Festival Theatre Birthday Bash

Apr 4 2019 | By More

Variety show to mark Festival’s silver anniversary in June

The 25th anniversary of the Festival Theatre will be marked in June with a one-off night of variety, featuring specially commissioned pieces and work produced over the last year in a packed evening of dance, music, film and song.

25 Live: The Big Birthday Show will take place on Saturday 1 June and tickets costing £10 have already gone on sale.

The Festival Theatre at Night. Pic: Capital Theatres

Specially commissioned for the show is Spinning Songs, an inter-generational singing and song-writing project produced in collaboration with Scottish Opera working with Edinburgh schools and community groups.

The evening will also feature a new work from Dance Ihayami and WHALE Arts, celebrating 25 years of the Festival Theatre and 50 years of Wester Hailes.

The event will be hosted by Jamie MacDougall, the singer and Radio Scotland presenter best known for BBC Proms in the Park, with Edinburgh-based actor and musician Saskia Ashdown, who is currently filming as Orla in the BBC/Red Productions’ second series of Trust Me.

Attic Collective

Saskia Ashdown is part of the Twelve Twelve new writing theatre company, which has just finished staging 12 new plays over twelve months in Edinburgh. Her association with Capital Theatres, which runs the Festival Theatre, goes back to the Attic Collective, performing in Jo Clifford’s War in America, Lysistrata and The Threepenny Opera.

A scene from War in America: Saskia Ashdown (She) with Hannah Bradley (alternate Ms Webb) in background. Pic: Greg Macvean

The Festival Theatre was opened on 18 June 1994. It was part new, with a sparkling front of house and huge modern back-stage area, and partly lovingly restored 1,900-seat auditorium, refurbished to the glory of when it was built as the Empire Theatre in 1928.

As well as new work, 25 Live will revisit some of the theatre’s most recent creative collaborations, sharing films made with LBGT Youth Scotland and An Audience With…Janice Parker Projects and performance the theatre helped make possible including work by Janis Claxton and Rosie Kay Dance Company.

A spokesperson for Capital Theatres said: “As we opened on 18 June 1994 with a gala variety performance that paid tribute to the many theatre venues, circuses and performance halls that had previously stood at 18-22 Nicolson Street, it seemed only fitting that we mark our silver anniversary with a variety show that celebrates creative collaboration.

“We can’t wait to share this birthday with you!”

25 Live: The Big Birthday Show
Festival Theatre 13/29 Nicolson Street EH8 9FT. Phone booking: 0131 529 6000
Saturday 1 June 2019
Evening: 7pm

Tickets and details:  Book here.

ENDS

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