Casting
In Traverse Theatre Company casting news, we’re thrilled that Best Female Performance (CATS 2019) winner Lucianne McEvoy will play a leading role in Crocodile Fever – Meghan Tyler’s surreal, grotesque, and blackly comedic family drama set in Northern Ireland in 1989 during The Troubles – alongside Bhav Joshi, Sean Kearns and Lisa Dwyer Hogg. We can also reveal that Amanda Wright and Louise Ludgate will play Toni and Jane (respectively) in Stef Smith’s fragmentary and intense journey into female friendship Enough.
Our co-production with ThickSkin, How Not To Drown, will feature actors Ajjaz Awad, Esme Bayley, Daniel Cahill, Reuben Joseph and Dritan Kastrati playing a rotating cast of characters, including Kastrati himself, on whose journey across the Adriatic with a gang of people smugglers to a new life in Europe the play is based.
Elsewhere, Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran, produced in association with the Traverse Theatre Company, will be performed by Javaad Alipoor (who is also the writer, and co-creator alongside Kirsty Housley) and Peyvand Sadeghian.
Community projects
We’re thrilled to reveal more exciting details on the community projects surrounding Frankenstein: How To Make A Monster – a partnership between Battersea Arts Centre, Edinburgh International Festival and the Traverse Theatre.
The project will create a unique opportunity for young people from Leith Academy, currently engaged in Edinburgh International Festival’s three-year school residency project, to work with Conrad Murray, who leads BAC’s Beatbox Academy, and Edinburgh-based musician Josie O’Neill, to jam with other young musicians, improve their vocal techniques and make their own music using nothing but their mouths.
Beatbox Academy is currently in residence in Leith Academy, engaging with 350 pupils in beatbox and song-writing workshops, following which they will be invited to sign up for an intensive Beatbox Summer School in July, ultimately showcasing their talent in curtain raiser performances at the Traverse across the month of August (every festival performance of Frankenstein: How To Make A Monster, except 10pm), celebrating young talent and bringing their energy to enthusiastic audiences.
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