Traverse Announces Festival 2016

Traverse Theatre announces its Festival programme 2016 today, June 7 2016. With 10 world premieres, 4 Scottish and 1 European premiere, the programme emphasises the Traverse's dedication to bringing the best new work to its stages during the Festival and throughout the year. As well as its two Traverse Theatre Company productions, the Traverse continues to support new and local artists.4 productions are produced 'in association' with the Traverse giving home-grown talent a powerful platform to be seen by the large and enthusiastic audiences who attend the Traverse annually for the Festivals.

Traverse Artistic Director Orla O'Loughlin said, 'Our carefully curated festival programme reflects the Traverse's place at the heart of our local, national and international community. It is always a privilege to showcase such an eclectic range of talent from both home and abroad and this year is no exception. We are especially thrilled to present the Traverse Theatre Company World Premiere of Milk, by Scottish playwright Ross Dunsmore and delighted that our Breakfast Plays this year will feature yet more brand new work by our Traverse Associate Artists.

We are so proud to to be working in association with a number of emerging Scottish companies and artists as part of our ongoing commitment to supporting emerging talent year round. Our Traverse Festival programme sees us present a mix of work from old friends alongside exciting new voices on our world renowned stages. With 10 world premieres, 4 Scottish and 1 European premiere, and much, much more, the Traverse is the place to be this August. Expect to be challenged, moved and of course entertained. Here's to a fantastic 2016 Festival!'

Milk, the Traverse Theatre's flagship production in Traverse 1, is written by Ross Dunsmore and is his first full play. The play came through Traverse Open Submissions and again highlights the pivotal role of the Traverse in providing a springboard for the freshest writing talent in the world of theatre. Milk is directed by Traverse Artistic Director Orla O'Loughlin and features a cast of six. Witty, dark and provocative, Milk explores the universal need to feed and to be fed; physically, emotionally, spiritually. It is an emotive and heartfelt play about what fills us up, what makes us sick and what we just can't get enough of. Milk reunites the creative team behind last year's festival hit Swallow by Stef Smith. Fred Meller is designer on the project and Danny Krass is composer and sound designer. Lighting design is Philip Gladwell and renowned choreographers White & Givan will also work with the cast on movement.

The extremely popular Breakfast Plays return this year and are written by the Traverse Theatre's Associate Artists Rob Drummond, Morna Pearson, Tim Price and Stef Smith. Breakfast Plays: Tech Will Tears Us Apart (?) are funny, bleak and challenging, and guarantee a fresh perspective on the future of human-machine relations. Will technology save us, or will it tear us apart? The Associate Artists are some of the finest playwrights working in Britain today and have come together to fight off killer robots, befriend cyborgs, forge unlikely connections and explore, first-hand, the many ways our lives may be about to change forever. The plays will be directed by Traverse Artistic Director Orla O'Loughlin, Traverse Literary Associate Rosie Kellagher, Associate Director Zinnie Harris and Associate Artist Emma Callander. Come and see these script-in-hand readings, and enjoy a breakfast roll and tea or coffee with your ticket. Each play will be performed three times across a rotating daily schedule from 16 August.

World Premieres:

Traverse Festival 2016 features ten world premieres. Traverse Associate Artist Rob Drummond's new show In Fidelity opens on the Traverse 2 stage. Produced by HighTide in association with Traverse Theatre Company, In Fidelity combines evolutionary theory and a live on-stage date. Whether you're single or not, this is a play for those looking to find love and those wanting to celebrate it.

Greater Belfast by Matt Regan (Little King) is produced by Little King and Tron Theatre in association with Traverse Theatre Company and is a gig like no other. Greater Belfast blends poetic storytelling with powerful contemporary composition for string quartet to paint a moving portrait of a city still aching from the violence of its recent past.

Acclaimed writer and director Adura Onashile opens Expensive Shit in 2016 but takes inspiration from the infamous events that saw The Shimmy Club in Glasgow temporarily close in 2013. It follows a nightclub toilet attendant in a fictional club in Glasgow. Her conflicted journey is spliced with flashbacks to the toilets of the Shrine nightclub in Lagos, Nigeria, where her younger self dreams of becoming a dancer in the revolutionary band of the late Nigerian musician, Fela Kuti. Expensive Shit is produced by Scottish Theatre Producers in association with Traverse Theatre Company.

Bring your festival hangover to the Traverse Bar Café for a theatrical hair of the dog every Monday morning of the Fringe courtesy of Edinburgh's own Village Pub Theatre, in association with Traverse Theatre Company. Join us at the start of each week of the festival for a pick-me-up of fresh new plays, served script-in-hand. Each week's performance of Hair of the Dog with Village Pub Theatre will feature a different morning-after theme.

The Traverse is proud to welcome back the Gate Theatre with the world premiere of Diary of a Madman by Al Smith. Pop Sheeran, proudly shouldering the family trade of restoring the Forth Rail Bridge, is about to lose it all. The company behind the two Fringe First-winning smash hits Grounded and The Christians return to the Traverse with a brand new adaptation of Gogol's classic story, reimagined in contemporary Scotland.

