Traverse Listings
Upcoming shows at Edinburgh’s New Writing Theatre
Traverse
10 Cambridge Street, EH1 2ED. Phone booking: 0131 228 1404
Website: www.traverse.co.uk.
Click on the name of the show to go to its ticketing site.
February
Manipulate Visual Theatre Festival
28 Jan – 4 Feb 2017
A celebration of innovative international visual theatre and animated film; in 2017 manipulate celebrates its 10th year with a programme designed to entertain, inspire and intrigue.
Fisk
Thurs 9 – Sat 11 Feb 2017
Amidst a vast ocean, a tiny boat is tossed through rolling waves and thundering storms in Tortoise in a Nutshell‘s new production. Rowing forward is a fisherman, sailing to nowhere with all his worldly possessions. He looks out at the darkness and prepares to leap…
Arctic Oil
Fri 10 Feb 2017
A Traverse rehearsed reading of a new play by the 2015 IASH/Traverse Creative Fellow Claire Duffy. A mother and daughter battle to save their children. Ella is fighting for her son’s future as an environmental activist and Anne is terrified she’s going to get herself killed. Not all mothers can know best.
Made in India
Thurs 16 – Sat 18 Feb 2017
In a surrogacy clinic in Gujarat, three women meet, in this new touring production from Tamasha. Londoner Eva is in motherhood’s last chance saloon. For village girl Aditi, surrogacy is a lifeline out of poverty. For clinic owner and businesswoman Dr Gupta, it’s all just another transaction.
Locker Room Talk
Fri 17 /Sat 18 Feb 2017
During his controversial presidential election campaign, Donald Trump regularly made statements considered by many to be offensive, misogynistic and sexist. Can such sexually abusive rhetoric really be accepted as mere ‘locker room talk’? A work in progress by Gary McNair.
Pink Mist
Thurs 23 – Sat 25 Feb 2017
The Bristol Old Vic production of Owen Sheers’ Pink Mist tells of three young men deployed to Afghanistan. As the physical and psychological aftershocks of war take their toll on the loved ones they left behind, Arthur, Hads and Taff find their journey home is their greatest battle.
Heads Up
Thurs 23 – Sat 25 Feb 2017
A city. Just like this. Right now. Multi award-winner Kieran Hurley weaves a picture of a familiar city at its moment of destruction, asking what we would do if we found ourselves at the end of our world as we know it.
March
Susan Calman: The Calman Before The Storm
Weds 1 Mar 2017
It’s Susan Calman’s tenth year in comedy and she’s back with a brand new show. She’s ready to create a storm, to set the record straight, to give it to the man (whoever he is).
If I Had A Girl
Thurs 2 – Sat 4 Mar 2017
A ground-breaking verbatim production that provides startling insight into the experience of honour-based violence in ethnic minority communities around Scotland.
Dreamers/Tutumucky
Fri 3 – Sat 4 Mar 2017
Scottish Dance Theatre double bill. Dreamers are people who dare to dream while not being asleep. In a world full of order how do we find peace in chaos?
Girls Like That
Thurs 9 – Sat 11 Mar 2017
When a naked photo of Scarlett goes viral, her reputation is trashed. When the same thing happens to a boy he’s just one of the lads. Lyceum Youth Theatre explore gender inequality in the digital minefield of young people’s online lives.
Expensive Shit
Fri 10 – Sat 11 Mar 2017
Adura Onashile’s prize-winning tale of a women working in a Glasgow club toilet, intercut with her life in Lagos, Nigeria, dancing in Fela Kuti’s band. Æ review: ✭✭✭✭✩ Multi-layered.
Transit
Tue 14- Weds 16 Mar 2017
New touring production from Zendeh. After her parents split up, Darya chooses to move to Iran with her mother. She grew up in a war zone: surviving air raids; caring for her mother; and falling in love for the first time. The legacy of war means that as she becomes an adult she is living through trauma.
Citizen
Fri 17/Sat 18 Mar 2017
People leave places, sometimes by choice, sometimes because they have to. Where do they go and how do they fit in? Dance from plan B with a darkly humorous look at how we bring our identity with us wherever we go.
The Red Chair
Fri 17/Sat 18 Mar 2017
A contemporary take on folk and fairy-tale storytelling traditions from Clod Ensemble. Sarah Cameron’s towering solo performance is a surreal ballad populated with larger than life characters.
National Theatre Connections 2017
Wed 22 – Sat 25 Mar 2017
The National Theatre Connections festival is a celebration of young people, theatre-making and the importance of access to the arts.
Offside
Thurs 30 Mar – Sat 1 Apr 2017
Four women from across the centuries live, breathe, and play football in Sabrina Mahfouz and Hollie McNish’s new play for Futures Theatre. Each faces very different obstacles in pursuing their dream profession, but the possibility that the beautiful game will change their future – and the world – is tantalisingly close.
