Katie Bonna's THE ENTERTAINMENT Announced as Part of the Summerhall Fringe Festival

Fringe First and OFFIE winner Katie Bonna today announced her return to Edinburgh with The Entertainment, a darkly comic, queer audio love story about the power and pain of imagination. Written and performed by Bonna and directed by Amelia Sears, with sound design by Annie May Fletcher, The Entertainment will appear as part of the Summerhall Digital Fringe this year and will be included in the wider Edinburgh Fringe Festival programme.

In this intimate audio production, audiences will share Anna's headphones to plummet into a world where the unreal feels disturbingly real. Audiences will also be able to join the creative team for a listening party at 6pm on Sunday 8 August, featuring an online Q&A with the creative team.

If you can dream it, why do you need to achieve it?

Anna's life seems small. She lives alone above Kapow, the kids' party and events company where she works, and her boss Margaritte treats her more like a personal skivvy than a personal assistant. But this is not what Anna's life is really like. Any time Anna needs to escape, she mainlines the most underrated drug out there, her imagination. Anna has the perfect girlfriend, job and family- when she puts her headphones on and closes her eyes

In real life, Anna struggles. Talking is tricky, sharing feelings is hard and feeling feelings is next to impossible. Often, she imagines violent things happening to people around her, like the entire office giving Margaritte an emergency hysterectomy- for no discernible medical reason.

And then Anna meets Justine. Justine is not the kind of woman Anna would expect to fall in love with - she's crass, loud and self-centred. But when Justine crashes into Anna's life and muscles into her fantasies, she has to make an unsettling choice between the two.

Katie Bonna said today, "Anna and her story began as a one off piece of storytelling that I made for Omnibus Theatre's Perception Festival in 2017, where I wanted to write a queer romcom set in a kids entertainment company. I spent years working in kids entertainment and loved it, but it's a strange world for adults to inhabit, especially adults who never really grew up. I fell in love with Anna, kept developing her story, was raring to go for the live Summerhall programme 2020 and then we ended up working on it in our front rooms. But working remotely revealed to us how well this piece would work as an audio play and I am hyped to be able to share that with this year's Edinburgh audience across the world."

The Entertainment is created with commissioning support from North Wall and the Imaginary Advice podcast.

Katie Bonna writes and performs. She is an award-winning writer and performer for stage, screen and radio. All The Things I Lied About, her first Edinburgh solo show, won the Off West End Award for Most Promising New Playwright, after it's run at the Paines Plough Roundabout in Summerhall in 2016. Dirty Great Love Story, co-written with Richard Marsh, won a Fringe First Award at the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Both plays went on to run at Soho Theatre, with Dirty Great Love Story transferring to 59E59 Theaters and the Arts Theatre in London's West End. Bonna is currently under commission from BBC Radio 4 to write an original afternoon drama and is writing her first YA novel. She was part of the prestigious BBC Comedy Writers Room course 2019/2020. The Entertainment is her first non-autobiographical solo show. Her other recent work includes IRL (RADA), The Rules (LAMDA), In Moderation (BBC Radio 4 commission), My Own Her (Mainstreet Pictures; in development).

On Demand

5 August- 29 August

Box Office: www.tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on

Tickets: £8 adult £6 concession

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