Fevered Sleep celebrates new outdoor piece for under 5s

Fevered Sleep chose to tackle “something very big” for their young audience.  Part dance, part installation, Little Universe features four ‘scientists’ exploring the universe and the things, both big and small, that make it.  Together they will discover particles, molecules, orbits and collisions, making shapes and patterns – even using elastic to portray a force.

The research and development process was led with as much attention to detail as the production itself.  A meeting with a physicist from the Science Museum to learn how particles move and behave was followed by careful research and ‘testing’ on children from a local nursery to see how a young audience would react to such a huge subject in the outdoors.

Says Sam Butler, Fevered Sleep’s Associate Artistic Director, “This is a very beautiful piece which engages its audience from beginning to end. We know from experience that small children are pretty sophisticated and they are completely clued into the wider universe.”

This is Fevered Sleep’s first piece of outdoor work and it’s been a very exciting learning curve for the company.  Sam says again, “Inside you can use light and sound to give focus to particular aspects of the performance and your audience is contained in the environment we carefully construct for them.  But outside it’s a very different thing.  We still make this intimate, but the outside sets us free in a way we can’t be inside. There is no stage and we perform in the round on grass.  As with all out children’s pieces, the children are not discouraged from talking about their experience.”

This is not a typical piece of entertainment for the under 5s – there are no words and no story.  Everything is portrayed through movement with the help of beautiful shiny metallic spheres.  Delighted Little Universe is being offered free to the children, Sam says, “I firmly believe that young people of all ages are entitled to good quality art, just like the rest of us.  By having a wide range of artistic experiences they can grow up to be discerning, make their own choices and appreciate the world around them.  What they experience now will shape them as individuals.”

Small Wonders will be supporting artists to enable them to create fantastic, challenging and exceptional work for the under-5s, with the aim of addressing the gap in outdoor arts provision for this age group. The scheme is initially funded by Arts Council England and the festival partners for 3 years.

Small Wonders includes: Mintfest, Kendal, Cumbria; Activate Performing Arts, Dorset; Norfolk & Norwich Festival; Hat Fair, Winchester; IF:Milton Keynes International Festival; 3 Foot People Festival, Chelmsford (Chelmsford Borough Council); and Fuse Medway Festival (Medway Council).  Small Wonders is produced by Alchemy Productions. The new outdoor performances will tour each of these events starting with Fuse Medway Festival on 16 June 2012.

For further information, interview, images or press tickets, please contact Rachel Shimell or Miranda Johnson on 02380 732981/ 01962 890208 or email: Rachel.shimell@ntlworld.com or mirandajohnson@btinternet.com

Participating Festivals

16 & 17 June – FUSE Medway Festival

6 & 7 July – Hat Fair

21 & 22 July – IF: Milton Keynes International Festival

1 & 2 Sept – Mintfest

29 & 30 Sept – Bournemouth by the Sea (in association with Activate)

May 2013 – Norfolk and Norwich Festival

July 2013 – 3 Foot People Festival

Creative Cow Theatre Company is touring the country this autumn with "The Rivals"

What the critics have said about Creative Cow productions:

“Best thing on the fringe this year…it’s fiendishly funny. But none of this would work without the cast’s outstanding performances…it belongs on a big stage in the West End.” The Stage

“Katherine Senior – despite being very much a junior – gave a bravura performance as the eccentric octogenarian Maud. I laughed out loud”  Phyllida Lloyd (director The Iron Lady, Mamma Mia)

“this is a play worth reviving. The cast is excellent throughout. Katherine Senior is outstanding as the eccentric and slightly bigoted Maud.” UK Theatre Network

“Small touring troupes like Creative Cow form a backbone to the British theatre industry.” 247 Magazine

Young and vibrant theatre company Creative Cow is touring the country this autumn with their much welcomed new production of The Rivals. Below is a brief interview with Katherine Senior, one of the 3 founder members of Creative Cow, together with Jonathan Parish and Amanda Knott.  Katherine plays Mrs Malaprop in the show.

We hope the interview will give you an insight into this wonderful company.  Other actors in the production include: Jack Hulland, Jonathan Parish, Harvey Robinson, Kate Sharp and Lucy Theobald.  The Rivals is directed by Amanda Knott.  You will find a list of tour dates at the end.

For those who don’t know the play, tell us briefly what The Rivals is about?