Also returning to the Traverse stage this year is Mark Thomas with the premiere of his new play The Red Shed. Produced by Lakin McCarthy Entertainment Ltd in association with West Yorkshire Playhouse, and directed by Joe Douglas (Bloody Trams), Mark Thomas tells the story of The Red Shed in Wakefield. The 47-foot-long wooden hut that doubles up as a Labour Club was where he performed his first gigs. Three decades later he returns to celebrate its 50th birthday, entwining the story of his political coming of age with the tale of the people who inspired him.

Blow Off is an explosive new piece of guerilla-gig-theatre from Julia Taudevin, described by The Scotsman as 'one of the most exciting forces in Scottish theatre', and Kim Moore with Susan Bear and Julie Eisenstein from Glasgow's hottest indie-pop duo Tuff Love. This fierce and playful feminist work explores the psychology of extremism with haunting melodies and progressive punk riffs. There will be two performances only of Blow Off on Monday 22 August.

Pre-View, University of Edinburgh and Playwrights' Studio, Scotland, returns this year and features readings from seven new plays. Enjoy the world premiere of new work from Melloney Flinn, Jill Franklin, Devon Jackson, Steven Morie, Jonathan O'Neill,
Jane Sunderland and Thomas Stuchfield. Get in at ground level with the most exciting playwrights of the future, from Canada, USA, England and Scotland.

Festival legend Daniel Kitson returns to the Traverse 1 stage with a Scottish premiere; Mouse - The Persistence of an Unlikely Thought. Currently thirty eight years old and still not entirely bald, Daniel Kitson comes with a selection of white boards, an angle poise lamp, anything up to three ladders, and a new show about, friendship and loneliness, doubt and hope, a mouse, a phone call and the unfathomable repercussions of everything we ever do.

A European premiere on the Traverse 1 stage comes in the form of Daffodils (A Play with Songs) from New Zealand company Bullet Heart Club. This critically acclaimed heartbreaker carves out the bittersweet nuances of one couple's life to a live mix-tape of New Zealand's most iconic songs - from Crowded House to Bic Runga played onstage by a three-piece band. Daffodils (A Play with Songs) is a charming, riotous and quintessentially Kiwi love story inspired by true events and small-town family secrets.

An act from not so far afield but with an altogether more political message arrives from Ireland in the form of Panti Bliss. The Scottish premiere of Panti: High Heels in Low Places sees The Queen of Ireland, Panti, invite you into her gender-discombobulating, stiletto-shaped world, exposing the stories behind the make-up - from performance giant to accidental activist - to reveal the National F*cking Treasure she is today. In 2014, Panti landed herself in a legal shitstorm, dubbed 'Pantigate'. Her speech about homophobia went viral, was broadcast around the world, remixed by Pet Shop Boys, caused a parliamentary meltdown, and fed into Ireland's marriage equality referendum success. Hilarious and poignant, Panti traces her journey from small-town boy kicking against traditions; to towering plastique woman in false lashes making history. This work from THISISPOPBABY and Soho Theatre promises all exuberance we have come to expect from Panti since she burst on the scene.

The RSC presents the Scottish premiere of Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again by Alice Birch in Traverse 1 examining the language, behaviour and forces that shape women in the 21st century. It asks what's stopping us from doing something truly radical to change them. This play is not well behaved. Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. made its debut as part of the 2014 Midsummer Mischief Festival in Stratford-upon-Avon, transferring to the Royal Court Upstairs and was recently produced at New York's Soho Rep.

107 Group in association with Cusack Projects Ltd brings My Eyes Went Dark by Matthew Wilkinson to the Traverse 2 stage. Nominated for three Off West End Awards and Directed Matthew Wilkinson, this is a thrilling modern tragedy. It tells the story of a Russian architect driven to revenge after losing his family in a plane crash. Cal MacAninch and Thusitha Jayasundera give electrifying performances in this searing new play about the human impulse to strike back. The nearly empty stage gives rise to these boundless performers. MacAninch frightens with understandable, controlled insanity and Jayasundera fluidly and impeccably performs an immense range of characters. Inspired by real events.

Playwrights' Studio Scotland and Made in Scotland will present TalkFest 2016 on Monday 8 & 15 August with two panel discussions on each day. The discussions will explore what stimulates the artists behind this year's Made in Scotland showcase, the Traverse's own programme and the wider Edinburgh Festival and Fringe. Lively, engaging discussions, expertly led by Scotland's leading playwrights and theatre-makers including David Greig and Lewis Hetherington.

The Traverse will also proudly host the award ceremony for the James Tait Black Prize for Drama 2016. The University of Edinburgh in association with Playwrights' Studio, Scotland and the Traverse Theatre with support from the National Theatre of Scotland award the £10,000 prize to the best new play worldwide, demonstrating an original theatrical voice and making a significant contribution to the art form.

Open Submissions

Early last year, a brilliant play called Milk by Ross Dunsmore arrived in the Traverse office, sent in during the Traverse Theatre's open submissions window. The team read it, loved it and developed it. This Festival, the Traverse is producing it on the iconic main stage, Traverse 1.

Once again, the Traverse is looking for bold, brilliant, innovative new plays. The Traverse wants to know what writers have to say about the world now - where they're going, what consumes them, what matters.

Provoke, entice, move and give the Traverse a story that could only be told on the Traverse Theatre stage. Submissions will be open from 1 August to 30 September. For details of how all can apply, please visit www.traverse.co.uk.