Issue #11 - Monday 16th August - FREE

MORE INSIDE...The Noise Next Door Interrogated about their Secret AgencyDomestic Goddi’s Festival Survival TipsLeCoq’s Theatre Ad Infinitum

»

»

»

THE VAUDEVILLAINS

Eight years ago, Les Enfants Terribles arrived in Edinburgh with their production West. Having been back to Edinburgh every year since, there is a certain harmony in their 2010 return with Vaudevillains, which features elements of that original show. Both are huge productions, both are set in a nightclub and both feature an enormous cast, band and crew. This could be Les Enfants Terribles’s most thrilling project to date.

Vaudevillains is dubbed by writer and company founder Oliver Lansley as “a murder mystery music-hall musical”. Set in The Empire Music Hall, things go awry when owner Charlie is found dead.

What follows is a murder mystery in which every performer is a suspect and every suspect conceals a dark secret. “There’s a psychotic ventriloquist, a three-part harmony of siamese triplets, magicians, all sorts of crazy stuff going on” reveals Oliver.

“It’s very much the world of Les Enfants. We use a lot of the stuff we love in our shows – puppets, costumes, sound and more. But this time it’s a musical.” Les Enfants Terribles are no strangers to musical performance, but Vaudevillains steps up the part it has to play. “It seemed like a really fun and interesting progression from musical features to using music as our storytelling device” tells Oliver.

Vaudevillains is an extremely large-scale production, taking over a performance space right in the centre of the Pleasance Dome and expanding outwards for a sprawling party later in the night.

“There are hundreds of us working on it” says Oliver, “eleven cast, a five piece band, three lighting technicians, sound engineers, costume makers, directors, writers, designers – it’s an incredibly exciting venture.

Two other of Les Infants Terribles’s shows will also be performed at the Pleasance in the final week of the Festival. The Terrible Infants and Ernest and the Pale Moon return to Edinburgh after national and international tours and enormous success with critics and audiences alike.

FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY, THE PLEASANCE DOME IS TRANSFORMED INTO A VIBRANT CABARET BAR,SETTING FOR A TERRIBLE MURDER - WHODDUNIT?...

The VaudevillainsPleasance Dome

(Palm Court) 16 Aug 22:45

Suspects to the murder of Empire Music Hall Owner, Charlie: Above,

Cerberus Sisters; Left, Gaston

INTERROGATION: THE NOISE NEXT DOOR’s SECRET AGENCYHow do you structure your improv, if at all?For most of year we just do short form improv, but for Edinburgh we like to pick a theme. In our first year here we predicted the future, last year it was building a planet and then this year we’ve decided to build a Secret Agency. It’s a real art to set and host a theme so that audiences aren’t limited, but are free to suggest great ideas.If everything’s new every night, how do you rehearse?We do gigs the whole year round, from theatre shows to private parties to comedy clubs, so our performance practise mainly comes through doing that. But then we use rehearsal time to develop new structures and work on how we host the performance. We

DOMESTIC GODDI HELP YOU THROUGH THE FESTIVAL

In the whirlwind of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival it’s only too easy to let one’s standards slip. Never fear - with Domestic Goddi’s Top

actually develop ideas in a similar manner to sketch troupes in terms of picking humorous scenarios. But then we have to work out the variables and workshop how they could incorporate audience suggestions. We have to make up a game that can be played a hundred times with a hundred different audiences and still be funny.How much does your show depend on the quality of the audience?Certainly, the more imaginative the suggestions, the better the show. We love Edinburgh and the Pleasance - people are so creative and imaginative. We gig all year at events and comedy clubs, where you tend to encounter loads of stag parties who generally only

want to hear about balls. We do oblige, of course. If the whole crowd wants it dirty we give it to them dirty. You adapt to the crowd.Do you think improv can work on TV or recordings?Like most comedians, we want as wide an audience as possible to see our performances. We started out excited by the success of Whose Line is it Anyway, but that’s showing its age. There’s so much more you can do now, not just in terms of the performance, but also in terms of filming techniques and graphics. When you have a particularly brilliant show, is it sad to have to leave that material behind?One of the best things about improv is that

however great your show was, there’s always a better performance to hope and aspire for at a future gig. With this one, there’s no huge premise or agenda to the show, it’s most like boys in a treehouse starting up a secret agency – it’s not profound, it’s just funny.The Noise Next Door: Chaos ControlPleasance Courtyard4-30 Aug (Not 18) 19:00

Tips you can ensure you stay a shining beacon of goddess-like radiance.

