“I hate the role of producer – I’m not good at promotion, the financial obstacles are great and appealing to an audience is like shouting at passing strangers in a hurricane.”
WHO: Martin Foreman
WHAT: “Eight very different people, eight very different situations. How does £500 get passed around? Willingly or violently? As a gift? Blackmail? Payment for drugs? Beauty treatment? A scam? Car repair? Is it stolen? Or lost? In cash or online? In someone’s home? A nightclub? On the street? In a theatre? Perhaps all of these or none. In a newly devised show, see money circulate in a kaleidoscope of comedy, tragedy and the mundane in Britain today.”
WHERE: Space 2 at theSpace on the Mile (Venue 39)
WHEN: 21:20 (60 min)
MORE: Click Here!
Is this your first time to Edinburgh?
Thanks for inviting me back to talk about our other Fringe show, A Pound of Flesh, so forgive me if some of my answers are similar to what I said before. 🙂
We’re an Edinburgh-based group of theatre creatives, which means that most of us have been in the Fringe before in different companies and many of us have worked together on other productions in the city during the rest of the year.
The last time I was fully involved in the Fringe was 2019. I hate the role of producer – I’m not good at promotion, the financial obstacles are great and appealing to an audience is like shouting at passing strangers in a hurricane. This year, however, I’m working with a great team and I – and we – are confident that we have two great dramas to offer the world.
I have no idea what makes a great festival. I know what made the Edinburgh Fringe great in the past was the sheer variety of talent that came to perform here from all over the world – and an audience that was excited and enthusiastic about what they were seeing. My fear is that the Fringe has become too commercial – the costs of venue hire and accommodation have shot through the roof, so we get far fewer companies from abroad. Ticket prices have had to go up to meet the cost of venues and that all impacts on the numbers who come to the city and see different shows.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again . . . I would love it if comedy were split off from the rest of the Fringe and held at a different time of year. For financial reasons it won’t happen, but coverage of stand-up reduces the attention paid to theatre and all the great things happening on stage.
Whatever the problems, I know I’ll have a good time seeing lots of new talent and shows – although they will all have to be in the daytime because I’m teching each night throughout the Fringe.
What are the big things you’ve learned since 2024 and have you absorbed any of the lessons yet?
I was only involved in a minor role in 2024 and before that my last contribution to the Fringe was in 2019. The lessons I have learnt are find a producer who has no fear, always be prepared to lose money and above all create a production that wows not just yourself but which wows the world that comes to see it. And don’t forget to see and support as many of the other fantastic performers here that need your support!
Tell us about your show.
I conceived the idea of Transfers – the sum of £500 passing from one person to the next in a never-ending circle – based on Arthur Schnitzler’s notorious La Ronde. That play consisted of a never-ending round of sexual encounters but it’s been done before in many different forms. So instead of body fluids I came up with the idea of money going round and round. And rather than limit the scenes to my own experiences and ideas, I decided it would be a much better play if it were created by the actors themselves.
The first step was to bring on board Michael Robert-Brown, an actor/director I had worked with before and together we put together a cast to represent a cross-section of Britain today. We haven’t managed to tick every box, but we have eight actors, male and female, of different ages, backgrounds and experiences who have come up with eight very different scenes covering issues from trans to Alzheimer’s, homelessness to violence, child custody to OnlyFans.
Michael is not only one of the actors but he brings the play together as director while I’ve taken the scenes that the cast have created, written the initial drafts of the script and together over the rehearsal process we have crafted a play that is in turns tragic, comic, dramatic and – deliberately – mundane.
What should your audience see at the festivals after they’ve seen your show?
Immediately before Transfers in the same venue is our other production – A Pound of Flesh, a tragoc version of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in which Portia cannot save Antonio’s life and Bassanio is forced to face the consquences of his own greed.
Of course I have to draw attention to other Edinburgh-based groups and actors that I have worked with or seen in the past. They include:
EGTG, who always produce fascinating work (disclosure, I worked on one their productions last year), are offering Dario Fo’s The Virtuous Burglar and Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children
This is the last time Arkle Theatre appears at the Fringe – with The Thirty-Nine Steps and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
One of our cast members, Jed Bury, is also in Holly Street.
In my last interview with GYCO I mentioned other plays I know nothing about but want to see.
Here’s a different list that I hope to get to: The Cadaver Palaver; The Domestiques; Frat; The Lolita Apologies; Love, Death and Shakespeare. . . and there’s a whole lot more.
(Btw not all the plays have X accounts so I have given the Instagram handle if they have one instead.)
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