World Premiere Of EAVESDROPPING Comes to Traverse Festival in August

ThickSkin will premiere a special Edinburgh edition of their location-based audio play series Walk This Play at the 2021 Traverse Festival.

Celebrating the stories and people who are the heartbeat and spirit of Edinburgh, Eavesdropping asks who gets to define a city, who gets to be it's guide and who's story matters?

Eavesdropping takes audiences on an adventure through familiar and unfamiliar streets of Scotland's capital, revealing new sides to and stories of the people who (may) live here. This location-based walking audio play by Hannah Lavery and Sarah MacGillivray, the latest in ThickSkin's Walk This Play series, will encourage audiences to look differently at the rich tapestry of people you may walk past every day, whether you see them or not.

Unique to each location, Walk This Play stories are designed for listeners as they walk. The immersive plays blend narration and original music with the physical sights, sounds and landscape around you transporting you inside the story.

Inviting you to experience a familiar route from a new perspective, ThickSkin and the partner companies have reached out to local communities and writers to create their Walk This Play stories. The audio experiences have been created by a different creative team from each local area, placing new voices front and centre. The series launched in March in Manchester and features promenade walking plays including Monuments by Broadchurch star Julie Hesmondhalgh.

As a company, ThickSkin are dedicated to developing and showcasing new-talent, while reaching audiences who don't normally attend theatre. ThickSkin are the innovators behind the pioneering Virtual Reality production Petrichor which was created to connect with young audiences during the pandemic and the hit 2019 TravFest production, How Not To Drown about a young asylum seeker in the UK.

Jonnie Riordan, Director of the Edinburgh Walk This Play, said: "It's fantastic to be working with the Traverse Theatre again, two years since How Not To Drown.

"We've been developing the Walk This Play series throughout the year and it felt like the perfect project to bring to Edinburgh, a city with so many rich stories and wonderful places to be explored. We imagined it would be a different kind of festival this year, so an immersive audio experience via our Walk This Play app offers audiences a new way to experience theatre. With a smart phone and a set of headphones, they can take part any time they choose so it's great for fitting in between the gaps of scheduled live shows and it'll take them off the beaten track.

"Digital arts has always been a feature of ThickSkin's work and can offer a wide range of new experiences for audiences. And, as with all ThickSkin projects, talent development is at the heart of what we do, in this instance with a spotlight on an early career playwright collaborating closely with a more experienced playwright. We're looking forward to eventually getting back on stage, but digital will be a permanent feature in how we take audiences on a journey alongside or embedded in live work."

Linda Crooks, Executive Producer, Traverse Theatre, said: "We are delighted to welcome ThickSkin back to the Traverse Festival following our collaboration on the evocative and award-winning How Not to Drown. We can't wait to continue our exploration of the different facets of Edinburgh, and bring to light people, places and events which we may never have come across before. Edinburgh has many stories still to share, and Eavesdropping gives audiences an exciting chance to get to know and appreciate the city afresh using new and innovative technology. We hope you will join us on the main roads and side streets to experience this immersive audio experience this summer."

All previous editions of Walk This Play are available to download from the ThickSkin app. They are Manchester (Keep Going Then Vanish), Ancoats (Monuments narrated by Julie Hesmondhalgh) and Huddersfield (Your Time is Now). For full details see www.thickskintheatre.co.uk.

To post a comment, you must register and login.