Dirty Protest Bring HOW TO BE BRAVE To Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Award winning Welsh new writing theatre company Dirty Protest is returning to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2019 with its critically acclaimed new production How To be Brave.

Based on writer Siân Owen's own experiences as a mother in a fast-changing and confusing world, this touching and hilarious one-woman play is told through the eyes of Katie, a mother in her late 30s living in Newport determined that her young daughter will never lose the powerful, fierce magic she arrived into the world with.

Join Katie on the worst day of her life as she cycles round Newport going nowhere on a stolen BMX while her daughter's life hangs in the balance.

How To Be Brave explores what we are made of, what we leave behind, and learning to be brave when your world is falling apart.

The production is directed by Catherine Paskell, Artistic Director of Dirty Protest - whose production of Sugar Baby by writer Alan Harris for the company was a critical and public hit at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2017 and 2018.

Laura Dalgleish, who's recent screen credits include the BBC multi-platform comedy, Halfway, performs the role of Katie.

Born and brought up in Newport, South Wales, How to be Brave is also a love letter to writer Siân Owen's hometown, exploring how our relationship with the place we grew up changes over time and feelings of how you can never leave.

The play will be presented by the UK's National Theatre of new plays, Paines Plough in their acclaimed Roundabout venue in Summerhall throughout Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2019.

Katie has gone from a little girl who used to climb trees, ride bikes and go on adventures to an adult who worries about everything.

But now Katie is a mum, she must be brave in a whole new way.

Join Katie as she sets off on a mission, with the help of a stolen BMX, a policewoman with bad hair and a pigeon in a bag as she rides around Newport to find what she's really made of.

By listening to the unheard voices of the city, she begins to ask what the women who have gone before can teach her about how to be brave.

The play premiered in Wales in March 2019.

Catherine Paskell, Artistic Director of Dirty Protest and Director of How To Be Brave, said:

"Siân has been involved with Dirty Protest for many years. We all love her incredibly funny, engaging and honest writing that is full of heart. Katie's story will resonate with anyone who has ever wondered what happened to their childhood resilience and sense of adventure. This production explores the experiences of a woman, a parent, in her late 30s and we don't see these stories, these women, on stage very often.

"The audience went wild for How To Be Brave on tour in Wales earlier this year and we are really excited to be back collaborating with Paines Plough to present this beautiful, funny show in the prestigious ROUNDABOUT @ Summerhall venue and can't wait to make a whole new audience laugh and cry - and you will cry."

Dirty Protest is Wales' new writing theatre company and has a strong reputation for creating lean, original, state-of-the-nation contemporary new writing productions from Wales. They have worked with more than 250 Welsh writers since their launch in 2007, staging new plays in theatres and alternative venues, and collaborated with world-class co-producers, including The Royal Court Theatre, the Almeida Theatre and Soho Theatre in London, National Theatre Wales, and the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh.

Tickets are now on sale for How To Be Brave.

Box Office: https://festival19.summerhall.co.uk/event/how-to-be-brave/

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