 Appy ending
THEATRE critic Thom Dibdin has proved the power of the blog after his very thorough road test of the Edinburgh Fringe's new iPhone app prompted a speedy response from the designers. On his Annals of the Edinburgh Stage website, he found "a few surprising drawbacks" to the program which gives iPhone users access to information about the Fringe's 2453 shows. These included a lack of running time information and no ability to search the list of venues. Within a day, however, Gavin Dutch, managing director of the app's creator Loc8 Solutions, had been in touch to say an upgrade was on its way before the Fringe begins and that is would address many of Dibdin's concerns and then some.  Boyd, Featherstone . . . Faulkner
THERE will be a new trainee director in the house when Emma Faulkner (pictured) joins the team at Dundee Rep in August. Faulkner is one of four recipients of a bursary in the Regional Theatre Young Director Scheme, the UK's longest running training programme of its kind. She'll be following in the footsteps of alumni including Michael Boyd, formerly of Glasgow's Tron, now at the RSC, and Vicky Featherstone of the National Theatre of Scotland. "The scheme has provided opportunities for a fantastic range of directors over the years and Emma's year in Dundee working with our ensemble will be no exception," says Dundee Rep artistic director James Brining. "These kind of opportunities are few and far between and we are pleased to be contributing to the development of the next generation of artistic directors." Brought up in Ireland and a graduate of the University of Glasgow, Faulkner, 29, spent two years as a production assistant at London's Young Vic before taking an MA in theatre directing and staging a production of David Harrower's Knives in Hens at Battersea Arts Centre last year. Since then she has been working as an assistant director at the Orange Tree in Richmond, sitting in rehearsals with Alan Ayckbourn, Sam Walters and others, and staging her own production of Joe Orton's A Ruffian on the Stair.  Autumn line-ups
STILL with Dundee Rep, the theatre has announced its autumn season. After the commercial revival of Sunshine on Leith, there is a short run of three monologues from Alan Bennett's Talking Heads series (Bed Among the Lentils, Her Big Chance and A Chip in the Sugar) at the end of September, before Jemima Levick, winner of the best director gong in the recent CATS awards, stages Ibsen's proto-feminist A Doll's House in October. After that, Levick is straight into a Christmas run of Sleeping Beauty. Also just announced is the autumn line-up at Glasgow's Tron where there is a particularly high concentration of visiting Scottish theatre companies, some capitalising on the IETM autumn plenary meeting at the start of November. The season kicks off in September with RSAMD students performing new plays by Peter Arnott, Chris Hannan and Nicola McCartney, and includes appearances by Borderline, Mull Theatre, Dogstar, Vox Motus, Magnetic North, Catherine Wheels, Poorboy, the Traverse (in Midsummer, pictured, pic: Douglas Robertson), Lung Ha's, Ankur and Tangerine. The Tron's own productions include Dirty Paradise, based on a short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Sea & Land & Sky by Abigail Docherty, and two Christmas shows, Very Cosy Christmas for younger children, and Flo White for everyone else. |  12 July 2010 The Guardian
By Paul Rudnick. A Tron Theatre review.  17 June 2010 The Guardian
Rough CrossingBy Tom Stoppard. A Pitlochry Festival Theatre review.  15 June 2010 The Guardian
By Cole Porter. A Pitlochry Festival Theatre review.  10 June 2010 Northings
By Michael Frayn. A Pitlochry Festival Theatre review. |