The Rivals was written in 1775 by Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan who also wrote The School for Scandal. It tells the story of a day in the life of a circle of socialites swooping in on the fashionable city of Bath: to take the waters, find romance and have a jolly good gossip. Mrs Malaprop delivers her famous twisted phrases.  Lydia Languish has ample suitors foisted on her, but is busy falling in love with Captain Absolute. Sir Anthony Absolute is hilariously ridiculous as his explosive father. The young lovers are suffering from proposed arranged marriages and the old from misdirected love letters! Confusion, duels, madness and mayhem ensue …

Why did you choose this particular play?

The Rivals is a play we all know well and felt we could do justice to. We work as a tight ensemble company, something that’s good for this fast paced and funny play. Visiting a play again having already worked on it in depth gave us a real advantage and is a work we believe our style will suit to a tee.

Tell us about the company and your philosophy.  What is it that drives the company’s creativity?

The core company is very small, just three creatives – two actors and an artistic director. It means the artistic drive and philosophy is crystal clear – to create honest and powerful pieces of theatre. There has never been a need to sit down and discuss an aim or mission statement as we came together because we simply wanted to produce quality productions and the ‘style’ was born out of an utterly organic process. There is no money behind the company which means although we really have to juggle the finances, we never have anything to lose, which gives us a certain amount of freedom to do what we want! The core company has bucket loads of tenacity, passion and creativity to always deliver top notch versions of classic plays on a shoestring.

So why ‘Creative Cow’?

The name Creative Cow came about because our director, Amanda, lives on a farm in the valleys of Devon and her husband is a rare breed cattle farmer. We rehearse on the farm, literally. The Rivals has quite a substantial set and we need a lot of space for this show. Luckily for us, it’s still classed as summer months (although you wouldn’t think so!) for farmers, so the cows are out in the fields, which means we can squat in their winter abode, which is a very, very large cow shed and yes, it’s outdoors! When the sun is shining and it’s warm, you feel very lucky rehearsing in such beautiful surroundings. When it’s torrential rain, however, you have to wear an additional layer of clothes, work harder and shout louder!!

You have an association with the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford for this production.  Can you tell us more about this?

We have been touring to the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre for three years and they are very keen to help us in any way they can. Of course, theatres are struggling with funding across the country so there is no financial support from the theatre but their knowledge of other receiving houses throughout the UK, endless advice and the resourceful props department is of great help to Creative Cow which also receives no public funding.

What do you hope audiences will take away from your productions – and this one in particular?

We always hope that audiences will leave the theatre feeling uplifted and they had a great night out. Hopefully it will encourage people and especially youngsters to continue going to live theatre and enjoy the atmosphere that it brings.

For more information, to organize your won interview or to book review tickets for The Rivals, contact:

Miranda Johnson, 01962 890208, mirandajohnson@btinternet.com,

or Rachel Shimell, 02380 732981, Rachel.shimell@ntlworld.com

Tour dates:

]]> http://www.festivalpreviews.com/blog/14156/interview-with-katherine-senior-creative-cow-theatre-company/feed/ 0 http://www.festivalpreviews.com/blog/14115/tenderpits-the-most-bonkers-show-at-the-fringe/ http://www.festivalpreviews.com/blog/14115/tenderpits-the-most-bonkers-show-at-the-fringe/#comments Fri, 24 Aug 2012 09:27:02 +0000 Festival Previews http://www.festivalpreviews.com/blog/14115/tenderpits-the-most-bonkers-show-at-the-fringe/

AnimalParts NYC presents Tenderpits

You can see Tenderpits by AnimalParts Theatre at the Underbelly from the 23^rd to the 26^th August from 21:30 hours for 55 minutes.  Suitable for 15+.  Get your tickets from Underbelly or the Edinburgh Fringe.

New York based Canadians Anthony Johnston and Nathan Schwatrtz, also known as Animal Parts Theatre Company, have crossed the pond to bring their show Tenderpits to this year’s Edinburgh Fringe – pipped to be the ‘most bonkers show at the Fringe’. The boys talked to Festival Previews about their combination of fantasy and reality onstage, bringing their own traumas to the show, and wanting to bring human excrement, crystal meth and bath salts into their future work…

FP: How did you both get into performance?

