Underbelly, Cowgate – Belly Button, located at 56 Cowgate, August 1-25 (no show 13th), 22:30 (ends 23:40) Tickets £8.50-£10.50 (£6 Previews)
The Seer is the first play created by a brand-new, all-star, international group of artists calling themselves Penn Dixie Productions. This devised comic-melodrama about the infamous life and artistic suicide of Arthur Rimbaud will be playing at Underbelly, Cowgate (Belly Button) at 22:30 from August 1-25th.
Though Penn Dixie’s ensemble were born in disparate nations (Brazil, Argentina, France, UK, Sweden, Norway, and the USA), these collaborators were destined to grow up and meet at the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) in 2008, where they were commanded to begin devising and got the hell down to it.
Two years later, led by Philadelphia-based writer-director Anisa George, they emerged with their first full-length work – The Seer. “We were attracted to work with Rimbaud’s story, because of his famous renunciation of art.” Considered by many to be the founder of modern European poetry, Arthur Rimbaud wrote all of his poems before the age of twenty, then quit writing and ran away to Yemen to make his fortune as a coffee trader. George discovered Rimbaud’s story during her own period of renunciation in Yemen, where she studied Arabic. “We’ve all felt the temptation to quit art-making,” says George, who sold all her hair for $1,000 to raise money for Penn Dixie’s run at the Fringe. “Theatre can be a very sacrificial art form, and we’ve all asked ourselves at one time or another in our careers why we persevere. The show is an absurd and hilarious interrogation of those questions.”
The Seer made ripples after a limited run at the The Philadelphia Fringe in 2011, where the newcomer’s show was dubbed “pick of the Fringe” (Live Arts Blog). Quinn Bauriedel, co-artistic director of Pig Iron Theatre Company, called it “a rare achievement” and continued: “This group has a distinct and powerful voice.” David Brick, coartistic director of Headlong Dance Theatre, said “The Seer created a bonfire of a play that does what only live performance can do.”
If you love to laugh, and you long for a theatre which is arresting, inventive, and bold – then trip into this ‘dark heaven’ of hysterical and surreal tragedy. Babies dance, camels fly – all is abracadabrasque.
John graduated from Telford College in 2010 with an HNC in Practical Journalism and since then he worked for the North Edinburgh News, The Southern Reporter, the Irish News Review and The Edinburgh Reporter. In addition he has been published in the Edinburgh Evening News and the Hibernian FC Programme.
