By Nancy Hirst
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Off With - Er, a Bang...

So! Here we are. Edinburgh 2011. The festival is set to go, the Royal Mile poster boards are in place but strangely empty, and our show Release had its first preview today...

Hmmm….. Not quite the technically perfect performance of my dreams, but not bad either considering it was the first run in the space. The performance wasn’t helped by the fact that there was some issue with the speakers at the start of the run – and when I say issue I’m not referring to a slight crackle or an unconnected lead.

For some reason, at the start of our first show today, we blasted our (quite large for a preview, hurrah!) audience with superhumally powerful bass. The kind of bass that you hear in a nightclub if you stand too close to the speakers. The kind of bass that throbs through your chest and lets you understand your primal being. The kind of bass that - ironically - we were told to turn down in the tech because of health and safety issues (I kid you not…)

The rostra shook, our ears hummed. It wasn’t exactly the start that I’d planned for the top of our beautiful show that we’ve been developing for the last two years. The Pleasance team fixed it about five mins in however, and I have to say that although I was sorry to see the start of our show gobbled up by a superhuman bass monster, my sorrow was partially allayed by sight of four Pleasance staff doing a techie version of a live acrobatic sequence, as they literally got on each other’s backs to get up to the height of the technical knob that had somehow been twisted awry…

First five minutes aside, it was remarkably lovely to see our show finally in the space that it was designed for. Our gels in all the correct colours were in the lights, the actors were on top form, the projection looked absolutely gorgeous, and all round there was a feeling of real satisfaction that we were finally performing the show. When you’ve been working on something as long as we have, it feels less like a show going up and more like giving birth. One phase of my life has just finished, a new one just started.

Just don’t be offended if I’m constantly putting my hand behind my ear and asking you to repeat things over the next few days….

- by Nancy Hirst

Any opinions expressed above do not represent the view of Whatsonstage.com nor any of its staff or contributors beyond the bylined author.

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