Anthony: I’ve been performing all my life and I grew up doing it. Nathan and I met when we were eighteen or nineteen at Studio 58, a theatre school in Vancouver because we were roommates. Throughout school we had always been a team and always and making jokes together.  Then when we graduated together in 2004, we went our separate ways.

I was working on things across Canada and Nathan was starting to direct more. I lived in Toronto and worked as a theatre actor there for a while, and then decided that I wanted to move to New York, so I got an immigration lawyer and paid $10,000 and moved to the USA. Nathan was born there so while I jumped through a million hoops, he just upped and went down.

Nathan: We worked on a solo show of Anthony’s at the New York Fringe and that did really well.

Anthony: It had already done well in Canada, but when Nathan came on board as director he took the show to a next level.

Nathan: I thought; let’s make something new and way crazier!

Anthony: So we started making Tenderpits shortly after that, and it became a company and then Tenderpits started really developing in late 2009.  It premiered in 2010, and has gone through many changes both small and large – in content, energy and execution. We have done a number of small runs of it in New York, and meanwhile we have also created other new work with people, directing them, or helping with the development of other pieces.

FP: Tenderpits combines autobiographical performance with fantastical elements. Why did you decide to work in this form?

Anthony: Yes, it is completely autobiographical, but I didn’t immigrate to America on the back of a moose! However, everything in the piece is autobiographical in the sense that it is all based on my life and real events.

We tell the story through the theatre and we want to do that in a very fantastical theatrical, bizarro style. There are a lot of things in the show that people think are probably made up and would fit into that category, yet it’s actually true.  It plays with what is reality and what is fiction, and when is he performing and when is he just talking to us. That can be brutally intimate at times but also very presentational and theatrical, and flips between the two.

Nathan: It’s fun for us to tell a story like that; it’s almost the reverse of Daniel Kitson. We saw his show a couple of years ago in New York, and he has this way of telling stories like they are nothing.  He cleverly makes you think that they are true, and then when you step back and think about it, you realise it’s not true at all, they just can’t be!  What we do is kind of the opposite of that, and we make it crazy so that a lot of the truth gets questioned with the fantasy.

Anthony: We also wanted to create an anti-solo show. We knew the show would be me performing, and because of that it’s a solo show, but we don’t always love solo shows, and yet there are solo shows that work which we do love. But the stereotype of the solo show is someone whining about their own life because essentially it’s autobiographical and we were extra careful about that way.

Nathan: We have our own opinions about what makes a solo show bad or stupid, or clichéd, and we inserted it into this show, and tried to make it not that. People’s reactions are on two levels – the surface, and then the metaphors either intentional or unintentional used by us which turn out really interesting.

Anthony: One of the most amazing things was when this bunch of college students, who were about eighteen years old saw the show and then wrote papers in response to the piece.  Nathan got hold of some of them and they were the most beautiful things I’ve ever read. We got to learn more about the piece through fresh eyes and seeing someone else’s perspective on it. Some of the things that these people were saying about the way that it moved them or entertained them was so exciting for us. Some would write that they had never seen anyone laugh so hard in a theatre that wasn’t a movie theatre. That was nice to share theatre with young people who weren’t exposed to it fully yet!

Nathan: When people tell us what the plot is, that’s funny, too, because in the first few occasions that we did the show, I don’t think we completely knew ourselves.  Since then we have agreed on what the plot is, but it’s not always that clear. Other people can also decide for themselves what it is for them.

Anthony: It was created through improvisation and standup style and can appear on the surface like a cabaret style, and a character and a narrative grows out of that. The show works best when there is a full-house and people jump on board and make the connection. It’s a show where people can laugh, laugh, laugh until they can’t laugh anymore, because another layer of reality comes into it. It treads a fine line between… not tragedy, but something tenderer.

FP: How would you describe Tenderpits in three words?

Nathan: Bonkers was in a recent review, right?

Anthony: Yes, the’ most bonkers show on the Fringe’! But also in the same sentence said that it was ‘a powerful testimony to human courage’, which is such a crazy combination.

Yeah, sometimes I like to use the word spastic. It was used in a review of previous work of ours, but this show is a million times more spastic than that show in my opinion! I would describe it as spastically soulful – so yes, having live-wire energy, and firecracker physical energy, and connecting with the audience with a lot of heart.

We say in our company mandate that we want to create work that is rooted in humour, heart, and innovation, and that’s because the stuff that makes me laugh the most has something or someone I care about in it.

