Newbury Youth Theatre artistic director ROBIN STRAPP reports home from Edinburgh Fringe. FOLLOWING their highly-successful run at Arlington Arts, Newbury Youth Theatre arrived safely in Edinburgh after a long coach journey to perform at the largest arts festival in the world. This is their 26th year of performing at the Fringe, quite an achievement.
Once again, they performed at Paradise in Augustines, a beautiful church that is converted to provide theatre spaces for the festival and is opposite the famous Greyfriars Bobby statue. With almost 4,000 shows across 300 venues with companies from 58 countries, there is plenty of competition. All genres are covered, with comedy the largest, and there is plenty to see spanning theatre, cabaret, music, dance, children’s shows, circus and musicals.
The themes this year include climate change, the female experience, neurodiversity, mental health, wellbeing and the NHS. Also there are 354 free shows and 577 pay-what-you-can as well as loads of street theatre all helping to create the party atmosphere that is the Fringe. With performances from international companies from Korea, Japan, Italy, France, the US and Australia this year promises to be magical.
The fun and excitement is being brave and finding a show outside your comfort zone that may just turn out to be a little gem. Newbury Youth Theatre enthusiastically worked the Royal Mile, selling their show and giving away fliers, engaging with people to entice the vast potential audi.