An intergalactic fairytale for people aged five to infinity. Fresh from a UK Tour, Gomito’s action-packed whirlwind adventure stars puppets, live music, giant spiders, witches and wizards. “A true masterpiece” Three Weeks on Little Red Things 2007.
www.thesundragon.co.uk
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| £ 5.00 | £ 7.00 (£ 6.00) |
Where on Earth did the past four weeks go? 54 performances across three different shows and that’s it, finito, Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2008 is complete. It’s a sad day, but also quite a necessary one, everyone involved is exhausted and the dreaded Fringe flu is felling actors left right and centre. Plus it’s not as if we will never do the shows again, it’s only a couple of weeks until The Sun Dragon tour restarts and as soon as we get home we’ll be chasing bookings for Before We Remember... after a good twenty-four hours of sleep of course.
We’ve still managed to cram some exciting activities into the final few days, including climbing the massive mountain behind our flat, competing in the Total Theatre volleyball championship (yes it is as bizarre as it sounds), dancing the night away at the Bedlam Theatre party and last but not least facing our old nemesis the mysterious bin burner. You can read the first story of how Gomito saved Edinburgh from a raging inferno in the blog below and yesterday we did it all again. Same old story, a cigarette thrown into a recycling bin which I happened to be walking past, my superhuman powers, which I refer to as ‘sight’ and ‘smell’ alerted me to danger and water was swiftly produced. Sleep easy Edinburgh, Gomito have got your back.
All that’s left to do is empty our cupboards of all those miscellaneous food remnants (breakfast tomorrow will be cheese and onion crisps served with tinned tomatoes and bramley apple sauce), pack and head to the trains. We hope we’ve managed to give you a little insight into the wonderful world of Fringe theatre and what goes on behind the scenes of the biggest arts festival on planet Earth. If you’d like to keep up to date with what we do next, or find out when our plays will next be near you our website is www.gomito.co.uk. Thanks for reading!
That’s right, it’s official we are in fact superheroes. In a striking example of how cigarette butts and recycling bins don’t mix there was a small fire on the Royal Mile yesterday. Rich our eagle-eyed director spotted it as the other hero of the story- a street performer who makes the most amazing balloon animals- rushed over to help. Together they called for help as I (yes, yes, I play a part) provided a bottle of water to pour over the raging inferno/small area of smoke. The streets of Edinburgh were quickly saved and the Fringe continued undisturbed. Like all the best comic book nemeses, the evil, cigarette smoking pyromaniac disappeared without a trace, presumably he’ll ‘get us pesky kids next time’.
It seemed that karma was smiling on us later in the day as our good deeds were rewarded with Gomito’s show ‘Before We Remember’ being shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award. It means lots of lovely publicity and an invite to the awards ceremony, it’s not quite as glamorous as the Oscars but we do get to spend some time with other companies that we admire so keep your fingers crossed for us.
Another day and another wet pair of shoes. Today was Fringe Sunday- a big family day out on the Edinburgh Meadows where Gomito performed a section of The Sun Dragon, the sun was shining, then it wasn’t, then it was….then it really wasn’t.
However rain in Edinburgh is certainly not the biggest news we have for you. Especially on the day that a Fringe company is accused of terrorism. Babolin Theatre Company who created ‘The Parched Lament of Child Farrago’ finished their one week run of the show and yesterday headed back down to Cambridge on the train. Balloons feature quite prominently in the Babolin show so they had with them a tank of helium. Despite having the tank when they travelled the five and a half hours up to Edinburgh and having successfully completed four hours of the journey back down, problems suddenly occurred when changing at Peterborough.
An eagle-eyed train guard took a look at the six slightly dishevelled actors and decided that there was something distinctly dodgy about them (a fair assessment probably as they’d been engaged in a little partying the night before and then had to get up eyeball poppingly early to catch the train). He refused to let them on their next train with a canister of gas that could be used as an explosive, or possibly involved in a dangerous display of balloon animal making. After a few minutes of discussion and with a train to catch one of the cast left to find somewhere to dispose of the helium, naturally while he was gone the public transport system decided to shock the assembled passengers as the train appeared perfectly on time and left without any of Babolin on it.
In the meantime the train guard, feeling bad and perhaps wanting to add a little more drama to his day, called the police to check if he was right to prevent the cast from boarding. The cast member who had been away to remove the helium returned to find his friends pretty much surrounded by uniformed officials. The police finally decided that six hungover thespians didn’t pose much of a threat to national security and agreed that they could take helium onboard. This led to a mad dash to retrieve the tank (it’s expensive you know!) and the cast squeezing themselves and their luggage on to the next available train. Despite being a bit late Babolin made it safely home and the train guard slept easy, safe in the knowledge that there were no explosions, balloon poodles or people misusing helium for squeaky vocal effects on his watch.
Graphic design by Paul Rawson. Site development by Simon Rawson.