Edinburgh International Book Festival – The View from Castle Rock

Nick Barley, Director of The Edinburgh International Book Festival is joined by Jemima Levick, Artistic Director of Stellar Quines to launch The View from Castle Rock 2

Earlier today in full sunshine the Book Festival Director, Nick Barley, met up with Stellar Quines Artistic Director Jemima Levick who will adapt a short story collection for the stage this year.

The EIBF have commissioned a theatrical adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro’s moving and enigmatic stories The View from Castle Rock. This will explore the story of Munro’s ancestors who sailed from Leith in 1818 to Canada.

In collaboration with theatre company Stellar Quines, the award winners who celebrate energy, experience and the female perspective.

Linda McLean of Stellar Quines will work alongside director Marilyn Imrie to adapt the word for word script for the stage.

Nick Barley, Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, said:  “Alice Munro is celebrated across the globe as the greatest living short story writer. She is also fascinated by her heritage and her family’s voyage from Scotland to Canada in the early-19th century.

“Today, at a time when the refugee crisis is such a topical issue right across Europe, I am proud that the Book Festival and Stellar Quines will bring Munro’s story dramatically to life as the centrepiece of a thoughtful, far-reaching discussion about human migration.”

Linda McLean, playwright, said: “Alice Munro’s writing is riddled with the kind of subtext I usually look for in theatre, where the unsaid is often more powerful than the words a character says out loud. She plants a seed of thought so stealthily that I often wonder if it was a figment of my imagination until two or three stories later she refers to it, almost accidentally, but with such emotional punch that I have to close the book and hug it to myself.”

The View from Castle Rock will be performed daily from Thursday 11 August (11 and 12 August Previews) to Monday 29 August (times vary) at artSpace@StMarks, 7 Castle Terrace, Edinburgh (Fringe Venue 125).  Tickets can be booked through the Edinburgh Festival Fringe at www.edfringe.com from Thursday 26 May, or through the Edinburgh International Book Festival Box Office, www.edbookfest.co.uk from Tuesday 21 June.  Full price £15.00, Concessions £12.00, Previews £10.00.

The full programme for the Edinburgh International Book Festival will be announced on Thursday 9 June 2016.