Festival Previews Video Blog

Today we are privileged to interview the ex-Blue Peter presenter, Stuart Mills whose solo show, The Adventures of Pink Peter is a unique send up of the famous “sticky-back plastic” children’s show, Blue Peter. He is on at the Sweet Venue, Teviot Place throughout the duration of the Fringe from 6.30 in the early evening. If you love Blue Peter or not, the Adventures of Pink Peter present an exotic change, so let’s learn more about Stuart and his three woman show…

1 What inspired you to become a comedian?

I would say first and foremost I am a TV and Radio Broadcaster who has developed a passion for writing and performing stand-up comedy. I guess the influence for my cross-dressing comedy would have to be some of the greats like Barry Humphries, Matt Lucas and Paul O’Grady. I’ve discovered that cross-dressing on the radio works really well!

2 What is your show about and what should the public expect from your show at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe?

The show is camp and fabulous, a tribute to my cross dressing stand-up comedy which I have been performing for the past three years. It features:

- Stella, cut price fashionista…“she fell off the catwalk straight into Primark”;

- Annette Curtan, who due to her tragic accident and the resulting prosthetic finger has now devoted her life to charity and will make a special appeal;

- Dr Noreen McAvity, who following a disastrous career in cosmetic surgery has turned to the art of Vegetable Cosmetic surgery.

Plus there’s a surprise appearance at the end of the show by Miss Vera Singleton, the estranged sister of Valerie Singleton one of the first ever Blue Peter Presenters!

3 What are your funniest and worst experiences performing in front of an audience?

Funniest was taking a woman’s newly bought clothes out of her bag from the audience, going backstage, trying it all on and then walking back on stage in her brand new outfit…she wasn’t happy!

The worst was having to get changed in a gents toilet and having to walk into the cubicle as a man and walk out as a woman!

4 What was the last Fringe or Festival you performed at and what was it like?

I have been coming to the Edinburgh fringe for the past three years performing bits and pieces but mainly just having a great time. I love being around all those performers and with everyone in one place it’s such a supportive atmosphere. This year with 21 shows I think I’ll be the one needing the support.

5 What’s your best advice for aspiring performers in your theatrical medium?

Just get up there and do it - its the only way you learn. Reading stuff on a page and thinking you know it is fine but it feels very different when you are on stage performing it. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes!

6 Are there any dreams or goals that you have yet to fulfill?

To be honest at the moment I feel I have taken on all I can what with this show and a daily radio show. I am sure when it is over I will sit down and go “Right. What’s next?”

7 What is the best advice you have ever been given? And did you follow it?

Someone told me writing a full length show for Edinburgh is like writing two episodes of a soap. I think that was great advice. I just need a cliffhanger now!

8 What is the best book you have read and why do you like it?

I loved Julian Clary’s ‘A Young man’s Passage’ because it really conveys the pain and the pleasure of gigging early on in your career. Especially if you are doing something a bit out there or different. I can really relate to that.

9 Who is the person you most admire and why?

I admire anyone who has the guts to stand up and do what they believe in. I tend not to put one person on a pedestal as they tend always to end up involved in some sort of scandal…. you know, like all those ex-Blue Peter Presenters!

10 If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?

Everyone should be naked… so no more Primark… Wars would look like orgies and we’d all have a laugh at the royal family!

Today we interview Liz Rothschild, writer and sole performer of Another Kind of Silence. Liz tackles the fascinating story of Rachel Carson, writer and ecologist and one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Important People of the Century. Liz’s one-woman show is both shocking and beautiful and acutely topical in today’s world. She is on at the Hill Street Theatre from the 1st to the 24th August at 3.40 in the afternoon. So let’s learn more about Liz and her show…

1 What inspired you to become a writer and performer?

Being moved by work that I saw and read and knowing it was a way of helping me understand life and trying to make changes.

2 What is your show about and what should the public expect from your show at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe?

It’s the story of Rachel Carson, an inspirational woman whose discoveries changed the way people in the sixties thought, and whose work remains as critically important today. A chance to experience the complexity and beauty of the world around us.

3 What are your funniest and worst experiences performing in front of an audience?

- Tripping up three times after making an entrance for no obvious reason and when not under the influence of alcohol. By the third time you could tell the audience had lost all confidence in my ability to stand up.

- Appearing between the wrong two flats when crossing the stage and so being briefly featured running through an ornate 18th century fireplace!

- We were talking about how girls fight physically and the director said show us to one girl who promptly gave me two black eyes. That night on stage I had to say “No-one messes with me.” to the sound of universal laughter.

- Falling out of the back of a small theatre in the Lakes having gone outside to get some fresh air forgetting we were two metres off the ground and so having to clamber back in hearing the lines getting nearer and nearer to my entrance.

- Yes, these are all true!

