The Stage

New venues emerge for Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2011

Published Tuesday 8 March 2011 at 17:20 by Thom Dibdin

Emerging Edinburgh fringe operators have begun moving into Edinburgh’s New Town venues as the Big Five operators consolidate their operations round the city’s Southside.

Remarkable Arts, the company set up by Tim Hawkins, one-time general manager of Edinburgh Fringe Society, and Dani Rae, one-time promoter liaison officer at the Society, is to take over St George’s West, which was dark last August. The Shandwick Place venue adds a 275 to 325-seat and a 100-seat space to Remarkable Arts’ existing smaller venues at the Hill Street Theatre.

The Edinburgh Playhouse has also announced that it is adding to its fringe presence, by taking over the running of the Hawke & Hunter Green Room on Picardy Place during August.

The Playhouse is already a major venue for the Edinburgh International Festival and host to one-off comedy performances on the fringe. The Green Room, a 200-capacity former night-club, has been regularly used as a fringe venue in the past.

Gary Roden, who took over as Playhouse general manager last October, told The Stage that the EIF would remain the venue’s main commitment, adding that: “this new venture will allow us to add another dimension to the theatre’s portfolio”.

The idea for expanding the Playhouse’s presence came from the venue, not its owner the Ambassador Theatre Group, according to Roden, who said he had to pitch the idea to the company. He is negotiating with a range of comedy, theatre and children’s theatre companies to perform this year but did not rule out the idea of the new venue being a platform for ATG product in future years.

He told the Stage: “The idea is to appeal to a classic fringe audience, but also to a Playhouse audience. There is a myth that people in Edinburgh don’t like the festival - this is an opportunity to offer our current audiences something different.”