Something that just makes me laughs on the surface isn’t as entertaining as something that makes me laugh and also moves me at the same time. Innovation also because we want to do new things with theatre, and push boundaries a little bit. And we do in some ways, in this show. Structurally, and combining the elements of surprise with how much intimacy you will feel with this character.

We’re also very interested in multimedia and continuing how to find better ways to tell stories, and show what’s going on in the play at different levels. We want it to hit people in their head, their heart and their groin all at once.

Nathan: Subversive I would say. It needs to have that laughter comic element, but also to move people and make them really FEEL!.

Anthony: Spastic, soulful and subversive, I think.

FP: How did multimedia become such an important part of the piece?

Anthony: one of the first ideas for the piece was about connecting the autobiographical parts of the show. When I was growing up, my father was a camcorder dad, and he took thousands of tapes of me and my sisters growing up which are still at their home in Vancouver. I remember him looking without a full face as a kid, just with part of his face covered by the camcorder.

Some of the first seeds of what we wanted Tenderpits  was as a result of an exploration of my positivity and that I am a wizard of positivity in my immigration story. I came from Canada to the USA so we thought about using real home video footage of my life in Canada. We sifted through so much footage to find the stereotypical yet beautiful images of me playing in the snow, me playing Hockey, very Canadian stuff, Christmas morning kind of stuff. That is peppered in throughout the show.

Nathan: We liked that nineties footage, the images of our childhood. The aesthetic of VHS and that colour that was only of the nineties was something that we wanted to help people of our age to think back to their own childhoods. The video game too, was a big part of it. WE use a lot of images from these late eighties and early nineties video games, and a lot of the sound in the show was from that, too.

Anthony: On one hand that gives the show a magical aesthetic, and we do talk about being a wizard in the show, and that fits in that way – but also a lot of people around our age have specific memories of those sounds in the video game Zelda. There is mythology in the story, and it’s about magic and spells, and the obsession with it attached onto me that I am a wizard and I CAN DO ANYTHING…….

FP: Is it painful discussing such personal traumas onstage and how do you, Nathan, as a director, deal with this being done safely for Anthony?

Nathan: We were always taught to take emotional risks, and not physical ones.  Anything can be an emotional risk if you want it to. But we were also taught not to tune into your own traumas and emotional experiences. It’s been a process and it’s happened slowly.  When we first decided that we needed to talk about what happened in the show, we talked to the audience about it. I don’t think we ever forced it, and we went back and forth talking about it – we knew we had to keep Anthony emotionally healthy. We knew he would be going through a range of emotions, but we didn’t think talking about it in the play would make it any worse.

Anthony: When we started doing it again, the show was more personal than anything we had created before – trying to do something like that after the death of my grandmother and sister felt panicky – so many conflicting feelings which I still experience. It’s still strange to do it, especially when you’re running a show this many times, and especially for this length of run and doing it for so long.  You can switch off a little sometimes, which must happen to every actor performing this often.

Nathan: There is a moment in the show when Anthony talks about some real stuff, and it just fits in with what we’re talking about.  People especially in New York performing knew Anthony, and knew about what had happened. I think they found it especially traumatizing! I think people here might take it more as a joke because they are not aware of all this stuff that has actually happened.

FP: What was the inspiration behind Tenderpits?

Anthony: A lot of it came out the superficial place that we wanted to explore the eternal optimist and the power of positive thinking, so we wanted him to have rotten feet, and for him to be obsessed with his video game. It started almost as a joke between us – in order to keep playing his video games he would need to keep a nappy on, and he would regard this as a great time saver, he would never have to go to the bathroom! But of course it has these connotations of me not being able to accept my adult life without my sister, and living in my childhood. They weren’t completely conscious processes and metaphors onstage, but I think people can take away whatever they want from it.

FP: What do you want your audiences to leave Tenderpits feeling and thinking?

Anthony: I want people to leave feeling hopeful and, questioning whether we can decide whether an eternal optimist is insane or lucky. I want them to leave feeling like they have just been through something, and jumping on board with the characters in a big way. I want them to feel like they have been on that journey, that breakdown, that epiphany, or mental breakdown as it was once written. Maybe some people don’t want to go to those places and feel those things, and be exhausted by those experiences.  But when I go there and experience these feeling, I feel I’ve been really pushed to the boundaries of my emotions, I feel pretty excited. Some people feel that from different things, but I hope our audiences leaves feeling like this.

