News

05 January 2015

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society has today unveiled plans to hold an event in New York City for artists and performing companies who might be interested in bringing their work to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2015.

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the most famous and dynamic arts festival in the world and takes place every August for three weeks in Scotland’s capital city.

On 10 January, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society will hold a roadshow at 59E59 at East 59th Street in New York City. This event takes the format of a panel discussion, followed by a ‘Q & A’session and concludes with an informal opportunity for potential Fringe participants to meet Fringe staff and venue representatives. The roadshow is free to attend.

Unveiling the roadshow plans, Kath M Mainland, Chief Executive of the Fringe Society said:

“Every year performers from all over the world take to a multitude of stages all over Edinburgh to present shows for every taste. From big names in the world of entertainment to unknown artists looking to build their careers, the festival caters for everyone and includes theatre, comedy, cabaret, variety, spoken word, dance, physical theatre, circus, musicals, operas, music, childrens’shows, exhibitions and events.

“This diverse range of work encourages arts professionals such as producers, promoters and programmers from all over the world to come to Edinburgh with the aim of engaging with Fringe participants who they might want to work with in the future.

“Featuring award-winning participants and producers and members of the Fringe Society staff, this roadshow event is an opportunity for professionals and amateurs alike to learn how to succeed when producing a show for the first time at the world’s greatest arts festival.

“The United States has a long and distinguished track record of sending some of the most exciting and innovative shows to the Fringe each year and New York, with its tradition of fringe theatre, is a natural place for us to come to and find the next generation of talented performers and producers.

“Coming to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe roadshow won’t commit any artists or producers to making the trip but it will equip them with some very valuable information if they choose to bring their work to Edinburgh.”

Notes for Editors:

• The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Roadshow will take place from 1130 hrs to 1300 hrs at 59E59, 59 East 59th Street, New York City. The doors will open at 1100 hrs.
   
• The panel for the New York roadshow will consist of leading cabaret performer Lady Rizo, comedian Lucie Pohl as well as Kath M Mainland, Chief Executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, Barry Church-Woods, the Venues & Companies Manager for the Society and Robyn Jancovich-Burns who runs the Fringe Society’s Participant Development services.
   
• The New York roadshow is made possible with funding from the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund.

Case Study:

New York based theater company The TEAM are presenting RoosevElvis as part of PS122’s COIL Festival from 02 to the 10 January.

The New York-based company first decided to come to Edinburgh in 2005 after attending the Edinburgh Fringe Road Show in New York City which convinced Artistic Director Rachel Chavkin Edinburgh was a great place to showcase work. They took a gamble and brought over two shows: Give Up! Start Over! a solo performance about reality television, Richard Nixon and the search for authenticity in America, and A Thousand Natural Shocks, a raw quartet inspired by Hamlet. Luckily the gamble paid off - the company had an incredibly successful run at C Venues and won a Scotsman Fringe First Award, and toured both works in the UK over the following season.

Following the success of their Fringe debut, The TEAM returned in 2006 with Particularly in the Heartland, another work exploring the experience of living in America. This piece was set in Kansas, and featured a series of bizarre and inventive characters - an alien in possession of the body of a dead pregnant teenage girl, a business woman named Dorothy whose plane has crashed in the cornfields, and the ghost of 1968 democratic presidential hopeful and liberal icon Robert F. Kennedy. In another year of critical acclaim, the company was awarded its second Fringe First.

Returning in 2008 with Architecting, the company took the audience on a multi-media road trip from the sweeping, romantic south of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, to post- Katrina New Orleans in order to look at the failures of the Reconstruction Era and the challenges of recovery today. . Playing to sell-out audiences at the Traverse Theatre and receiving numerous five star reviews, it was no surprise when this production won the TEAM their third Fringe First award.

In 2011 they returned to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with Mission Drift, an exploration of capitalism, told through atomic blasts, lizard ballet and music that fuses Vegas glitz with Western ballads and Southern Blues. It follows the story of an immortal Dutch couple setting out west from Amsterdam to New Amsterdam to financially devastated modern-day Las Vegas. Mission Drift won that year’s Edinburgh International Festival Award for a show in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a Herald Angel Award, and the company’s fourth Fringe First,. In the 2014 Edinburgh Festival Fringe TEAM’s founding Artistic Director Rachel Chavkin returned to collaborate once again with Chris Thorpe in China Plate, Warwick Arts Centre, and NorthernStage’s production of Confirmation for which they picked up a Scotsman Fringe First. Rachel Chavkin and Chris Thorpe also delivered the 2014 Fringe Central Opening Address, an event designed to motivate and inspire the thousands of less experienced Fringe performers at the start of their great adventure.

Speaking at the Fringe Rachel Chavkin said: "I can trace nearly every step of my company's and my professional life to our first year at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.”