PRESS RELEASE: For immediate release June 22nd 2020
Lockdown may have been particularly cruel to theatre, driving all of this year’s programme online, but from brand new responses to Covid-19 through exciting multi-media experiences to former Fringe favourites, there is still a wide range of theatre available at the Fringe.
Orange and Pip follow up Buxton two sell-outs, Ugly and After Alice, with a new virtual play, Through the Screen. Three students are keeping in touch via video chat during lockdown. When Rosie suspects Paige isn't being entirely honest, she learns something which could damage their friendship group forever. In another drama created during the current crisis, Damn Cheek build on their run of lockdown successes, with a tour de force dramatisation of Gogol’s celebrated short story, Diary of a Madman. It is disturbing, dark and funny by turns as we follow the protagonist’s descent into insanity.
The Landscape Jukebox is an intriguing part-radio play, part-film and online jukebox, inspired by the Buxton landscape. Climb to the peak of a hill. Look out at the landscape. What does it feel like to think? Do you think in words? In pictures? Have you ever thought about the nature of thoughts? Choose a track from the Jukebox and experience consciousness from a different point of view.
The Gambit won the Fringe’s New Writing award in 2013, and went on to pick up five-star reviews in Edinburgh being described as “a dense web of ideas, analysed over the background of a failed friendship - the cleverness of Mark Reid’s script is that it works on both an intellectual and emotional level”. This meeting of two chess grandmasters is available as a radio recording so can be enjoyed at home or out and about! Mark also curates and performs It’s About Time from The Institute of Managing Performance, a collection of quotations and reflections in real time with spectators able to provide their own suggestions and reflections and engage with the material in their own ways.
Breadface Theatre weren’t able to complete their show about body image, stereotypes and power due to Covid, but fortunately a performance video called Sticks & Stones has been produced which allows a sharing of past stories, a time for confession and a way to resolve differences. Another exciting performance video called Root comes from Kellie Colbert, which aims to raise awareness around Mental Health. This piece is an illustration of the struggles of living with Trichotillomania, a compulsive desire to pull out one’s hair, and the strain it puts on everyday life.
Joanna Lavelle’s Crossing the Line has been described as an “unexpected gem of the Fringe”, and has been an evolving series of linked stories giving voices to overlooked victims of abuse: wife, police officer, and mother. It now includes the perpetrator in this moving, compelling and thought-provoking drama based on real-life cases. Another successful recent play has been Special Measures from Blackboard Theatre, a big word-of-mouth hit among anyone interested in education. This heart-warming play explores why more teachers are leaving the profession than ever before, delving into what life is like as a teacher in 2020. Hilarious from start to finish, the cast will be doing an online read through of a play that features stories and characters that you have to see to believe. Silver Pine Productions won a Fringe Award for their twisty two-hander Once Upon a Time in Trieste last year and are now presenting it online. Another award-winning company, Aulos Productions, brings a Hamlet-inspired murder mystery play, This Mortal Coil.
The Lion and Albert (and Friends) is an entertaining selection of music hall and parlour recitations collected by Hancock Fabrications, including: all of the Albert stories, Three Ha'pence a Foot, The Runcorn Ferry, The Cremation of Sam McGee, which will be available via Facebook and Zoom. Last year’s very successful show from Some Kind of Theatre, The Grandmothers Grimm, has returned in recorded form. Look out for cannibalism, werewolf trials, deceit, murder, as Marie Hassenpflug and the Brothers Grimm edit the darkness out of old stories. But as they do so, the voices of the women who created these tales are lost. What will be saved and what will be forgotten?
Further information on over 80 Fringe events across all genres can be found on www.buxtonfringe.org.uk or on the free Buxton Fringe App.
The Fringe wishes to thank its sponsor The University of Derby as well as financial supporters The Trevor Osborne Charitable Trust and High Peak Borough Council, its Fringe Friends and the town’s many Fringe supporters and venues.
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