Go See: 17 captioned performances at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2017!

This is a sponsored post.

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the largest arts festival in the world, celebrating its 70^th Anniversary this year.

The Scottish capital hosts over 3,000 performances each August, featuring theatre, comedy, dance, physical theatre, circus, cabaret, children’s shows, musicals, opera, music, spoken word, exhibitions and events.

Honouring the pledge to be an open access festival, the Pleasance Theatre Trust has taken the plunge into captioning and are presenting 17 captioned performances over seven days with the help of experienced live captioner Claire Hill (read our interview with her from 2013 here).

The captions will be visible to all, presented on a plasma screen in front of the stage, and will be written live or pre-prepared, depending on the material. Concession tickets are available for people who are registered disabled, as well as a complementary ticket for assistants, and seats will be reserved with the best view of the stage and the plasma screen.

Email boxoffice@pleasance.co.uk for more details, or book online at www.pleasance.co.uk (see direct links to the shows below).

More shows are being confirmed so please visit https://www.edfringe.com/experience/accessibility-and-additional-needs for the most up-to-date list of captioned Fringe performances across all venues.

Claire is also live captioning events at Edinburgh International Book Festival on 22^nd and 23^rd August, listed here: https://goo.gl/8krKQV

Her website will give an up to date list at www.clairehillrealtime.com/edinburgh, with links to all confirmed captioned events.

Arranged by date, the Pleasance captioned performances are as follows:

14th August – 1.00pm

Bare Skin on Briny Waters

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/bare-skin-briny-waters#overview

Annie finds herself on a clifftop. She says she’s fine but she can’t quite get her story straight. Sat by her side, Sophie covers the bruises on her neck. She thinks everything might just be alright, because it’s amazing what you get used to, isn’t it? Underscored with live folk music, Bare Skin on Briny Waters is a story about survival and escape. It’s about two young women standing on a cliff edge, steadily being blown on an unexpected course

19th August – 1.20pm

Once Were Pirates

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/once-were-pirates#overview

Pirates, Shane and Gareth, have been marooned in the present. How will they survive without a code of values to guide them? Award-winning Australian Company, Gobsmacked, return to Edinburgh with Emilie Collyer’s dark and quirky comedy about young men navigating their way through a complex and dangerous world.

19th August – 3.40pm

Curse of Cranholme Abbey

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/curse-cranholme-abbey#overview

Doors creak and dust falls; the Curse of Cranholme Abbey has awoken once more. The “superbly talented” (List) Young Pleasance presents a tale of intrigue and horror as the past and present collide. Distant screams echo from the east wing. The clock ticks. Time stands still. Peeling back the wallpaper, our heroes unravel the abbey’s terrible secrets as the curse threatens to destroy them all.

19th August – 5.00pm

The Damned United

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/damned-united#overview

Down the stairs… Along the corridor… Round the corner… Into the dressing room… His dressing room. Hateful, hateful place. Spiteful, spiteful place. Dirty, dirty Leeds. 1974. Brian Clough tries to redeem his career and reputation by winning the European Cup with his new team. Leeds United. The team he’s openly despised for years, the team he hates and which hates him. Don Revie’s Leeds. Adapted from David Peace’s brilliant, ingenious novel, The Damned United takes you inside the tortured mind of a genius slamming against his limits, bringing to life the beauty and brutality of football.

20th August – 1.00pm

Snowflake

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/snowflake-mark-thomson#overview

Jax is 20 and is battling with reality. Worst of all she has to get up every single morning. But nothing is clear, not even where she is. Or even who she is. A play of how to find human connection and certainty in a universe of endless notifications and conflicting knowledge.

20th August – 7.00pm

Police Cops in Space

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/police-cops-space#overview

Fresh from sell-out runs at the Soho Theatre, globally acclaimed, multi award-winning comedy trio The Pretend Men are back in town! Evil corporation FutureTech have taken over the galaxy. On a distant planet, illegal human Jack O’Connell teams up with cocky fighter pilot Ranger and his trusty cyborg C9. Together, they embark on an action packed adventure across the galaxy on a mission to find Earth, uncover the mystic legend of the Police Cops and overthrow FutureTech. Winner of the Stage Award for Acting Excellence 2015.

