Edinburgh News: theatre

A memory from les evenements (the term is used advisedly) in Tahrir Square. A young woman, smartly dressed, wearing a hijab and Palestinian keffiyeh grins as she waves a victory sign to the camera. An icon for much more than the Egyptian element of the Arab Spring, and in both dress and gesture,  symbolic of a rising generation skilfully negotiating both modernity and a reviving Islamic consciousness.

The penultimate play in this season’s A Play, A Pie and A Pint  series of writing from the Arab world is a collaboration among several writers and miscellaneous people who contributed various tales, slogans and related experiences and has been devised by the show’s directors David Greig and Fiona MacKinnon and the two actors, Seif Abdelfattah, Sara Shaarawi.

‘Translation is always a form of treachery’. Perhaps. Yet it may be an unavoidable treachery. Dogstar’s The Captain’s Collection tiptoes around the implications of this without fully addressing the issue.

A cold, wet evening in May (aye, May) is not the best atmosphere for being at the wrong venue for a launch.  My excuse? There was a hint somewhere in an email about seeing renovations and anyway, what do I know about building schedules? Answer: hee haw. We are so used in Edinburgh to the disruption of barriers closed streets and roads, that whether or not scaffolding has gone down is barely noted any more.  Luckily, I was in the Guides so used my initiative and soon came across some likely folk on the way to the launch in St Andrew Square.  (Note to self: always read the small print.)

Plutôt la Vie is a Scottish touring theatre company, founded in 2003 by Tim Lacata and Ian Cameron. Both have trained with such clowning greats as Pierre Byland and Philippe Gaulier, who share the belief that acting is, ‘a child’s game played with great pleasure and dexterity that forms a rapport with the audience by speaking to their imagination.’

Audience participation is often an integral part of children’s theatre, but this performance took interaction to a whole new level, to the absolute delight of the younger members of the audience.

Cloudia, the tweedy and anoraky cloud expert with her absent minded specs held together with a plaster, is already sitting on stage intently taking notes as the toddling audience takes its seats in the Church Hill Theatre Studio. Cloudia (Jen Edgar Ireland) is on a determined mission to find a Cloud Man, a shy elusive creature who lives in the clouds.

The Bank of Scotland Imaginate Festival is only in its third day and already in full swing going by the buzz of lanyard wearing delegates in venues. Today’s performance of Titus, was originally written by award winning Belgian writer Jan Sobrie, and is considered one of Europe's most successful plays for young people (recommended age is 11+ years).  Small wonder.

With the Bank of Scotland Imaginate Festival on for the week children and adults are tasting a good range of live performance (such as the show pictured, Kindur, which is told from the perspective of Icelandic sheep).