Mark Ravenhill Leads Second Round of Fringe FirstsDate: 17 August 2007
The second round of winner's at this year's prestigious Fringe First Awards, celebrating high quality new theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe, have been announced today (17 August 2007) by The Scotsman newspaper, which presents the awards. Continuing on from last week (See News, 10 Aug 2007), six more productions have been selected to receive accolades including Ravenhill for Breakfast, where writer Mark Ravenhill (pictured) pens and presents a new 30-minute play every single day at the Traverse.
Another one of this week's winners is 1927's Between The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea playing at the Underbelly, a theatrical cabaret which combines live music and performance with animation and film. 1927 take you on a journey to the wild woods and shipwrecked seas, from the weird underbelly of the suburbs to the tweedy world of the old rich, through dreamscapes into waking nightmares.
The rest of the second round successes are DO-Theatre's dance and physical theatre piece Hangman at the Aurora Nova, Popsicle Departure 1989 a one-woman show written and performed by Madi Distefano at Assembly @ St George's West, The Smile Off Your Face presented at C Soco by Belgian company Ontroerend Goed (closes 18 August), where seeing the show involves being tied up and blindfolded. Finally there is Emergence-See! by Daniel Beaty, a provocative one-man show also at Assembly @ St George's West, telling the story of a slave ship which rises out of the Hudson River in front of the Statue of iberty in New York.
Last week’s winners were: David Greig's Damascus, The Container, The Walworth Farce, Tim Crouch’s new play England, Truth in Translation and Fiona Evans’ Scarborough at the Assembly Rooms (See News, 10 Aug 2007).
The Fringe First Awards were established in 1973 when there was concern that the Fringe was not attracting the right quantity and quality of shows. The awards are announced weekly during the festival, with the Scotsman Fringe Awards ceremony being held on 24 August 2007. There is no fixed number given and the only requirement is that the work must be new - having had no more than six performances in the UK, prior to the Fringe.
The Edinburgh Fringe, the world's largest arts festival and now in its 61st year, opened this year on 5 August and continues to 27 August (See News, 3 Aug 2007). During the Fringe, there will be an estimated 18,626 performers presenting 31,000 performances of a record-breaking 2,050 shows in 250 venues. It is also the first Fringe under new artistic director Jon Morgan (See News, 26 Mar 2007).
- by Tom Atkins
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