AGENDA
NEWS
50th birthday Festival to re-create triumphs of the past
THE EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL Festival's 50th birthday programme, unveiled recently by director Brian McMaster, will aim to recreate the highlights of a half-century of Festivals.
The retrospective includes new productions of Verdi’s Macbeth, the first opera ever performed at EIF; a rare production of Richard Strauss's Ariadne Auf Naxos and its companion piece Le Bourgeois Genti/homme, last performed at the I950 Festival; and a production of The Birthday Party by T. S. Eliot, which had a festival world premiere in 1949.
The music programme features seven major reCreations, including the Rotterdam Philharmonic’s performance of Schubert’s 'Unfinished' Eighth Symphony and Mahler's Das Lied Von Der Erd, and a series of archive recordings of key concerts from the past 50 years, including a 1966 recital of Beethoven and Schubert by Fritz Wunderlich, who died a few days later.
Spanking new work is also included in the programme, including two shows
from Spain — Cegada De Amor (B/inded By Love), the country's most successful theatre piece ever, and Tomas Breton’s La Verbena De La Paloma ( The Festiva/ Of The Dove), a tragi-comic zarzue/a or light opera. The Gateway Theatre in Leith Walk Will be partially converted to house three shows, including one by young Scottish company Suspect Culture.
German director Peter Stein brings his magnificent Cherry Orchard to the Festival Theatre, a performance which McMaster has been attempting to bring to Edinburgh for five years now. ’I felt it was the greatest piece of theatre I had ever seen’, he said at the launch last week.
The dance programme is strong, with viSits by New York’s legendary Twyla Tharp Company, NDT III the 'mature' arm of the Nederlands Dans Theater, and France’s Ballet Atlantigue Reg ne Chopinot, whose performance Vf.‘(](‘fc')/ is an interaction with work by Scottish- based envrronmental artist Andy Goldsworthy.
Glasgow club aims to be firestarter
BUDDHIST CHANTING, HEALING arts and envrronmental actiVism are the ingredients in a new venture which organisers hope Will shake Glasgow clubbers out of their apathy.
Club Versus, launched by the Kingston Bridge Collective (KBC), is billed as an entirely new approach to clubbing, aiming to tap into the dance scene's hidden strengths
The collective has grown out of
; movements such as the Faslane peace ' camp and the M77 road protest
Roads campaigner Marcia Gibson believes it Will provrde a focus for those wanting to get more involved
'There is a big untapped resource of people coming along to clubs, but clubbers are too used to haying things put on for them,’ she said.
The club night Will encourage
participation and anything goes 5 according to Gibson. ’Anything that
can be fitted into a club atmosphere is
welcome '
The launch night at The BedSIt, Glasgow, featured face-painting, drumming and even impromptu
haircuts Videos of anti-roads actions provrcled a backdrop
KBC hope future incarnations Will
F include Juggling, workshops in Buddhist chanting and eastern healing arts such as Shiatsu and Sheri
Versus is currently running at The
Bedsit, With the next night scheduled for 25 April Further club nights will 3 take place in the more spacious
surroundings of Glasgow School Of Art “Stephen Naysmithr
4 "IE llST ‘1 l i Apr 109/
Video amnesty
HOMELESS YOUNGSTERS COULD benefit from a new offensive against video piracy, and the public are being called upon to help.
During an amnesty which is being backed by major video stores, anyone who owns one or more ‘pirate' videos can hand them in at various collection points
The tapes will then be recycled, with money raised going to NCH Action For Children's ’House Our Youth 2000' campaign.
According to the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACng which is organising the campaign, surveys show more than half the population would
; refuse to buy pirate videos
SQUEAMISH BOOKSELLERS HAVE forced
a change of strategy for a vegan author, after they obiected to his appearance on a cookery book's cover
' in the altogether.
Tony Weston, who wrote the vegan cookbook Rainbows And Wellies, waded naked into a Ioch for the
photograph, but readers are spared the
sight of his nut cutlet thanks to a strategically placed bunch of bananas Still, Edinburgh distributors Bookspeed have found some retailers are unhappy about the book, feeling
the cover is in dubious taste
However Weston is unrepentant 'The sort of people who would be offended
. by the cover aren't going to buy the
book anyway,’ he pointed out
'We
wanted to show that not all vegans
'Magnificent': Peter Stein's The Cherry Orchard
Tickets for all events (including the Bank Of Scotland Fireworks Concert, whose tickets normally go on sale later) are available by post from Monday 7
April, and by telephone (0131 473 2000) or in person from various outlets in Edinburgh from Saturday 19 April. (Andrew Burnet)
initiative to help homeless
However others see them as a way of savmg money, and seeing films before they are officially released on Video or even in the cinemas Sales are estimated to cost the film and vrdeo industry £200 million a year
FACT's director Reg Dixon said, 'Vrdeo piracy is on the run, but we estimate that 21 million pirate Videos are already in British homes
We are calling on the public to demonstrate against the pirates by emptying their shelves of pirated vrdeos and handing them back to the legitimate trade for a good cause '
FACT says there are various ways to tell whether a video is pirated These include poor gualrty or photocopied
were skinny, pale and had goatee beards '
Karen Boglialo, a partner in Findhorn Press, who publish Rainbows And lt/e/lies, backed his view 'Vegan people tend to be rather different It is hard to know there has been reszstance to it People don't seem to l:ke his ha'e body, but If you look at top-shelf magazines, they are really rather more offensich
A new push by Bookspeerl aims to sell the book on the strength of its content, rather than allowing the cover to become an issue They argue Weston's recipes for Si‘ri‘.‘.’i'(‘(l and coconut mousse, cotters' carrots and vegan chocolate mousse ‘.'.lfl amply reward the less-prudish purchaser IStephen Naysrriith‘
covers printed On only one side, a security label which peels off eaSily or a cassette With the brand name of a company which makes blank tapes.
While buying pirate Videos is not a crime, FACT is hoping the public will take advantage of the chance to help tackle homelessness by handing suspicious tapes to Video stores. Participating chains include Blockbuster and Global Video
NCH Action For Children's ’House Our Youth’ campaign, launched earlier this year, aims to eradicate the problem of youth homelessness by the year 2000. It claims this is posSible, given a practical approach and the right policies iStephen Naysmith)
; Vegan author puts booksellers off their food
JOHN PAUL
Weston: no cover up