Always carry a parasol to protect that delicate complexion from the infrequent Edinburgh sunshine. Also useful for beating the ankles of unsuspecting people out of your way as you trip daintily across the Courtyard. A wedge heel will do nicely thank you. Only brave the stiletto if there is an obliging

1.

2.

beau to hand who can carry you across the cobblestones.Get up at dawn every day to wash your face in the morning dew. Followed by a brisk skip across the Meadows - it’s all a goddess needs to keep up her healthy glow - that and scarlet lipstick.Remember to pack the essentials: a tub of Baking Soda for its myriad of applications, an apron, a rolling pin and organic flour. You can spend the

3.

4.

evenings baking your own bread!If it should all get a bit much – smile! A goddess never ever frowns - it causes unsightly wrinkles.

If none of the above restores your goddess-like glory, then ensure you have an emergency stash to hand of Crunchie Bars and a large bottle of Gin. Hide them in a Cath Kidston tote bag.

Domestic Goddi Wonderland

Pleasance Courtyard4-30 Aug 14:35

5.

@ThePleasance#pleasancetimes

RT @dreadfulsA @dreadfuls clubnight? FilmScore + GlitchCore + Victoriana + FunkBeats + GameNoise + Mashups? Banana Yazoos on the house! For @ThePleasance

RT @cdundas Two unsurprisingly excellent shows last night at @ThePleasance. The talented charm of @mrswallow + the gentle genius of @alexhorne #edfringe

The Lecoq trained Theatre Ad Infinitum bring two plays to the Fringe this year, Odyssey and The Big Smoke. Both are one person shows, both tell the tale of one person’s journey through adversity, but each show has a very distinct approach to storytelling. How can we see the Lecoq training within these two very different plays?

The Jacques Lecoq School is often misunderstood as a mere mime school. In fact, the core of the training is a discipline that teaches theatre-making through the body, improvisation, and through exploring the many different theatrical styles that exist all over the world. Lecoq then encourages his students to find new styles and ways to create theatre using his method as a base, or

LECOQ’s THEATRE AD INFINITUM

MONUMENTAL OPENING FESTIVAL FOR PLEASANCE AT GHILLIE DHU

starting point. Both of our pieces reflect this training in their physical approach to theatre-making, but they also express unique experiments in style and storytelling and are the result of two different creative journeys.

In Odyssey, we found a language using the body- through highly physical movements and finely tuned gestures. The voice is employed to tell the story through text, but also to create spaces, landscapes, characters and atmospheres. The result was an exciting fusion of text, vocal sounds and a physical language using gestures and the body. The engagement of the performer’s entire body truly brings the story to life and engages the audience in Homer’s epic tale.

With The Big Smoke, although the body is as important as ever, the challenge was to translate what we know about theatre into a new discipline that creates the same level of engagement but does so through the colourful musicality of the performer’s voice. In The Big Smoke the music moves about the stage just like the body, creating spaces, characters and emotions and evoking the audience’s imagination through melody and rhythm.

Where Odyssey weaves classical storytelling with a highly physical language to enchant it’s audience, The Big Smoke weaves storytelling with music sung a cappella -using music as if it were a physical language in its

own right to provoke the audience’s imagination in a different way and on an emotional level. With both shows, in order to find something truly unique and original we had to experiment and take risks; to go on a creative journey and see what we could find. Odyssey and The Big Smoke are what we found.

The Big Smoke / OdysseyPleasance Dome

4-30 Aug (Not 17, 24) 14:20 (The Big Smoke), 14:50

(Odyssey)

MONDAY 16THDENISE BLACK’S

LOOSE SCREWPleasance at Ghillie Dhu

00:15Elaine C Smith Joe McGann

Sarah Louise Young Des O’Connor Peter Straker

Checkley BushCircus Trick Tease

ITCH: A SCRATCH EVENTPleasance Courtyard 14:00

Hardeep Singh KohliStephen Frost (Blackadder)

Shazia MirzaWendy Wason

Stuart GoldsmithPhil Nichol hosts

Please note that all line-ups are subject to change. Check the Box Office for the latest information.

MERVYN STUTTER’S PICK OF THE FRINGE

Pleasance Courtyard 12:55Vive Le CabaretDes O’Connor

Sarah Louise YoungManga (GaGa Heads)

Kai HumpheriesHour Of Telly Live

Blackout & One more act

NICHOLAS PARSONS: HAPPY HOUR

Pleasance Courtyard 17:10Janey Godley

Stuart GoldsmithThe Magnets

VIVE LE CABARETPleasance at Ghillie Dhu

21:30Rosie Wilby

Gypsy Charms,Kiki Kaboom,

The Kitsch Kats,Mr B The

Gentleman RhymerPippa the Ripper

& One More Act TBC