4 What was the last Fringe or Festival you performed at and what was it like?

Approximately 1980 and it was great fun and very hard work and dramatic because our show was stopped by the Brecht Estate on grounds it had infringed copyright.

5 What’s your best advice for aspiring performers in your theatrical medium?

Do what you believe in and work hard at it. Then whatever response you get you know you have stayed true to your own intentions.

6 Are there any dreams or goals that you have yet to fulfill?

Just more work, better work, new influences, new colleagues to work with, exploring what theatre can do.

7 What is the best advice you have ever been given? And did you follow it?

Buy something with your first acting wage. Don’t just pay the gas bill. I bought a pair of walking boots.

8 What is the best book or books you have read and why do you like it/them?

‘Silent Spring’ of course by Rachel Carson because it is beautifully written, cogently argued, groundbreaking, and puts hard truths before you in a way that keeps you wanting to act – not to run away and put your head in the gas oven.

9 Who is the person you most admire and why?

Apart from Rachel Carson. This could become monotonous. I really admire Nelson Mandela for the way he kept his courage through all the years of captivity and for the way he has avoided all rancour and thirst for revenge since being in government in his retirement. He always demands the truth, for example now on the AIDS issue, even being prepared to challenge his own government.

10 If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?

That we all could really trust one another and accept the value of difference.

Today we extend a warm welcome to the immensely talented, Colin David Reese. This is Colin’s first Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the “Athens of the North”. A passion for Shakespeare, Colin’s show, Gift to the Future explores Shakespeare’s theatrical colleague who collected the scattered writings of Shakespeare’s work.

Gift to the Future is on at the Sweet Venue, Teviot Place from the 31st July to the 16th August starting at 6pm daily. So let’s speak with Colin to learn more…

1. What inspired you to become a writer, actor and performer?

My first performance on stage was at the age of 5. At 12 I played Shakespeare’s (illegitimate) son in a musical fantasy based loosely on his life. I guess I just never really envisaged doing anything else.

2. What is your show about and what should the public expect from your show at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe?

Gift To The Future is a celebration of the unsung people who render genius available to the world. Not many people outside of Shakespeare studies have heard of John Heminges but, according to my play, without him a large proportion of Shakespeare’s plays would have been lost. Heminges was a co-worker, member of the company and, given that plays were held in such low esteem at the time, took an enormous risk in time and resources to ensure that these masterpieces were preserved. The play takes the audience into Heminges’s world and shows the inside workings of the theatre of the time.

3. What are your funniest and worst experiences performing in front of an audience?

In a Somerset Maugham play, the leading man, having discovered that a young man is having an affair with his wife, calls him on stage to confront him. Unseen by the husband, as the young man enters and closes the door, a large door knob comes off in his hand. The husband’s next line is “Has it ever occurred to you, young man, that you are destroying my home?”

4. What was the last Fringe or Festival you performed at and what was it like?

This is my first festival and I am both a bit scared and highly excited to be part of such a large celebration of the performing arts.

5. What’s your best advice for aspiring performers in your theatrical medium?

Solid training is essential. Only through technique can an artist realise his/her potential.

6. Are there any dreams or goals that you have yet to fulfill?

Yes. Alceste in La Misanthrope, Iago, Lear and (a real dream) to direct a production of Macbeth using rock concert techniques and technology.

7. What is the best advice you have ever been given? And did you follow it?

To not let your opinion of yourself be influenced by what you think other people’s opinion of you is. In the first place you are probably wrong about their opinion and secondly if you are aware of who you really are, you will achieve your potential. This is as true for a performing artist as for life in general. Yes, I live by this every day.

8. What is the best book or books you have read and why do you like them?

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare … what else ?

9. Who is the person you most admire and why?

Nelson Mandela. After 30 years in prison, to emerge and still have his humanity and integrity intact remains for me the most exemplary illustration of what we are all capable of, if we make the effort not to fall into the trap of comfortable emotions

10. If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?

The President of the United States!

Today in our spotlight falls on John Dumnot, actor and co-writer of the Children’s show, The Sun Dragon which takes place at the Pleasance Courtyard throughout the duration of the Fringe. Starting daily at 12.45 pm John is joined by four fellow actors to take children on an intergalactic fairy tail journey following the adventures of Jacob who dreams of flying. So let’s learn more about John and their show, The Sun Dragon….

1. What inspired you to become a performer and writer?

Donald O’Connor singing “Make ‘em laugh” in Singin’ in the Rain and Orson Welles, who played Unicron in Transformers the Movie.

2. What is your show about and what should the public expect from your show at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe?

The Sun Dragon is a magical fairytale about a boy who has to travel to another world to rescue their Sun from a dragon, with the help and hindrance of the planet’s inhabitants who range from the wise, to the nasty, to the very, very, silly.
The public should expect magic and fun and to enjoy themselves a lot more than they expected to.

