Friday 8 August 2014

21st Century Poe: Moyamensing continues at Edfringe

My Edinburgh Fringe show 21st Century Poe: Moyamensing is doing well at this year's Edinburgh Fringe. We filled the venue, Paradise In The Vault, the old vault of St. Augustine's Church in other words, on the first two nights and Friday and Saturday look like they'll be similairly packed with decent sized audiences inbetween. No disasters or catastrophes to report and I've got a great tech to back me up this year in Craig Black. Audience members I've spoken to seem to have enjoyed the show. It's a challenging piece: where last year's 21st Century Poe stories were essentially straightforward horror tales, this show is more complex, more allusive, more poetic, more surreal, its logic the associative logic of nightmare rather than conventional A + B = C plotting, a portrait of the inside of a the soul of a very complex man, not just a blunt 'boo!" shouting shocker. It's directly based on Poe's own reports of the dreams and hallucinations he suffered while imprisoned in Philadelphia's Moyamensing prison. Some incidents which might seem like ghoulish invention on my part (live dissection! Prospective cannibalism!) are actually pretty much verbatim from Poe's own reports. Anyway, here's a couple of backstage photos. The show continues at Venue 29 till 17 August. Here's a link for tickets: TICKET LINK