FP: What’s next for Animal Parts and for Tenderpits?

Anthony: This is our swan song!

Nathan: We have actually already started developing a piece that can stand on its own, but is also titled “Tenderpits, and is ‘Tenderpits 2: Revenge of the Popinjay’. Popinjay is a word from Shakespeare’s time that means a dandy or gaylord.  That show, while we do think of it as the next part of Tenderpits, is its own show. You won’t have to have seen Tenderpits to understand it. It’s definitely the same style as Tenderpits, combining reality with fantasy again, so it’s dealing with the specifics in real details of the loss of Anthony’s sister in a very intimate way.

Anthony: Another big part of that show is me being a rap sensation, and there is a lot of live music in the show, and the rapping is all extremely hetereophobic, and about murdering straight people, and extremely graphic, which obviously satirizes regular rap. IN this show the fantasy aspect is still very much there but the reality is also bigger. We are so excited about it, and Tenderpits is our first baby, but I think this is going to be very different, and much darker.

FP: Who have you enjoyed at the Edinburgh Fringe so far?

Anthony: Betty Grumble is amazing. She does burlesque and at first we thought that she was a transsexual because she has this amazing body and beautiful breasts. She also has so much makeup on her face and fake teeth that she looks like she has a mask on. Her movements were so hard and aggressive that they were kind of masculine, but still very sexual. Bizarre as f**k! She ate her own poop onstage!!

Nathan: And we were told we couldn’t do that in one of our shows, so we’ll be calling our manager to ask about that!

Melanie Anne Ball

That Swing Sensation @ 2012 Edinburgh Fringe

No wonder That Swing Sensation began with Sing Sing Sing – this show was packed with great songs, from five brilliant vocalists.  The programme was a lively mix of twenty-three classic big band tunes and favourite songs – and even some dancing in the aisles. Good to hear some modern numbers as well as the old favourites – especially loved was the energy of Paolo Nutini’s “Pencil Full of Lead” and the “Big Bad Voodoo Daddy” arrangement of “I Wanna Be Like You“.

How analogous The Jazz Age seems today, a period of excess paralleling dangerous speculation, triggering economic depression.  From one generation to another, the music never dies; it is given new life because the music is so good.

Suited, sharp and slick, the 13 jazz hands fused one piece after the other luring audience members to bebop and swing.  Out they popped, dancing around the aisles and up in the balcony, with the more mature members of the audience drumming their fingers, bopping their heads and tapping their feet.

Surround sound filled the very impressive St. Cuthbert’s Church with its large reverberant space.  The 5 singers “just let us have it” clearly enjoying the space to interact with their audience.  A welcome interval mid-way through was a pleasant break to enjoy a refreshing cuppa and a quick look around this most dramatic of venues.

Then it was back to the music and a trip down memory lane with the more traditional of jazz pieces and laid back vocals that both sizzled hot and cool.  With two Guinness World Records under their belt and again another sell-out show this year “That Swing Sensation” finished with the rousing “New York, New York” with whoops of joy and a standing ovation.

Of particular interest is the fact that the two lady vocalists, Claire Knight and Pamela Byrne are stars of BBC’s River City!

High energy and a class act from start to finish. Loved it!

Peter Michael Marino is Desperately Seeking the Exit

American writer/performer Peter Michael Marino brings his show, Desperately Seeking the Exit to the Laughing Horse Free Festival @ Edinburgh City Football Club from the 22nd to the 26th August at 18:00 hours for an hour.  Suitable for 18+.  Peter chatted to Festival Previews about how the £4m musical was made and unmade.

FP: How did you originally get into writing?

Peter: I started out as a performer and I did a lot of improvisation. From that I created a character to portray the worst example of a musical theatre performer that there was. I was coming up with so many things in improvisation with this character that I ended up writing a whole show for him. I performed it and it got terrific reviews in New York, and so I thought “Oh I guess I’m a writer”, and everyone I knew said of course you are a writer!

I’ve always been able to express myself through words. I enjoy the puzzle through words, which is why Desperately Seeking Susan came out – taking the puzzle off a screen play, and the puzzle of music and mashing them together in show type way.  In some ways the cabaret shows I have done are also puzzles.  The character has monologues which make him seem that he made the life of every famous musical ever – referencing Gypsy, West Side Story into the life of this fictional character who doesn’t have a career at all.

