by Laura Kressly
How do our jobs change our bodies? What is the choreography of work? What is the relationship between farming and dance? This two-person dance asks these questions through multiple styles from different countries. The rhythms of agriculture and cycles of growth also inform the speed, energy and movement qualities of the ever-evolving piece.
Continue reading
by Laura Kressly
In 1992, Nasa’s shuttle launch Endeavour STS-47 had two firsts in its crew: an African American woman, and a married couple. Though the first is a major achievement in terms of racial equality and representation, the media was far more interested in whether or not the married couple had sex in space. A cast of five women use this remarkable, real-life history to consider racism and misogyny at NASA and more widely in this highly visual show.
Continue reading
by Laura Kressly
Section 28, the British law that prohibited the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality by local authorities, was passed in 1998 by Margaret Thatcher’s government. Though repealed in 2000 in Scotland and 2003 in England and Wales, Ellice Stevens (she/her) & Billy Barrett’s (he/him) verbatim musical demonstrates the harm this legislation caused on millions of queer people, and serves as a warning against today’s rampant transphobia.
Continue reading
by Laura Kressly
Zara is a fiercely intelligent sex worker who runs an Edinburgh brothel as part of a non-hierarchical cooperative. The canny business woman doesn’t seem like she’s rattled by much, until a new client turns out to be one of her former teachers. On top if this, her colleague that he requested is running late due to childcare issues. The dark comedy by Kieran Hurley examines a tangled web of contemporary issues, particularly capitalism, parenting and familial relationships, work, and aging.
Continue reading
by Laura Kressly
In the Wes Anderson-esque, Scomodo Hotel looking out over the Edinburgh skyline, Aaron arrives for his first day of work. The row of identical, pastel doors foreshadows the farce that is about to commence, but this new play by Isobel McArthur uses the genre as a vehicle for a more complex story. Unfortunately this ambitious play tries to do way too much.
Continue reading
by Laura Kressly
Lucy McCormick, performance artist extraordinaire and queen of the grotesque, starts off this show dressed in a felted tree costume. It calls to mind an out-of-place, awkward child in a school play unsure about what to do, but still enthusiastic. This is an appropriate start to the show’s premise: McCormick wants to put on a cabaret but doesn’t have any friends who could work on her show, so she drafts the audience in to help.
Continue reading
by Laura Kressly
We have time, and life is short. It’s ok to make mistakes, and every choice has a consequence. Self-care is important and so is hitting milestones. These conflicting truisms living within us inform small decisions and big ones. As actor/writer Hayley McGee demonstrates, they are often the root of our greatest pleasures and most suffocating griefs. Her monologue narrating an unnamed person’s life, from age 25 through the years after the they die, hones in on key episodes that irrevocably define them and their future, as well as drawing attention to death’s inevitability. As sombre as this piece is, it also adeptly encapsulates moments of joy. As a whole, it’s deeply human and beautifully performed.
Continue reading
by Diana Miranda
Song-based storytelling with cheeky humour at its core, 100% Cotton: In a Spin captures snapshots of Liz Cotton’s life as an empty nester in a small village. The solo show unravels within a kaleidoscope of acoustic music, video delights, and storytelling sequences that smoothly interweave as she glorifies her lovely cat and parodies lockdown life with a suffocating husband.
Continue reading
by Laura Kressly
As “the man she always wanted to be”, Chloe Petts is a devoted Crystal Palace football fan who embraces and is (mostly) embraced by lad culture. Her fellow season ticket holders who sit nearby, all very manly men, accept her as one of their own but she has issues when she goes to the loo. Over the course of this low-key hour Petts considers the effects of whether she is perceived as a woman or a man by those around her, and how this relates to the right-wing instigated culture war about trans people. It’s a pointed, provocative and very funny debut with heaps of promise.
Continue reading
by Romy Foster
A young black boy has just been stabbed in the hallway downstairs. The neighbours are sad but ultimately, not surprised. This one-woman show follows the lives of these working-class people in this typical London block.
Continue reading
The Play's The Thing UK 