British Council’s Biennial Edinburgh Showcase
August 17, 2009
Sally Cowling, director drama and dance at the British Council, provides an overview of the British Council’s biennial Edinburgh Showcase which, 12 years after its inception, will in 2009 stage more than 30 productions across the Fringe, from 22 to 29 August.
In a few days’ time, 250 theatre programmers, festival directors, producers and agents from 52 countries will descend on Edinburgh for the British Council’s 2009 Theatre Showcase and swell the already huge numbers of people in the city looking for the next, the newest, the most interesting piece of theatre.
The fantastic chaos of Edinburgh at festival time has always encouraged a sense of exploration and discovery, and most visitors have to rely on assiduously reading reviews and canvassing taxi drivers for tips. However, those international delegates attending the Showcase get help in finding their way through the thousands of shows on the Fringe and access to a week of performances from many theatre artists whose work would otherwise remain under their professional radar. In turn, many theatre companies, who might not otherwise be able to justify the cost of performing at the Fringe, time their visits to coincide with Showcase years, knowing that they have a chance to sell their work and develop new audiences all over the world.
International cultural relations
The Showcase undoubtedly performs its promotional duties well and artists like Stan’s Café, Tim Crouch, Ray Lee, Lone Twin and Hoipolloi, amongst many others, have seen huge international success from their involvement in recent Showcases. However, the reasons behind the British Council’s development of the Showcase 12 years ago were not primarily about bringing economic or even creative benefits to the artists involved, although clearly both those things occur. Rather, they were about the British Council’s responsibility for the UK’s international cultural relations and the importance of arts work within that remit.
Artists are often the first reflectors of change, sometimes even the catalysts for it, but they are always prime movers in a nation’s attempt to explain its culture to itself as well as to others. The last couple of decades have seen unprecedented change in terms of how Britain engages with the rest of the world and how we define ourselves as a nation. While technology has made global communication easier than ever before, understanding between cultures often remains fragile. The British Council’s mission is to foster long-term, mutually beneficial, international relationships. Fundamental to building those relationships is a willingness to offer an honest, ‘warts and all’ perspective on the state of the nation, and theatre can give an extraordinarily vivid insight into a country’s values, challenges and humour: its sense of itself.
A catholic definition of theatre
The Showcase programme reflects our catholic definition of theatre, embracing new writing, physical and visual theatre, live art, and mixed-media installations. Our choices always necessarily reflect the current preoccupations of the theatre community in Britain and this year’s Showcase is no exception. Included in the programme are an unprecedented number of interactive pieces from, for example, Adrian Howells, Rotozaza, Melanie Wilson and Action Hero which, in the way that they are presented, ask questions about the nature of our traditional roles of spectator and performer and explore theatre as a personal, individual and fundamentally local experience.
In that vein, some fascinating installations in this year’s programme give Showcase delegates and the wider Edinburgh audience the opportunity to be completely immersed in unusual environments and experiences, whether having their feet washed by Adrian Howells, enjoying a fully functioning miniature theatre for an audience of one in Bootworks’ Black Box, or discovering their inner five-year-old in subject to_change’s Home sweet home. And that’s without mentioning Blast Theory’s Rider Spoke, which will take its audience on bicycles through the streets of Edinburgh and offer the chance to eavesdrop on the thoughts of other riders.
Reducing the environmental impact
In fact, bicycles and, more broadly, a concern for our environmental impact in the world, loom large in the subject matter of many of the shows in Edinburgh and in the Showcase this year. One of the challenges that the British Council faces as we take the Showcase model on in the next few years, is how to lessen the environmental impact of international touring and international artistic collaboration.
We are convinced of the continuing importance of this global exchange, so simply exhorting everyone to stay still is not an option, but we need to rethink and we will take advantage of this critical mass of artists and presenters gathering for our 2009 Showcase to explore ways of constructing residencies and tours that make geographical sense and that travel more lightly.
No longer a one-off
When we curated the British Council’s first Edinburgh Showcase in 1997, it was intended as a one-off, a way to encourage some of the most interesting theatre artists of the time to brave the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in return for the opportunity to place their work in front of an international audience. That first showcase - which included Frantic Assembly, Improbable Theatre and The Right Size - rapidly overcame its original, limited ambitions as a straightforward exercise in generating bookings.
While a gratifyingly large number of theatre company managers did indeed sit in the bar of the Traverse Theatre successfully booking global tours, the Showcase also generated a series of more subtle professional relationships, many of which are still in evidence 12 years later. Co-productions, collaborations and international commissions are the tangible evidence of these relationships but so is the increasing internationalism of the artists and their subject matter and their involvement in networks and communities of interest across the world.
The first Edinburgh Showcase expanded to become what it has remained: a biennial meeting place for theatre professionals from around the world to make or see work, explore points of connection and difference, discuss mutual artistic concerns, forge relationships, and generally develop their understanding of each others’ practice and audiences. And, tours are also booked, of course.
For the full Edinburgh Showcase 2009 programme, visit the British Council website.
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