by Dan Freeman, while Sam Underwood (The Following, Dexter, Homeland) brings Losing Days, a story about losing his mind – and finding it again. Famous Scots participating in the Fringe this year include Craig Ferguson, who last performed at the Fringe 24 years ago, before leaving Scotland to find fame in the US. Irvine Welsh presents two new shows – Creatives, a darkly comic pop-opera look that examines the contemporary music industry, and Performers, a black comedy that revolves around two gangsters auditioning for roles in a 1960s film, making its world premiere at the Fringe. The Fringe is a great level playing field, providing an opportunity for emerging talent to rub shoulders and share facilities with established stars, for new material to be tested and new talent to be discovered. Ones to watch in 2017 include ‘A GIRL & A GUN’ , the first Fringe show from Louis Orwin. This live multimedia performance structured as a live film-making experiment features a different male co-star (who has not seen the script before taking to the stage) at every performance. Various Fringe performers will be challenged to accept the role, reading lines and stage directions live off an autocue as ‘He’ is is directed to do increasingly violent things to ‘Her’. The show is described as a witty, fun and unflinchingly provocative look at the relationship between women and violence in media and the intrinsic sexual objectification of women found all around us.
Photo by National Museums Scotland - After hours Friday Fringe
Photo by Lizzie Coombes - Pauline Mayers in ‘What if I told you’
‘WHAT IF I TOLD YOU’ is another debut performance, this time from Fringe first-timer Pauline Mayers.
her story as a black woman, a dancer and choreographer. It’s a story of universal truths and contradictions that everyone can relate to.
Last year Pauline hit a crisis point. Perhaps not that unusual for a woman in her mid 40s, but a pretty big deal when it happens to you. What if I Told You is her way of telling
‘SHOW ME THE MONEY’ is about the things artists and performers have to do to earn a living and thus provide secondary employment for the likes of you and me!
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It’s a funny, inspirational show by multimedia artist Paula Varjack looking at how artists manage to support their creative dreams. Using a blend of documentary-style interviews with live performance it provides a painfully honest, yet ultimately optimistic portrait of life in contemporary Britain as government cuts bite.