Earlier this year, we announced the two winners of our Ideas Fund Edinburgh award. RashDash and The Bridge Theatre Company (pictured) each won an amazing £10,000 towards their shows as well as mentoring and marketing support. As the Edinburgh Fringe prepares to open its doors to the public, we catch up with the winners to see how they’re getting on…
Abi and Helen from RashDash
Without the Fund, we simply couldn’t afford to come up to Edinburgh. The festival is so important to us as it’s where we began, and it’s the best way to platform new work to a wide range of people.
This show deals with difficult material – it’s about porn and raunch culture and we don’t know what the response will be. Showing this in Edinburgh first is an excellent way to gauge an audience’s response because people are likely to take a chance on something different.
The show’s very nearly ready. It’s taken us a long time and we’ve stopped and started again around five times, but it’s in the best shape yet. It’s a challenge for us both as performers and people – it’s messy, noisy and scary – but we’re excited to be presenting it to a festival audience.
This project has been a huge learning curve for us as theatre makers, and we hope that this show demonstrates a real development from our previous work. It’s very different – but we think that’s a good thing.
Solly Thompson from The Bridge Theatre Company
We did a preview last Thursday at Theatre503 in Battersea. We had a full house and we got good feedback from everyone, so that went well. The next step will be on Wednesday: we’ll all be getting up nice and early to be at King’s Cross!
I’ve never been [to Edinburgh] before. A couple of people from the company have but never with a show. So it’s a first for all of us in that respect.
I’m looking forward to doing the show but also it’s going to be good to see all the things that are going on – we never get that opportunity to see so much theatre.
Without the funding, it would’ve been difficult for us to go up – especially for the full month. And I think we’d have all been sleeping on the street. But it’s not just about the money, it’s also the contacts and the people that we’ve got to know through IdeasTap. That’s been such a help because none of us had a clue what to do with the press side of things. We feel like we’re a bit more on top of it now – hopefully!
RashDash will be performing Scary Gorgeous on 5 to 20 August 2011 at Bedlam Theatre. Book tickets.
The Bridge Theatre Company will be performing Show Me The World on 4 to 28 August 2011 at Underbelly. Book tickets.
IdeasTap is running a series of career-boosting events at the Underbelly, Bristo Square, Edinburgh, from 8 to 23 August. Find out more on our Edinburgh microsite.
RashDash image by Richard Davenport; Bridge Theatre image by Kirsten Short.