the whole
45:50team i've never been in such a beautiful process and like having this in my hands when i say that
45:58it's just unbelievable thank you so much
46:09i'm i'm alonzo i'm the artistic director of pool party for mexico city um and you know we've been
46:14working on the show for about five years so being here is truly a dream come true this was definitely
46:20not in a bingo card for this year we're incredibly excited and surprised and thankful um to everyone
46:26here i want to thank everyone who believed in us really to um make it all the way here so um
46:31you know susanna and ellie and kaylin and jenny and john and steph from something for the weekend
46:38really just got on a zoom and decided that mexico was a good idea for scotland
46:44and of course james and everyone at the zoo really giving us our home away from home
46:49where we carry drums back and forth from the shed every night
46:52um someone once said that the essence of theater is carrying
46:59um and of course i want to thank the very lovely um diane borger who's not here with us today
47:04because she's in london um but she's been a beautiful godmother for this project since the
47:09very beginning so we're very very grateful for that of course everyone back in mexico
47:14we're so happy um and i think it's my turn to really introduce you to the company of
47:20kamala who are going to do a little piece for you are we brilliant
47:33we don't have musical instruments this is maria yeah
47:41my grandfather was from mexico city
47:51foreign
48:03no
48:13no no
48:21oh
48:31no
48:51oh
49:07is
49:21thank you
49:28and unbelievably because it's all flown past that's it for this week we'll be back next week
49:34of course with our final scotsman fringe awards bigger ceremony including um some other awards
49:39apart from our fringe firsts which will be taking place in the pleasance grand at 10 o'clock next
49:44friday but that's us done for today guy come and talk to me and now over to the dog segment
49:51how was that for you oh it's just beautiful it's uh i'm thrilled that i managed to see one of those
49:55shows of the weather girl and uh um i wish i could have seen them all um the weather girl
50:02appealed to me particularly because it's a solo show and i know the genre quite well
50:06and her connection with the material was extraordinary i had to look her up and
50:10found out that she was californian yeah and then i found out this morning that uh that she has
50:15family in the danger zone um and so the connection was extraordinary and that was palpable it came
50:21across and that is beautiful when you see that and the connection through the audience to the
50:27through from the performer to the audience it brings you in it's so palpable and powerful and
50:33i felt that it was a terribly important message loved it thank you so much guy well i hope you
50:38manage to see all the others because they are all i assure you just equally um brilliant and
50:43you're you've got two shows on apart from your your own performance of animal farm on sunday
50:47you've got two shows that you're producing on the fringe this year for your last year on the
50:51fringe there's one about the daughter of victor mature yes um yes the brilliant victoria mature
50:58daughter of victor his only daughter in fact after five marriages he finally had a a child
51:03and she's an extraordinary opera singer in her own right and she's um she's telling the story of
51:09her father um through a child's eyes and a celebration of her understanding of his superstardom
51:15he was the brad pitt of his day and uh effectively and she's now sort of looking at it in retrospect
51:22saying actually he was a very very important part of hollywood hollywood's original hunk
51:27and he started with my uncle in the robe which was really interesting um uh and the other one
51:32is making marks which is actually another story about uh the imposition of the patriarchy on
51:37on jenny marx who was um karl marx's wife who not only underpinned karl's life but paid for it
51:45and suffered for it she had nine children of which only four survived and two committed suicide
51:51and her story was airbrushed out of history and this is her being reincarnated by the
51:56the pen of a writer who's trying to put words into her mouth which are the wrong words
52:01and here she's trying to say no no no that's not how it happened and uh and here's my story
52:07and of course the writer says but that's not going to sell books and um so it's it's it's
52:13another patriarchal story and a brilliant performance by clara francesca um and of course
52:19animal farm which is as uh which is on sunday which is as pertinent now as it ever was if ever
52:25a story was important it's it's animal farm with the elections coming up we've had one
52:32uh where our vote vote counted and um all animal farm can do is to say the only means of message we
52:38have to change things for ourselves is through our vote and my god we need people to get out there
52:44and vote thank you so much guy and of course we can also we hope change things a little
52:51through the work that we can thank you very much thank you
53:06okay now i have one message that i've been asked to pass on to our winners which is could you
53:11please one person from each show with your plaques gather out in the courtyard after we finish today
53:18so that you can have a picture taken all together um for the scotsman thank you all very very much
53:24now that's us finished for today as i said there are always too many people um to thank in relation
53:30to the fringe firsts i particularly like to thank our scotsman team um who work so hard to see as
53:36many shows as they can um who who um who who uh trail around uh far into the night casting votes
53:44on which shows they like um and and always always finding um things which are a wonderful surprise
53:50and privilege and joy for us all to see so i want to thank um the scotsman team you all know
53:56uh who you are once again i want to thank our wonderful sponsors queen margaret and napier
54:01once again i want to thank the pleasants for being such unfailingly uh brilliant hosts but above all
54:07i want to thank you for being here this morning to celebrate this work and i want to thank all of
54:13the artists who have been our winners today for putting themselves on the line for doing that
54:18brilliant thing to trying to shift the dial of the world a little by doing work that matters and all
54:24of the other artists out there um who are trying to do the same so thank you all and please join
54:30us again at 10 o'clock next friday morning for our final scotsman fringe awards of 2024 thank you