21st August – 11.45am

Me and My Bee

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/me-and-my-bee#overview

Climate change is massive. Bees aren’t. Our fuzzy little friends need our help and so we’re launching a political party disguised as a party party disguised as a show. Multi award-winning theatre company, ThisEgg, invites you to save the world – one bee at a time. A new comedy for children and adults alike. Plant the seed for change, join the Bee Party. Before it’s too late…

21st August – 1.15pm

Odyssey

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/odyssey-0#overview

Ad Infinitum bring their multi award-winning reinvention of Homer’s timeless Greek myth back to Edinburgh Fringe after touring the world for eight years. One actor. One hour. One man’s epic quest to reunite with his family and seek his bloody revenge. Passionate, highly physical and poignant storytelling brings this breathtaking adventure to life. A journey that will ignite the imagination and awaken the senses…

21st August – 3.30pm

Buzz – A New Musical

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/buzz-new-musical#overview

Winner of the 2016 Eddies Award, the sell-out hit Buzz returns; a hilarious musical journey through the history of the vibrator and a brutally honest story of a singleton’s quest to fall back in love with herself. Sex ed just got a revamp.

24th August – 2.20pm

A Super Happy Story

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/super-happy-story-about-feeling-super-sad#overview

A fun, silly and sad show for anyone whose brain isn’t always on their side. Sally’s a happy person. She doesn’t let little things get her down and almost never cries. But she’s got an illness. It makes her feel like she isn’t the person she wants to be… But she doesn’t want anyone to know about it. Written by Jon Brittain (Margaret Thatcher Queen of Soho) with music by Matthew Floyd Jones (Frisky and Mannish), the show mixes storytelling, live music and sketch comedy.

24th August – 4.00pm

Flesh & Bone

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/flesh-and-bone#overview

An ‘incredibly entertaining’ (PlaysToSee.com) show that gives the gritty residents of an East London Tower Block a stage – through their wickedly eloquent voices we are thrust into their stories, held by the scruff of the neck and made to listen. Feast your eyes upon the depravity, the triumphs and the utter hilarity of the underprivileged as they are thrust onto a vivid and fast-paced ride through a working class estate.

24th August – 6.30pm

Secret Life of Humans

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/secret-life-humans#overview

Inspired by the Yuval Harai’s international bestseller, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. In 1949, Dr Jacob Bronowski installs a secret, alarmed room in his house. Fifty years later his grandson discovers his secrets, unearthing echoes from across six million years of human history, told from the perspective of a century in which every year is a revolutionary year.

25th August – 12.00pm

Girls

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/girls#overview

Three girls. Best friends forever. All the big issues: love, sex and religion… But when they’re kidnapped from home, their world is turned upside down. The only hashtag that matters now is survival. A funny and fiercely passionate new play about enduring friendship, the power of imagination and the stories behind the headlines that quickly become yesterday’s news.

25th August – 5.00pm

Testosterone

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/testosterone#overview

What’s it like going through adolescence at the age of 33? One year after transgender man Kit receives his first injection of testosterone he enters a male gym changing room for the first time. For the other guys this is just another routine moment in an ordinary changing room, but for Kit it becomes an urgent search to uncover what it means to be a man. Critically acclaimed Rhum and Clay collaborate with writer and performer Kit Redstone in this comical, coming of age quest for masculine identity in an environment that affords little space to hide

25th August – 10.00pm

We are Ian

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/we-are-ian-O

It’s 1989. Manchester. A frenzy of drugs, beats and bucket hats. Illegal raves and acid parties. Jumping up and down in a field and throwing two fingers to Thatcher… Remember it? Cus we don’t. We weren’t even born. But Ian was. Ian remembers. Ian reckons we’ve got fuck all now. So let’s go back to the 80’s, neck a brown biscuit and bounce around like idiots. Ian’s gonna show us how…

26th August – 12.45pm

Perfectly Imperfect Women

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/perfectly-imperfect-women#overview

What makes us want to be perfect? What is so bad about imperfection anyway? In this universal story, multi award-winning storyteller Danyah Miller explores what drives us to want to live perfect lives. This is one woman’s search for a richer understanding of her concept of perfection and what it means to accept imperfection in order to connect more deeply to her female line. The show examines the often complex relationship between mothers and daughters and the challenge of discovering you may have more in common with your female ancestors than you care to admit.

26th August – 2.15pm

Goody

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/goody#overview

1934, Dustbowl America. Backstage at the travelling circus, we discover the complex relationship between one man and his performing chimpanzee. Marooned in a world she does not comprehend, Goody finds comfort with her only companion: her trainer Frances. How do they communicate? How do they cohabit? Who is in control? Lucy Roslyn’s new play is a striking, darkly funny exploration of the extraordinary, heartbreaking world of performing apes and the humans who live with them, love them and break them.

26th August – 3.40pm

Offside

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/offside#overview

It is 1881. It is 1921. It is 2017. Four women from across the centuries live, breathe and play football. Whilst each of them face very different obstacles, the possibility that the beautiful game will change their futures – and the world – is tantalizingly close. Written by leading spoken word artists Sabrina Mahfouz and Hollie McNish, Offside comes to the Pleasance after a hit UK tour in the spring.