Weekend Wonders

May 30 2020 | By More

Edinburgh folk on the Wild World Web…

There’s still plenty happening online for those still caught up in Lockdown shielding with some Edinburgh performance peeps who are involved in some very fine work over the weekend to take your minds of those allowed to socialise.

Highest hitter is sound artiste Zoe Irvine, who has created a live event with opera companies around Europe. Storyteller Mara Menzies is doing Rachel Rose Reid’s Sofa Chat with Rhik Samadder and, tonight, the Stand Comedy Club is hitting the season finalé of its Saturday Night event.

La Boheme (Oper Wuppertal) like what you’ve never seen it before has not been cancelled. Phone in to find out more!

The one we are looking forward to with most excitement, although we try not to practice favouritism here, is Zoe Irvine’s project with Bergen National Opera: This Evening’s Performance Has Not Been Cancelled.

She’s been working with nine different opera companies which would have been staging works during lockdown. The operas are as diverse as classics La Boheme and The Marriage Of Figaro to more modern pieces like Voyage Vers L’Espoir and The Murder Of Halit Yozgat.

Audiences call in on national number, choose an opera company from the menu and are connected live to an usher – someone who is involved with that opera in some way, be it a singer, designer, dramaturg, trainee, composer, administrator or make-up artist.

Choices

The usher will introduce you to their production and guide you through the recorded material in the call centre. Callers will then be able to make further choices – hear more from that opera or bounce off round Europe to other productions.

All productions will be available in both English and the language of the company staging the opera. There are three times you can phone up – The evenings of Sunday 31 May, Tuesday 2 and Friday 12 June, from 6.30pm – 8.30pm BST.

Rhik & Mara – on the Sofa 31 May.

Mara Menzies is joining the Sofa Story Club on Sunday 31 at 8pm. This is a limited online series curated by award-winning writer and performer Rachel Rose Reid.

The idea is that international, complementary, contrasting artists, from New York Times best-selling authors, to award-winning performing artists, who probably have never met in real life, meet up for a live chat and you watch along.

In this case, award-winning performance storyteller Mara – who draws on her twin cultural heritages of Kenya and Scotland to create worlds that explore contemporary issues through legend, myth and fantasy – joins actor, broadcaster and acclaimed memoirist Rhik Samadder.

The Stand

And so, on to our favourite bit of a Saturday night – Saturday Night Live At The Stand (or a flat very close by)…

This has been a corker from the start, combining live presenter Mark Nelson (with some brilliant #HeckleMark self-deprecation) with a wealth of specially recorded one-off snippets. Some brilliant, some not so, but all unique. And some live Zoom chat, too, thanks to the marvels (and occasional gaff, from resident techie Al).

This is going off air for a short while, so they seem to have pulled out all the stops for tonight’s show which will feature material from comedy megastar and host of Last Week Tonight John Oliver not to forget Omid Djalili, the fearsome Mark Thomas, Katie Mulgrew, Jay Lafferty and Alex Edelman.

LISTINGS

Saturday Night Live At The Stand
A Stand broadcast live on YouTube.
Sat 30 May 2020: 8.30pm.

This Evening’s Performance has Not Been Cancelled: https://thiseveningsperformance.net/
Full details on the website. In the UK phone 0207 741 0077, 6.30-8.30pm, Sun 30 May, Tue 2 & Fri 12 June 2020.

Sofa Story Club
Sunday 31 May 2020.
Book through Facebook: here.

ENDS

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