Traverse Theatre Announces Companies for Hothouse 2016

The Edinburgh-based theatre companies and performers who will present work at this year's Traverse Hothouse showcase are announced today. They are Alice Cooper with Blue Cow, Black Dingo with Scribble, Brite Theatre with Can This Be Home and Fronteris Theatre Lab with Volante.

Though all four companies and artists are first-time Hothouse participants, three of the pieces presented share a thematic link around home and belonging.

The works, which are at various stages of their development, will play in Traverse 2 from 08 - 11 November. As part of their creative progress, audience input will be actively sought by the artists following their performances.

Since its inception in 1963, the Traverse has been focused on nurturing and developing talent; cultivating both emerging and established artists. Traverse Hothouse showcases home-grown, Edinburgh-based emerging theatre companies and artists, with Traverse 2 becoming a place where the selected companies can explore their work with an audience by sharing their newest creations at varying stages of development.

Traverse Engagement Manager Sunniva Ramsay said, "We are delighted to bring Traverse Hothouse back for its third year, welcoming four new companies and artists to the Traverse 2 stage. The Traverse aims that through Hothouse, Edinburgh based companies will be given a platform to explore, experiment and discover, in the supportive environment of Scotland's leading new writing theatre. This year we are excited to welcome to Hothouse artists from Brazil, Australia and Iceland, who have made Edinburgh their home and base - and to celebrate the dynamism and diversity of exciting emerging voices within the Edinburgh cultural scene."

Tuesday 8th November: Fronterias Theatre Lab

Fronteiras Theatre Lab is an Edinburgh-based company focused on multicultural/multilingual theatre and international collaborations. They will present Volante - a piece in the early collaborative stages of development. Volante is the story of an Italian circus performer, Mariana Violante, an expert rope dancer in search of a new life after her husband's accidental death. She moves to Edinburgh, a city she loved in her youth, and begins to teach dance. Her first private student, a young man named Douglas, is struggling to reconcile his sexuality with the demands of his very conservative and upwardly mobile family.

Wednesday 9 November: Alice Mary Cooper

Alice Cooper will perform Blue Cow - a performance piece about contamination. The show is a personal piece reflecting on what it means to be contaminated and partly based on a research report about people living on contaminated land sites. Alice Mary Cooper is a performer and theatre-maker from Sydney, Australia now living in Edinburgh. She is an Associate Artist with Imaginate, and recently finished a three month FST Assistant Director Bursary placement with Catherine Wheels Theatre Company.

Thursday 10 November: Brite Theatre

Brite Theatre is an independent theatre group especially interested in the liveness of theatre, deconstructing classics and devising and writing new work about today's world. They will bring Can This Be Home to the Traverse 2 stage, a piece about people's experiences of finding a home in Britain ahead of the EU referendum. It has previously been shown at Theatre Royal Plymouth as part of the Plymouth Fringe, as an excerpt at the Tron 100 Festival and at Over to EU at the Traverse. The verbatim piece ran before the referendum but will be reworked in light of the results and the confusion that has followed and the continual search for "home".

Friday 11 November: Black Dingo

Black DinGo Productions is an Edinburgh based theatre company, who support Edinburgh's emerging theatre talent and aims to bring affordable theatre to audiences. Theywill present a rehearsed reading of Andy Edwards' Scribble, a play written during his attachment to Playwright's Studio Scotland's Mentoring Programme, supervised by Rob Drummond. Scribble is a play about what it means to have mental health right now. Shifting between monologue, dialogue and duologue, Scribble takes the largest concepts imaginable as a means to consider the smallest moments in individual histories, charting the writer's experiences of OCD through the lifecycle of a supergiant star.

The Traverse is Scotland's new writing theatre.

Formed in 1963 by a group of passionate theatre enthusiasts, the Traverse was founded to extend the spirit of the Edinburgh festivals throughout the year. Today, under Artistic Director Orla O'Loughlin, the Traverse nurtures emerging talent, produces award-winning new plays and offers a curated programme of the best work from the UK and beyond, spanning theatre, dance, performance, music and spoken word.

The Traverse has launched the careers of some of the UK's most celebrated writers - David Greig, David Harrower and Zinnie Harris - and continues to discover and support new voices - Stef Smith, Morna Pearson, Gary McNair and Rob Drummond.

With two custom-built and versatile theatre spaces, the Traverse's home in Edinburgh's city centre is a powerhouse of vibrant new work for, and of, our time. Every August, it holds an iconic status as the theatrical heart of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Outside the theatre walls, it runs an extensive engagement programme, offering audiences of all ages and backgrounds the opportunity to explore, create and develop. Further afield, the Traverse frequently tours internationally and engages in exchanges and partnerships - most recently in Quebec, New Zealand and South Korea.

