The Stage

Stand wins Assembly bid for Edinburgh Fringe

Published Thursday 30 June 2011 at 15:45 by Thom Dibdin

Salt ‘n’ Sauce Promotions, the company behind leading Edinburgh comedy club The Stand, has been announced as the preferred bidder to run the city’s Assembly Rooms during the fringe from next year.

The Assembly Rooms are currently closed for a £9.3m refurbishment and will be reopened in 2012. Assembly Theatre, which has run the venue for 30 fringes, failed in a last-ditch bid to halt the refurbishment last Autumn and transferred its fringe operations to Edinburgh’s south side.

Making the announcement at the City Council’s culture and leisure committee on Tuesday, the convenor Deidre Brock said: “Salt ‘n’ Sauce Promotions have put forward some very exciting plans for their use of the Assembly Rooms during the summer festival period, and we look forward to working with them in the years ahead.”

Salt ‘n’ Sauce is best known as a comedy producer through its two existing Stand venues in Edinburgh and Glasgow, with a third due to open in Newcastle.

Director Tommy Sheppard is also Director of sister company the Scottish Comedy Agency, which runs the Magners Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

Sheppard told The Stage: “We are delighted and looking forward to working out detailed plans to make the Assembly Rooms the flagship of the fringe.”

The company has negotiated a three-year deal to hire the venue for the summer festival period, approximately five weeks during July, August and September.

Details of the deal have not been released but the culture committee was told that Salt ‘n’ Sauce had undertaken to stage

a varied programme of comedy, music and theatre and that income from the let would be positive for the Assembly Room business.

When the Assembly Rooms reopen the ground floor, previously used during the fringe as performance spaces and a members bar, will be used as a restaurant and retail space. There will be four public spaces for performance on the first floor. The tenant for the ground floor restaurant in the old Supper Room has also been announced as Jamie Oliver, who will open a branch of his Jamie’s Italian Kitchen.