Theatre Guide

2010

Theatre guide eif.co.uk/theatre

Photo: Alex McKnight

World Premiere

The Sun Also Rises (The Select) Based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway

Elevator Repair Service Lurching from 1920s Paris with its café culture to the blood and sun of the bullfight fiesta in Pamplona The Sun Also Rises is a story of impossible love, sultry sex and disaffected youth. This illuminating stage interpretation of Hemingway’s first great novel comes to life on a stage strewn with liquor bottles and café chairs and features the ensemble’s trademark sound design and highly energized choreography.

Saturday 14 – Monday 16 August 7.30pm, Sunday 15 August 1.00pm, Tuesday 17 August 2.00pm Audio described performance Monday 16 August 7.30pm Royal Lyceum Theatre Tickets from £10 Visit eif.co.uk/sun for video clips and online booking

Supported by Edinburgh International Festival Benefactors and the Director’s Circle With additional support from

A co-production of ERS and New York Theatre Workshop.

Commissioned by the Ringling International Arts Festival, John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, in association with the Baryshnikov Arts Center; the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival with funding from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative; and ArtsEmerson: the World on Stage.

Photo: Nancy Campbell

Vieux Carré

by Tennessee Williams

The Wooster Group

Saturday 21 – Tuesday 24 August 7.30pm

The Wooster Group occupies multiple, overlapping worlds of performance, visual art, multimedia and theatre. The New Yorkers forge a new mode of expression for Tennessee Williams’s lyric voice in Vieux Carré, drawing you into the entangled lives of the young malcontents and elderly eccentrics who share a squalid boarding house in New Orleans.

Audio described performance Tuesday 24 August 7.30pm

Please note this production contains adult themes.

Supported by

Commissioned by Théâtre National de Strasbourg, Wiener Festwochen, Les Spectacles Vivants – Centre Pompidou and Festival d’Automne à Paris.

Royal Lyceum Theatre Tickets from £10 Visit eif.co.uk/woostergroup for image galleries and online booking

Image: National Theatre of Scotland

World Premiere

Caledonia

BY AlISTAIR BEATon

national Theatre of Scotland Anthony neilson director A story of greed, euphoria and mass delusion, Caledonia is an ancient tale for modern times. It’s 1698 and Scotland fervently desires its own slice of colonial empire – what happens is a short lived and disastrous foray into Central America known as the darien venture.

Inspired by documents, songs and poems of the period, playwright and satirist Alistair Beaton has created a work that is both a tribute to Scotland’s heroic ambition and a darkly witty take on the deceptions and delusions of rich and poor alike.

Award-winning writer and director Anthony Neilson directs this world premiere.

Saturday 21, Sunday 22, Tuesday 24 & Wednesday 25 August 7.30pm, Sunday 22, Wednesday 25 & Thursday 26 August 2.30pm Captioned performance Tuesday 24 August 7.30pm BSL interpreted and audio described performance Wednesday 25 August 7.30pm Touch tour Wednesday 25 August 6.30pm King’s Theatre, Edinburgh Tickets from £12 Visit eif.co.uk/caledonia for online booking

Supported through the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund

Photo: Yuval Binur

The Gospel at Colonus

By Lee Breuer and Bob Telson

The Blind Boys of Alabama The Legendary Soul Stirrers The Inspirational Voices of Abyssinian Baptist Church The Steeles Jam packed with gospel music this uplifting spectacle stars the legendary Blind Boys of Alabama, collectively playing the role of Oedipus, in a version of Sophocles’s tragedy like you have never seen before. Add a dash of soul and some rock ‘n’ roll swagger to the proceedings and it’ll have you jumping out of your seat to join in!

Classic Greek drama is given more than a little contemporary twist by New York based theatre director Lee Breuer who brings this seminal production to the Festival following success with the brilliantly theatrical Peter and Wendy last year and Mabou Mines DollHouse in 2007.

Saturday 21 & Sunday 22 August 7.30pm, Sunday 22 & Monday 23 August 2.30pm The Edinburgh Playhouse Tickets from £8 Visit eif.co.uk/colonus for video clips and online booking Produced by Dovetail Productions.

Sponsored by

‘the most electric and inventive show in American musical history!’ The Atlanta Constitution

The Gospel at Colonus 21-23 August Sponsored by Standard Life

Photo: Yuval Binur

‘If you don’t go: you’re making a terrible, terrible mistake.’