Alice Mary Cooper

Alice Mary Cooper is a performer and theatre-maker from Sydney, Australia now living in Edinburgh. She is an Associate Artist with Imaginate, and recently finished a three month FST Assistant Director Bursary placement with Catherine Wheels Theatre Company.

Following a Bachelor of Creative Arts Degree (Melbourne University), Alice trained as a clown at L'Ecole Philippe Gaulier (Paris). Alice devises and performs solo performance works with a strong character and physical focus. To date she has made three very different pieces, Waves, When Alice (Cooper) met (Prince) Harry (a clown piece) and The Box, a commission from the Harlow Playhouse.

Alice has a passionate interest in the arts and sustainability and is engaged with other like artists in Scotland through Creative Carbon Scotland (CCS). She recently performed a successful season of Waves as part of the Edinburgh Fringe at Summerhall where The Observer called it 'a miniaturist gem'.

Black DinGo Productions

Black DinGo Productions is an Edinburgh based theatre company, who support Edinburgh's

emerging theatre talent and aims to bring affordable theatre to audiences. The company

was founded in 2012 by David McFarlane and since then he has produced and co-produced

many productions at the Edinburgh Fringe, in numerous venues in Edinburgh's grassroots

scene and in venues out with Edinburgh.

Most notably Black DinGo Productions produced the Loud Poets, a poetry collective who

have taken their work to the Brighton Fringe, the Prague Fringe and the Edinburgh Fringe.

The company was also asked by the Just Festival in 2013 to produce new writing that would

explore sectarianism in Scotland as part of a three-year project called Tackling Sectarianism.

The productions produced for this project include; Creepie Stool by Jen McGregor, which

most recently undertook a Highland tour, The Onion of Bigotry which was by and featured

the Kielty Brothers and Warrior by Jennifer Adam, which was performed at the Citizens

Theatre's Circle Studio and will be touring schools in West Lothian this autumn supported by

Sense Over Sectarianism.

Brite Theater

Brite Theater is an independent theatre group especially interested in the liveness of theatre, deconstructing classics and devising and writing new work about today's world.

Previous productions include a dance theatre piece / play called Meat (2006), a radical adaptation of Chekov's The Seagull (2008), Nobody Dances with Themselves, an original devised site specific piece (2009), a deconstructed King Lear, an original Shakespeare mash-up called My Only Love Sprung from My Only Hate, a devised Coriolanus made in fifty hours, an autobiographical monologue called Chet Baker, Love and we put Shakespeare's villains in the layers of Dante's 'Inferno' in a site specific promenade piece called Shakespeare in Hell (all in 2013). In 2014 we staged Titus Andronicus and collaborated on a new adaptation of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe with Midsummer Madness. The two-hander Bitter Sweet played in Edinburgh and the company's interactive adaptation, Richard III (a one-woman show) was produced in 2015. The latter has been touring non stop since it was awarded all three awards at Prague Fringe and a Bobby Award at Edinburgh Fringe.

Fronteiras Theatre Lab

Fronteiras Theatre Lab is an Edinburgh-based company focused on multicultural/multilingual theatre and international collaborations. Founded in 2011, our most relevant work to date includes Theatre Tasters (2012), a lunchtime 'menu' of three short plays by multinational playwrights (Australia, Scotland, and Norway) performed by a cast from 8 different countries; Fronteiras Explorers (2013), a three-week residency programme on the Brazil-Uruguay border funded by a Creative Futures grant from Creative Scotland; and La Niña Barro (2014), a collaboration with a Spanish writer and performers which premiered in Edinburgh and has toured around Spain, Brazil, Uruguay, and the USA, winning the Impact Award at the 5th Small-Scale Theatre Festival in Miami.

Director Flavia D'Avila is originally from Brazil. She moved to Edinburgh in 2006 to pursue her degree in Drama and Theatre Arts and is currently doing her PhD at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, researching syncretic theatre. Flavia has specialised in working with devised theatre and new writing, having also trained at the Odin Teatret in Denmark and in South America.

Jen McGregor is a playwright whose recent credits include Vox (Charioteer Theatre/Piccolo Theatre of Milan), Heaven Burns (Previously... Scotland's History Festival), and Comfort & Joy (TREND Festival, Rome). Her short play Lost Love, was published in New Writing Scotland #34. Jen was mentored by Rob Drummond through the Playwrights' Studio Scotland Mentoring Scheme.

The cast features Laura Pasetti, Italian actress and director trained in the Giorgio Strehler school at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, and Daniel Hird, up-and-coming actor from Dundee, recently trained in Edinburgh with Thomas Richards from the Jerzy Grotowski Workcenter.

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