“For audiences in 2023, it’s a retro-futuristic world that is full of a symphony of gadgets, buttons, motors, and machinery – a world of SOUND unlike our silent contemporary digital world.”
WHO: Eric Rose
WHAT: “An out of body experience! Tomorrow’s Child is an immersive, multi-layered sonic adventure based on Ray Bradbury’s compelling sci-fi short story. In the imagined retro-future of 1988, new parents Polly and Peter confront the reality that their baby has been born into an alternate dimension. Will they accept the interstellar divide between parents and child? This celebrated production from Canada’s Ghost River Theatre crafts a landscape of sound for blindfolded audiences that is ‘the audio equivalent of a five-star dinner’ (Stephen Hunt, Calgary Herald). Adapted by Matthew Waddell, Eric Rose, and David van Belle.”
WHERE: Assembly Checkpoint – Assembly Checkpoint (Venue 322)
WHEN: 11:40 (70 min)
MORE: Click Here!
Is this your first time to Edinburgh?
This is my second time to Edinburgh; I attended Ed Fringe in 2022. Ed Fringe is a wild fun house of all things live performance and there is really every kind of performance you can imagine happening all at once! I mean, where else but at Ed Fringe can you watch a clown show in the morning, a musical at noon, a serious political drama for a matinee, an experimental show about bananas during supper, a dance show in a bar for dessert, a mind-blowing physical theatre piece to start the evening, an unthinkable circus spectacle to sail into a late evening, and to top it all off, a laugh-out-loud stand-up set. Wild.
What are the big things you’ve learned since 2022 and have you absorbed any of the lessons yet?
My big piece of advice for first time attendees is to plan and prebook half of your available shows before landing and then let the rest of your shows fall into place once your feet are on the ground.
Tell us about your show.
Tomorrow’s Child is an immersive, blindfolded listening experience akin to a high octane radio play!
Bradbury is one of the world’s literary sci-fi giants and he’s at his classic best with Tomorrow’s Child (also published as The Shape of Things in 1948). Bradbury wrote Tomorrow’s Child coming out of WWII, imagining the future world of 1988. For audiences in 2023, it’s a retro-futuristic world that is full of a symphony of gadgets, buttons, motors, and machinery – a world of SOUND unlike our silent contemporary digital world. It posed some fun and unique challenges to myself and co -sound designer and director Matthew Waddell… for example, conceptualizing the sounds of a baby in the fourth dimension who appears to everyone as a blue pyramid. These lush audio challenges were a fantastic starting point for a wild audio-only piece of immersive theatre.
We premiered Tomorrow’s Child in 2014 at our home venue in Calgary. It has since gone on to tour across Canada and win several awards. We hope to build a tour for Tomorrow’s Child out of our run in Edinburgh. Right after the Fringe, Ghost River Theatre will be going into post-production for a new Cli-fi (Climate-change Science Fiction) streaming series, So Dark The Sky.
What should your audience see at the festivals after they’ve seen your show?
Our fellow Canadian devisor Sarah Deller’s new solo show Optimistic: Elizabeth Holmes at ZOO Southside – Studio, which examines the gap between appearance and reality with this infamous fraudster. Sarah was back home recently in Calgary and spent some time in our theatre rehearsing Optimistic. Sarah is a brilliant artist and I recommend everyone go see it.
Our artists coming to Edinburgh are stoked to see a bunch of shows – top of our list right now is Jazz Emu whose music and comedy is sharp-witted, smart, and utterly hilarious. An opportunity to be moved, surprised, and laugh yourself hoarse. Also, Avital Ash: her brand of deeply personal comedy has come to be refined over the years with poignant observations about relationships, love, and charming self-deprecation. This new show appears to be the culmination of her work thus far and we’re looking forward to it. And Lawrence Chaney, the winner of Drag Race UK. His show Overweight and OVER IT appears to be a personal look at what it’s like to live in a fuller sized body while working in an industy where this kind of body is outside what may be considered the ‘norm.’
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