Edinburgh Festival

AS YE SOW By Stewart Pringle, directed by Tom Richards, plays previews at The Pleasance Dome for Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Aug 1-3, and continues Aug 4-27 (no show on the 13th), 2012. All performances play at 12 p.m.

What if a gay woman, gay man, and straight woman had equal stage time to muse on sex, identity, and dating? Fed up with the predominantly straight-white-male perspectives on life and sex, Veronica Elizabeth, Kenny Neal, and Alyssa Wolff dreamed up the Gay/Straight Alliance: an LGBT-friendly comedy show that breaks down barriers, exposing the fact that basically, we're all awful, regardless of orientation. The cast presents their sardonic stand-up comedy showcase as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival at the Phoenix Bar on 46-48 Broughton Street at midnight from August 19th-26th.

Musical memoir CONFESSIONS OF OLD LADY #2, spiced with songs, is presented by well-seasoned Broadway and Hollywood actress Joan Shepard at the Fringe. At the age of 7 she was on Broadway, cast by Laurence Olivier. This prominent child actress has never looked back.

Michael Fletcher joins the cast of InSTEP Theatre's award-winning production of Departure Lounge direct from ITV's Superstar.

The company behind the national sell-out success Fresher the Musical have teamed up with performers from Musicality, the stars of TV's Don't Stop Believing, to present Wild West End, a deliciously dark musical comedy revue.

Soho Theatre has announced a full summer season of theatre, comedy and cabaret to be presented both at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and in London. In theatre, the group presents new work from Phil Porter, Will Eno and Joel Horwood. In Edinburgh and in London Soho presents acts from across the globe, including Barry Award Winner Doctor Brown and the joint Best Newcomer Winners from the Melbourne Comedy Festival Matt Okine and Ronny Chieng. Plus the return of the Soho Literary Festival.

Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) today announced the continuation of Artistic Director Chris Fujiwara's tenure, initially for a further three years. The appointment was announced following 2012's successful EIFF that saw admissions of just over 40,000 across the 12-day event.

With an original score and storyline and a cast of top-notch Scottish performers, new musical STREETS looks set to be one of the highlights at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

The 66th Edinburgh International Film Festival announced the winners of its awards today at a prestigious ceremony held at Filmhouse, hosted by Grant Lauchlan of STV Moviejuice. Scottish stars presenting awards included Kate Dickie and Jury member Ewen Bremner. The ceremony took place ahead of the Closing Night Gala of the European premiere of BRAVE which closes the 12-day Festival.

Three shows impossible to stage in conventional theatres are waiting in the wings as the 2012 Royal Highland Show draws to a close at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston.

This film deliberately tricks its audience. It starts out as an erotic romantic comedy, passes through political thriller and ends as a philosophical personal drama. What you realise at the end of the film, however, is that it was a personal drama all along: each set of genre conventions reflects the shifting perceptions of the main character, Frankie, a sassy aerospace engineer who works for the government designing drone planes.

Sexposition, the technique of making boring dialogue interesting by putting characters in a sexual situation, is subverted in an interesting way for one of the scenes of Either Way, an Icelanic film making its UK Premiere this week at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

After an award-winning run in 2011, Casual Violence return to the Edinburgh Fringe to spin new yarns of tragicomedy sketch terror with CASUAL VIOLENCE: A KICK IN THE TEETH, at Just The Tonic @ The Caves - The Fancy Room, 2nd - 26th August 2012, 22:00 (not 14th or 21st).

The Traverse will bring together two of Scotland's mos famous playwrights, David Greig and David Harrower, in a special double bill as one of the Theatre's flagship shows for its 2012 Festival Programme this August. Presented back to back, David Greig's The Letter of Last Resort and David Harrower's Good With People take us from London to Helensburgh, tracing the paths of personal and political destruction in two highly-charged stories.

The Edinburgh International Book Festival today announced its programme for 2012. Charlotte Square Gardens will welcome Nobel Laureates, Booker and Pulitzer Prize winners and Poets Laureate as well as a stellar line up of the world's leading writers, poets, thinkers and commentators. With Guest Selectors, the Anobii First Book Award, the Edinburgh World Writers' Conference, the gamut of outstanding authors from Ali Smith to Zadie Smith, and a third year of the late night Unbound events, the Book Festival promises a summer of contemplation, inspiration and entertainment.

With just over six weeks to go until the start of the 2012 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Fringe Society have released their updated mobile apps for iPhone and Android.

'Learn Me Right' - an original song featuring British-born singer and songwriter Birdy, will be featured on the upcoming soundtrack to the animated Disney*Pixar film Brave, which will be released by Walt Disney Records on June 19th. The track was written, arranged, and produced by Grammy-nominated British folk-rock group Mumford & Sons.

Forest Fringe has announced Paper Stages, a beautifully designed free book co-authored by over twenty Forest Fringe artists, each page of which will be a different instruction-based performance for the reader or readers to perform themselves. Paper Stages will be launches on the 11th of August with a raucus party at an as-yet secret location. Featured writers include Kieran Hurley, writer-performer of the CATS Award-winning Beats.

Today the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) announced 2012's Michael Powell Award Competition Jury and the four other juries who will deliberate over the Festival's seven awards. Two of the jurors will also be the subjects of In-Person events that have been newly added to the EIFF programme. Jim Broadbent, Elliott Gould, Gerald Peary and Ewen Bremner are among those chosen to judge awards.

Soho Theatre has announced a full summer season of theatre, comedy and cabaret to be presented both at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and in London. In theatre, the group presents new work from Phil Porter, Will Eno and Joel Horwood. In Edinburgh and in London Soho presents acts from across the globe, including Barry Award Winner Doctor Brown and the joint Best Newcomer Winners from the Melbourne Comedy Festival Matt Okine and Ronny Chieng. Plus the return of the Soho Literary Festival.

A simple love story between a librarian and a young English teacher is the excuse for a twenty minute jukebox opera, inflicted on unsuspecting Edinburgh library goers all this week. The show will be performed in various Edinburgh City Libraries and the Scottish Poetry Library until Saturday the 16th. The exact times and locations will be advertised on Twitter and Facebook a half-day before each performance.

Silence will be broken by gentle song and hearts set fluttering among the dust jackets as Edinburgh International Festival's new series of guerrilla operas is set to get pulses racing in Edinburgh's libraries next week. From Monday 11 June to Saturday 16 June daily performances of Love in a Library will take place in (where else!) the romance section of libraries across the city as part of Edinburgh International Festival's year round outreach programme.

Following a limited season at the Menier Chocolate Factory and a UK Tour Educating Rita, the Olivier Award-winning comedy by Willy Russell, will play at the Assembly George Square Theatre this summer from Wednesday 1st - Sunday 26th August 2012 as part of the 2012 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Claire Sweeney plays Rita and Matthew Kelly is Dr Frank Bryant in a production directed by Tamara Harvey.

Chocolate Factory Productions have announced a production of ANTHONY RAPP -WITHOUT YOU, based on Anthony Rapp's bestseller Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent, to begin performances in Boston on Tuesday, June 19th. The show, which is directed by Steve Maler, will continue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this August and London's Menier Chocolate Factory until Septemeber 15.

The Arches makes its return to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to present the most daring, death defying show on earth, Bullet Catch by Rob Drummond, which will open at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh from Friday 3 - Sunday 26 August 2012.