3. What are your funniest and worst experiences performing in front of an audience?

Excuse the length of this anecdote, but it was a series of mishaps that shaped the whole comedy of this experience: I was in a production of the Mysteries and needed the loo. So I asked a fellow player if I had time and they said yes so off I dashed. Taking off my Shepherds hat and very warm jacket on the way. When I got back (in quick time I might add) I discovered that the other two shepherds had just gone on with their sheep in tow. So I grab my jacket, throw it on, grab my hat, and grab the packet of Cherry Bakewells that I had to pull from my trousers to offer as a gift to baby Jesus. As you do.

So I run into the hall, it was an en promenade performance, catch up my shephards, kicking a sheep in the face as I went, and continued to try and get my rather stubborn jacket on, as it seemed that I had put my arm into the lining rather than the sleeve. All the while my packet of Cherry Bakewells were retreating further and further down my trousers.

We were now on our stage and I’d given up with the jacket, forcing my arm through with a sickening tearing noise and slapping my cap onto my head finally. I then waddled over to baby Jesus, with my Cherry Bakewells now below my knee in the horribly ill-fitting trousers that I’d been costumed in and proceeded to delve into my trousers a little bit too deep to be in entirely good taste and handed Jesus some Bakewells. It got a good laugh.

My worst experience was the time we were booked to do a short vignette from the children’s puppet play we were performing up at the Fringe that year at a Midnight Cabaret. The act before us was a stripper, the act after us a man singing about his penis. They loved it. As did I actually, maybe this is the best?

4. What was the last Fringe or Festival you performed at and what was it like?

Last years Fringe, it was very wet, but very enjoyable.

5. What’s your best advice for aspiring performers in your theatrical medium?

Take the audience on a ride, include them in everything, it is all about them.

6. Are there any dreams or goals that you have yet to fulfill?

I’d like to write something that is loved by everyone. Which is impossible, but aim high I guess.

7. What is the best advice you have ever been given? And did you follow it?

In my schools leavers book my drama teacher wrote “Rum-diddle-de-de, an actor’s life for thee.” Until that point I didn’t know what the hell to do, but I find it impossible not to obey anything that starts “Rum-diddle-de-de”.

8. What is the best book or books you have read and why do you like them?

Catch 22 for it’s sense of humour, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for it’s characters and implementation of message and themes, Dracula for the way the narrative unfolds, Treasure Island for it’s adventure, and The Little Prince for it’s innocent charm.

9. Who is the person you most admire and why?

Woody Allen, because I love a well constructed joke, and he’s the master.

10. If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?

I’d shuffle the wealth about a bit, I guess. Put more into the advancement of the human race and less into the advancement of the running shoe; that sort of thing.

Today our spotlight falls on the absolutely fabi dabi, Bunny Galore! International octogenarian Bunny Galore is a classy act! Bunny is on at the Zoo Southside venue, Nicolson Street throughout the festival. Her one woman show, Bunny Galore LIVE AND SEDATED looks a treat to see, so let’s chat with Bunny, International Showgirl, Cabaret artist and Queen of the Flamingo Lounge to find out lots more about her and her show…

1. What inspired you to become an international star?

Well darlings, its hard to say when one had ones calling to la stage was….. but the old Drury Lane theatre had just burnt down and London was ablaze with talk of the latest thing, oranges!

2. What is your show about and what should the public expect from your show at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe?

It’s me becoming downloadable and blogging with the good people of this fair city. My roller coaster of a life through funny stories and songs! Plus there’s a guest appearance from my days of children’s television presenting and clips from my films and TV shows and my soap opera “Pantry Manor”.

3. What are your funniest and worst experiences performing in front of an audience?

Well I used to entertain the troops in Soho during the war, with an electric fan and wearing only feathers, slowly the fan would blow them off, although I never went all the way of coarse!… till one night a doodlebug had just gone off in Leicester square, and there was a power surge and sudden WOOOOOSSSH!!!
I lost the lot!

4. What was the last Fringe or Festival you performed at and what was it like?

Does the opening of The Crystal Palace count? …….No! Ok then this is my very very first festival! I’m so excited! I did come up last year to see my friend Faith Brown in her show BOYS IN THE BUFF purely to be supportive of coarse!

5. What’s your best advice for aspiring performers in your theatrical medium?

Always keep your hand on your penny! And never close your teeth when you smile.

6. Are there any dreams or goals that you have yet to fulfill?

Maybe to resist the plastic surgeons knife for a little longer…….

7. What is the best advice you have ever been given? And did you follow it?

As Mandy Rice Davis told me always get the money before removing any items of clothing!

8. What is the best book you have read and why do you like it?

Probable my autobiography “LOOK AT ME!!!”

9. Who is the person you most admire and why?

Well my absolute touch stone is still the one and only Diana Dors!

10. If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?

That they should make the watching of episodes of Noele Gordon in Crossroads compulsory.