Creative Director Charlotte Hall and Programmer Liz Wolton have returned from the first Edinburgh Festival Fringe since 2019 full of optimism and praise for some fantastic pieces of work they've seen there, some of which will be heading to Eastleigh this season.
Charlotte reflects on her experience below...
'I was thrilled to be back at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and having been as an audience member, a performer and a programmer (only missing my annual pilgrimage because of pregnancies and pandemics), I have covered it from most angles. I love the city, the festival atmosphere but most of all I love the shows, even the ones I don’t love, because of the thrilling possibility that the next show will be the ‘best thing I have ever seen’.
There was a real buzz this year and it felt like audiences were overwhelmingly grateful, myself included, for the hard work, passion and effort given over by the artists so that we could all have a really brilliant time. Many of the shows I watched brought audiences to their feet and the atmosphere was electric. Nostalgic home videos, dark comedy, spine-tingling song, and light-bulb moment demonstrations weaved stories of climate change, connection, loss and identity, and over and over again I thought about how stories help me to know myself and other people better, connecting me to emotions I spend my day to day life dodging.
I exclaimed ‘best thing ever I have ever seen’ many times at this year’s Fringe and now we are back at our desks, Theatres and Festival Programmer Liz and I will try and bring this brilliant work to Eastleigh and Hedge End, motivated to find ways to make it possible for other people to see it too and to find out how they feel when they watch.
Excitingly we have a hit of the Fringe in our Autumn season already, so there isn’t long to wait: Destiny will be at The Point on 2nd and 3rd November providing that injection of theatrical magic with more wonders in our coming seasons.
