Traverse Theatre to host award-winning talent

The Traverse Theatre will host some of Scotlands top new talent in April. The Platform 18 award is run by The Arches to recognise emerging directors in Scotland. This years two winning performances will be  coming to Edinburgh between April 14th and April 17th.

The first winner is Clare Duffy and her piece Money…The Game Show with  Brian Ferguson and Pauline Lockhart as two former bank employees who ran hedge funds and are now performers.  It’s very timely indeed with the government’s recent austerity measures, the banking crisis and the impact of the international recession. The Platform 18 award is £6,000. So Clare is making a show about what money is worth – with the actual money she won in pound coins. Members of the audience will participate in games which will look at the element of risk-taking and silliness in moving and investing money.

The second winner is Gareth Nicholls with his heart-warming show Pause with a Smile. The show, featuring performers Gary McNair and Kieran Hurley (playing themselves), concerns coincidences which happen every day and make us stop to consider the possibilities. For example: have you heard the story of the farmer’s wife who lost her wedding ring only to find it forty years later inside a potato? Or the story of Martha whose first three husbands were all killed by lightning? Listen to a remarkable collection of true stories that explore coincidence and those moments in life that make us pause, if only for a second, and smile. The soundtrack to the show comes courtesy of Michael John McCarthy (Zoey Van Goey; Go Away Birds).