April
Girl in the Machine
3 Apr 2017 – 22 Apr 2017
Do you want to live forever? Click ‘YES’ or ’NO’. Traverse Associate Artist Stef Smith has written a disturbing but compassionate take on our potential digital future, and what it might mean for ‘life’ as we know it. Under Traverse Artistic Director Orla O’Loughlin’s direction, it is a timely exploration of technology in a world that is falling apart.
PPP: Ding Dong (A bit of a farce)
Tue 4 – Sat 8 Apr 2017
Hilary Lyon opens this Spring’s A Play, A Pie and A Pint season of lunchtime theatre with her tale of Susie and Jennifer who have the same postcode but share little else. A minor incident involving Susie’s teenage son exposes major differences, and triggers a darkly comic domestic crisis of epic proportions.
PPP: Channelling Jabez
Tue 11 – Sat 15 Apr 2017
Giles Croft- examines the life of Jabez Wolffe; Channel swimmer, variety artist and international sporting hero who received obituaries in papers as important as the New York Times.
PPP: His Final Bow
Tue 18 – Sat 22 Apr 2017
Peter Arnott explores the story of John Wilkes Booth – best known for his assassination of Abraham Lincoln – but who also had a life as a Shakespearean actor
Stuff
Thurs 20 Apr 2017
Sylvia Dow’s new play about hoarding of things, memories, emotions and secrets is presented as a script-in-hand performance. On the day the Council comes to clear her house Magda struggles to make order out of chaos, facing her past and her present as she sifts through the stuff in her head and the stuff all around her.
PPP: Voices In Her Ear
Tue 25 – Sat 29 Apr 2017
Talking to the dead is a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it. In David Cosgrove’s new play, Betty has been talking to dead people for thirty years and she’s weary, heart sore and filthy rich. So, she’s packing up, taking down the website and retiring somewhere warm.But retiring is not as easy as you would think.
Dive Cabaret: Celebrating LGBT History
Sun 30 Apr 2017
Evening: 6pm.
Join Dive, Luminate and LGBT Age for an extra special dollop of proper entertainment as they celebrate our rich and diverse cultural history in the sumptuous surroundings of the Traverse Bar Café.
May
Safe Place
Tue 2 – Sat 6 May 2017
In the middle of the night a young woman arrives at Martine’s door looking for shelter. Martine, a lifelong feminist and writer, invites the woman into her comfortable spacious home. What follows challenges all Martine’s beliefs and it becomes clear that Rowan is not quite what she seems.
My Country – A Work in Progress
Thurs 11 – Sat 13 May 2017
In the days after the EU Referendum, the National Theatre began a nationwide listening project. A team of interviewers spoke to people around the country and, using exact words taken from the interviews, Carol Ann Duffy and Rufus Norris collaborate to put those conversations centre stage.
Scorch
Thurs 11 – Sat 13 May 2017
For those who don’t feel like they’re in the right life, online is a place to be yourself. Out in the real world though, things can be very different. Prime Cut Productions’ Fringe First winning production examines how the human story often gets lost amidst the headlines.
PASS Out 2017
Wed 17 – Thurs 18 May 2017
Edinburgh College’s Performing Arts Studio Scotland returns to the Traverse with their unique take on showcase performances for graduate actors. This year, the students will work to create new pieces on the theme of ‘leaving’.
Words Words Words
Fri 19 May 2017
The Traverse’s scratch platform for writers to test, experiment and discover. Submissions for Spring/Summer 2017 will open on Mon 3 Apr and will close on Fri 21 Apr.
Daphne Oram’s Wonderful World of Sound
Tue 23/Weds 24 May 2017
Live-scored by electronic sound artist Anneke Kampman this new production from Blood of the Young and the Tron Theatre tells of Daphne Oram who, aged 17 and inspired by a seance, founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop – thus shaping the entire development of electronic sound.
Music is Torture
Fri 26/Sat 27 May 2017
Jake owns a recording studio. He’s been recording the same album with the same band for the past fifteen years. Tromolo Productions’ jet-black comedy is set in Limbo Recording Studios, featuring live music and new songs from A Band Called Quinn.
Imaginate Festival
Sat 27 May – Sun 4 June 2017
The Imaginate festival of theatre for young people takes place in venues around Edinburgh. Details announced in Spring.
June
Shackleton
Wed 7 – Fri 9 June 2017
Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold… safe return doubtful. Blue Raincoat Theatre Company return to the Traverse Theatre to perform the story of, and about, ship Endurance on the Antarctic’s icy Weddell Sea.
Crossing / Last Night Me
Sat 10/Sun 11 June 2017
Strangetown Theatre Company with a pair of plays. Crossing, devised by the company, uses text and movement to find ways forward and trace the way back. Last Night Me, scripted by Alan Gordon, asks what happens when Last Night You does something This Morning You never thought possible?
ENDS