Philadelphia Magazine

Photo: Rodrigo G贸mez-Rovira

Sin Sangre (Without Blood) From Alessandro Baricco, by Dauno Tótoro, Juan Carlos Zagal, Laura Pizarro, and Diego Fontecilla

Teatro Cinema Venegence, deceit and a river of secrets – lives bound together by a shocking act of violence. Sin Sangre is adapted from a novella by Italian writer Alessandro Baricco with all the darkness and tension of a 1960s B-movie thriller.

Ingeniously fusing live action and widescreed cinema Chilean company Teatro Cinema tear down the boundaries between the artforms in a thrilling and totally original way. Don’t miss the chance to see these, their first UK performances.

‘When revenge becomes the only visible way, when death reigns over all… the tragic destiny can only be defeated by not spilling blood.’

Performed in Spanish with English supertitles

Saturday 28 & Monday 30 August, Wednesday 1 & Friday 3 September 8.00pm King’s Theatre, Edinburgh Tickets from £12 Visit eif.co.uk/sin for video clips and online booking

Sponsored by A co-production between Festival Internacional de Teatro Santiago a Mil, Centre Dramatique Le Manège, Teatro Cinema and Consejo Para la Cultura y las Artes (Chilean Government).

Image: Abel Elizondo

The Man Who Fed Butterflies

By Laura Pizarro, Dauno Tótoro and Juan Carlos Zagal

Teatro Cinema During the last moments of his life an old man feels the urge to carry out a forgotten ritual taught to him by the only survivor of an extinct and forgotten tribe.

This original and poetic story makes the very most of Teatro Cinema’s striking visual style fusing film and live action. Brave and ambitious, The Man Who Fed Butterflies asks questions about the true potential of the human mind.

Sunday 29 August, Thursday 2 & Saturday 4 September 8.00pm, Saturday 4 September 2.00pm King’s Theatre, Edinburgh Tickets from £12 Visit eif.co.uk/butterflies for online booking

Performed in Spanish with English supertitles

A co-production between Edinburgh International Festival, Teatro Cinema, Festival Internacional de Teatro Santiago a Mil, Scène Nationale de Sète, Centre Dramatique Le Manège, Napoli Teatro Festival and Fondo Para El Desarrollo de Las Artes (Chilean Government).

Sponsored by

Photo: Jesse Froman

Songs of Ascension

By Meredith Monk and Ann Hamilton

Meredith Monk blends elements of music, art and theatre to mesmerising effect in her distinctive and evocative style. Her career first took off in the avant-garde world of 1960s New York alongside contemporaries including Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed and Andy Warhol.

Saturday 28, Sunday 29 & Monday 30 August 8.00pm Royal Lyceum Theatre Tickets from £10 Visit eif.co.uk/monk for video clips and online booking

Exploring circles and ceremony and combining music, movement and film, Songs of Ascension is a luminous piece of music theatre to move and inspire you.

‘Later generations will envy those who got to see her live.’

The New Yorker

Supported by the American Friends of the Edinburgh International Festival

With additional support from

Photo: Valentino Saldivar

Diciembre (December) Written and directed by Guillermo Calderón

Teatro en el Blanco Christmas Eve 2014. Chile, Peru and Bolivia are at war. A soldier arrives home on 24 hour leave to celebrate with his pregnant twin sisters. But when they discover he may not return to the battle front, one is ready to hide him, the other is furious.

Thursday 2, Friday 3 & Saturday 4 September 8.00pm, Saturday 4 September 2.30pm Royal Lyceum Theatre Tickets from £10 Visit eif.co.uk/diciembre for video clips and online booking

During the course of a relentlessly combative, yet darkly funny display of sibling rivalry, South America’s hectic political history is explored, scrutinized and dissected by this young Santiago based company.

Performed in Spanish with English supertitles Sponsored by

A co-production between Teatro en el Blanco and Festival Internacional de Teatro Santiago a Mil.

Book your Festival tickets! eif.co.uk 0131 473 2000 Young People and Students

Standby tickets

Access discounts

All young people under 18 and all students in full-time education are entitled to 50% discount on tickets across the Festival 2010 theatre programme.

50% off all tickets for senior citizens, unemployed people, Young Scot, Equity and MU card holders from 4 August 2010.

Wheelchair users, people with severe mobility difficulties or with visual or hearing impairment will be sold seats/spaces at ÂŁ10 in the area of the venue most appropriate to their needs. Discount also applies to a companion. Dedicated access booking line 0131 473 2089.

Edinburgh International Festival Society is Scottish Charity (No SC004694) and is registered in Scotland (SC0247660) at The Hub, Castlehill, Edinburgh EH1 2NE.

Front cover photo: Arnaldo RodrĂ­guez