Dress Rehearsals

Ohhhhh, it's been an exciting week.  We have been in tech rehearsals and, with the exception of Scavengers which is going on tomorrow, we have all had our first dress rehearsals.  The plays are shaping up great and it's been a fantastic experience to work with professional technicians and stage-crew.  All the shows are looking really slick with interesting design choices everywhere you look!

You can find out more about Mother Maria here and The Bends also has a blog here.

The plays open at the Tron next Wednesday, you can check-out 'Scavengers' and 'Mother Maria' on the 31st and 2nd and you can see 'The Bends' and 'liberty equality fraternity' on the 1st and 3rd.  Links to the ticket site are on the right-hand side of this page.  Hope to see you there...

Beijing Baby!!!

This is a photo of the much coveted 'Golden Hedgehog' that goes to the winner of the Beijing College Drama Festival.  Why is that of interest to us here in rainy Glasgow?  Because 5 of our actors (and one director) are in China right now participating in this prestigious event!

They have brought their new play 'Scavengers' by Davey Anderson to the festival and it made it's premier performance last night to wild acclaim.  We are really proud of the group and it's a huge honour for the RSAMD (almost the RCS now - name change coming in September) to be the only European representatives at the event.  The play is a fast=paced thriller with a whirlwind of characters and an edge-of-your-seat ending.

Below is one of the lucky actors, Francois Menard-Noens, posing by a large projected picture of the poster for the play.

You can catch Scavengers from the end of this month in the not quite as exotic locations of the Tron, the Traverse and The Cockpit - the link to their box office is on the right (the Traverse are still too busy with the Festival so haven't go tickets put yet, but they will soon - we promise) as well as 3 other brand-new plays written by some of Scotland's most exciting playwrights.

The Fringe

Over the past week, MACCT has been bussing it through to Edinburgh to experience the madness that is the Fringe. The Fringe, and the International Festival, Book Festival and Art Festival, mean that the usually quiet and reserved Edinburgh doubles in population, gives over every possible space into being a theatre venue, and generally turns into a 24 hour performance carnival for the month of August. 

Our part of the Fringe madness kicked off at the hub of new writing, the Traverse, at a Q&A with writers David Greig, Lynda Radley and Zinnie Harris. This fascinating discussion started us off appropriately on a week of exciting and varied theatre, racing around Edinburgh, in the characteristically grey downpour of rain, to make it to different venues dotted around both old and new town. So far, we’ve dodged tomato juice at Junction 25’s fantastic take on love as a teenager; seen war through the ages with National Theatre of Scotland’s epic examining of conflict and innocence, The Wheel; visited a gorgeous freakshow with the visually lush Futureproof; been lead through the University of Edinburgh’s anatomy department by Grid Iron’s terrifying mad musical maestro; cried over paper cranes with Catherine Wheels and been marveled by The TEAM’s incredible play/cabaret/story of American Frontierism, Mission Drift.

We’ve also had the pleasure of popping in to see the RSAMD/RCS’ Musical Theatre MAs performing in their own fringe shows, taking a tour of the Scottish Parliament as research for ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ and taking part in a workshop with Master Oh of the Korean Mokhwa Repertory Company as part of the International Festival.

For some of us, it’s our first experience of the Fringe whilst others have been many times before – regardless, it’s been brilliant so far, and we can’t wait to return next week for the Playwright Studio talks, David Greig’s Monster in the Hall and Poorboy’s Blood and Roses, before we start our tech week.  You can read a little bit more about a couple of the shows on one of actors, Charlotte Purser's, personal blog.

The Scavengers cast and crew left today for Beijing, we look forward to hearing from them soon, but back to rehearsals for now!