Music from Richmond, Virginia, soundtracked the Bank of Scotland Herald Angel awards at Edinburgh�s Festival Theatre on Saturday as the Fringe entered its final weekend.
Music from Richmond, Virginia, soundtracked the Bank of Scotland Herald Angel awards at Edinburgh's Festival Theatre on Saturday as the Fringe entered its final weekend. Special Ed and the Shortbus have been one of the sensations of the festival at the Spiegel Garden, and the band's performance of the song Paperchase gave this week's other winners and our guests a flavour of their contemporary take on bluegrass music.
A range of Fringe venues were presented with Angels by the artistic director of the National Theatre of Scotland, Vicky Featherstone - herself a double-Angel winner in her previous job with Paines Plough theatre company and fresh from the first night of her International Festival show, 365. She was assisted by Karen Tighe of the Bank of Scotland.
The week's Archangel award went to James Mackenzie, who has expanded his Zoo organization from Kirk O'Fields to run the Zoo Southside, neighbour of the Festival Theatre over the past few years. Its main space has become a premier location for an international programme of dance and physical theatre, where Scottish Dance Theatre also takes up residence.
A new initiative this year was the Forest Fringe, a packed programme of free events at the Forest Cafe. Ryan Van Winkle of the Cafe accepted the award on behalf of co-directors Andy Field and Deborah Pearson, whose programme included input from Battersea Arts Centre as well a number of artists and performers from distant Glasgow.
The Arches in Glasgow has been home for Al Seed, who is just completing a year as artist-in-residence at the Byre in St Andrews and is a creative associate at the Glasgow venue. His Angel-winning show The Fooligan, at The Pleasance, has been a great homegrown example of work in an international language and tradition of performance.
The director of the Spiegel Garden, David Bates, himself an Archangel winner in 2005, collected an Angel on behalf of My Friend the Chocolate Cake, the Australian group which made a triumphant return to the venue after a decade. Although their run has ended, the venue is one of those still open till the end of the coming week and the conclusion of the International Festival with the Bank of Scotland Fireworks Concert. The Spiegel Garden's programme of Gypsy Arts this week follows on from the dazzling virtuosity of moustachioed Hungarian violinist Roby Lakatos and his Ensemble, performing as part of the International Festival at The Hub. An Angel for him was collected by the festival's director of sponsorship and development, Christopher Wynn, sporting an impressive false moustache for the role.
The festival's head of audio- visual work, Mike Hannah, collected an Angel for Looking at Tazieh, Abbas Kiarostami's moving triple-screen film of the audience at a Persian passion play, screened at The Hub for an audience on rugs and cushions on the floor.
Sophie Bayne, Suzanne Bentley and Laurence Gireaud, three members of Bal Moderne, the dance company which has been working with schools and members of the public on choreography by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker as part of the Bank of Scotland-supported Connecting to Culture project, collected two awards for de Keersmaeker's Rosas company.
The Angel was for the company's performances to music by Steve Reich, which have been this year's highpoint for many festival-goers. A Little Devil award was in recognition of the efforts of all who ensured that the first night went ahead after the onstage sprinkler system was accidentally triggered moments before curtain-up. Crews from the International Festival and from the Festival Theatre mopped up furiously to allow the show to go on after a 50-minute delay.
