The National Trust Fan Club Comes To Edinburgh Festival 2019

Join Helen Wood's daring one-woman quest to visit every National Trust property and become a certified super-fan. The National Trust Fan Club follows hot on the heels of her The O.S. Map Fan Club in 2018. It's packed to the brim with Goretex, cream teas, and a loyal canine assistant - when NT rules allow. Using a combination of personal stories, historical anecdotes, poetry, sketches and selfies, Helen takes the audience on a whirlwind tour of National Trust properties and outdoor spaces around Britain.

Writer and performer Helen Wood is a lifelong performer who loves playing larger than life comic characters. Her favourites have been Mrs Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Sparsit in Hard Times and Captain Hook, the latter of which she had to learn to stage fight and say "ooh arr" a lot. As part of Freshwater Theatre Company, she played Helena and Snug on a tour of A Midsummer Night's Dream for Italian schools and many historical characters for performances in the UK. In 2014 and 2015 she co-wrote and performed in sell-out comedy The Usherettes and, for her first solo show, wrote about the little-known Enneagram personality 'system'. Since 2015 she has been performing improvised comedy with Brewhaha!, an all-female, Gloucestershire-based trio.

Director Chris Head is a live comedy director as well as a writing and performance coach and the author of A Director's Guide to the Art of Stand-Up (Bloomsbury Methuen). He's directed work at Soho Theatre, Bloomsbury Theatre, Pleasance, Assembly and Underbelly and further afield at the Melbourne Comedy Festival and LA Comedy Shorts. Chris works one-to-one with comedy writers and is script-editing the forthcoming Radio 4 pilot of the sitcom Wisebown.

Tickets £6.50 - £13 / Box Office: 0131 622 6552 / www.gildedballoon.co.uk or Fringe: 0131 226 0000 / www.edfringe.com