I make a joke in the show, about when I pitched Desperately Seeking Susan to producers and they all jumped on board immediately! Before I knew it, I had MGM on board, I had Blondie on board, UK producers, US producers, and nobody even asked to read anything else I had written! Even the agent that signed me, who was one of the biggest agents in Hollywood and New York, never read the script.

In a weird way, this business is built on ideas – the successful projects are by people who can take ideas and infuse them with something that is universal, which I’m hoping my show is. The show has characters with wants and needs that people can relate to in some way.

I went to state school and grew up in Queens. I was one of those kids who would cut school to go and see Broadway shows and I didn’t just go to see those shows, I more absorbed them, to try and work out how musicals worked. I think life taught me how to be an artist, more than education. So I consider my training to be on the job.

FP: Did you think that Musical Theatre would always be the world for you or did you consider comedy as equally?

Peter: I always thought that I would be in musicals – I understand music, and I have been a drummer from a young age. I don’t have the discipline needed to be a musical theatre performer, though. I didn’t really take dance or vocal classes either.  I did a lot of musicals but I was always cast as the funny guy. I could get away with singing the ballad that my voice couldn’t really support because I would tell the story really well.

FP: Desperately Seeking the Exit is borne out of the failure of the musical you wrote, “Desperately Seeking Susan”. What made you want to make a show about this event in your life?

Peter: The failure of Desperately Seeing Susan plunged me into year long depression where I didn’t leave the house. My world had all come crashing down, as it had been embraced by so many people, and then suddenly the world was saying it was crap.

But the show actually opened in Tokyo a year later, very unexpectedly, and it was a massive success.  My depression completely lifted on the fourteen hour flight home. I ended up telling the story of the show in bars, restaurants, family events, everywhere, and eventually someone said to me “You should just write a show about it! So I did, I realized it was a kind of amazing story.

The show is about three things: how showbiz works, and how musicals get made and unmade, the difference between American and British culture and about having a goal and doing everything you can to achieve that goal, and the comedy rising out of the attempts to overcome your obstacles. That is the relatable bit for me – whether their goal is to get married, or see the world, or have a baby – which is just like having a show, actually – the world sends you things to trip you up!

FP: Was it at all painful creating the show?

Peter: No, not really. People would say to me after the show “you’re so brave!”  But what I wrote was actually comedy; my show is a comedy, and I suppose attempting to do comedy is brave, but I think doing anything creative is brave. A painter who spends weeks and weeks making tiny dots to make a landscape is brave; because it might be that nobody cares!

Five years later, I have grown up, I have met some of the most wonderful talented people because of that show, and everyone who was in my show has gone on to play leading roles in the West End.

I have a tremendous affinity for British culture, and I have a reason to go back to London regularly. It’s made me appreciate other cultures more, and made me more empathetic to other people, and other people’s disappointments. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I didn’t have that experience.

So to me, this show is a triumph show, and I would like to inspire other people. I would love for theatre students to see this show, and find out how the industry works, and find their own voice – we are all storytellers. We went to bed every night being told stories with a beginning middle and end, and we have to thank those stories for being able to sleep at night. I think it’s really important to keep alive the tradition of storytelling, and there is no better person to tell your story than you. I want people to pursue their goal, and I hope the show can prove that.

FP: Did you ever doubt what you were doing?

Peter: Yes, I did, so I work shopped it away from New York, and for an audience who didn’t know me or the business that well. I guess I had some doubts that I would be offending people, like the creative team. What makes it a theatre show, rather than a comedy show is that I show the story rather than telling it – I portray characters.   When I look back, I realise that all of them were only trying to do the best they could, so once I tapped into that, it took away the guilt of exposing all of those flaws.

It’s not my intention for it to be a backstage gossipy show. I don’t want to throw anybody under the bus… Maybe one guy and I’ll leave that up to you to decide! A couple of the cast members have seen it and have been reduced to tears, because they remember the experience, or people have said they knew of someone involved and agreed about people. I also had a fear of backlash, or halt the impossibility of the musical happening again. But so far, it’s only ignited interest in the show. So ever doubt that I had has been completely reversed!

You can see Desperately Seeking the Exit at the Laughing Horse Free Festival @ Edinburgh City Football Club from the 22nd to the 26th August at 18:00 hours for an hour.

Melanie Anne Ball