Help Quirky Robur Theatre get to Fringe 2024!

Hi!

We are members of Quirky Robur, a new school theatre company from East London. We have a chance to perform at the August 2024 Edinburgh Fringe – the biggest arts festival in the world! We’re so excited (and a little bit terrified!), but we need your help to get there.

We’ve managed to secure a venue, one of the wonderful Riddles Court theatres in the heart of Edinburgh, and we’ve managed to get a really good deal on accommodation by staying in the cheapest possible student halls outside town. But we still need to do lots of fundraising to help cover that cost as well as our travel and the registration to be part of this extraordinary festival.

Who We Are:

There are a huge number of us in the school who are deeply passionate about theatre. Give us the hint of a chance, and we’ll be there, devising plays, learning lines, painting sets, programming lights, fitting mics, sewing costumes, performing, designing, singing, dancing, directing. Why? We all share a fascination with the magical trick that theatre can perform: gathering together a group of strangers to share in an evening of collective imagining! We believe that, at its best, it can be positively life changing for performers and audiences alike.

Many of us aspire to careers in theatre, so we take each opportunity very seriously and push our school productions to the highest standard possible. This chance to perform at Edinburgh is the culmination of years of unfaltering hard work and commitment. Involvement in this project goes far beyond the cast – the massive school choirs are recording our original songs, a team of incredible textiles students are designing and constructing the costumes, we’re even hoping our talented history students will lead further research into the forgotten true events that inspired our piece. Our school has never gone to the Fringe before -it’s ambitious!- but if we can prove that it’s possible, we can try to offer the same opportunity to future students.

The Play:

Last Spring, a group of pupils successfully produced, directed, designed, and performed a piece of theatre in a school-wide drama competition. Out of that concept grew Quirky Robur and our new, entirely original show, ‘Silt Song’ which we warmly invite you to come and see on the 7th, 8th, 9th of August 2024 at the Thistle Theatre in Greenside @ Riddles Court. Below is a sneak peak or you can find a description in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival programme! https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/silt-song :

What belongs in a woman’s trousseau? Something old, something new… a plan of escape? This is a folktale about love, blame, sisters, brothers, rivers and rage; a story woven from court cases, waterways, and the true account of Jane Clouson who lived and died in 1870s Deptford. Once mythologised simply as victim or seductress, Silt Song reclaims her. Jane is vivid, brilliant, and brimming with intensity, a wanderer desperate to breathe freely. She and her friends spend their time singing, mudlarking and studying the moon above the beaches of the estuary. When her testimony is written out of history, Jane’s friends swear an oath upon the silt of the Thames – a flood is coming and she won’t be forgotten.

Shot through with original music and gorgeous stagecraft, ‘Silt Song’ cries for silenced voices to be heard.

The devising is well underway, with our original script, songs, movement, set and costume design progressing well. We will be keeping you posted on our progress here and on social media, with production photos (and maybe even a few video teasers) released regularly.

Help our little theatre company with a big show get to Edinburgh!!

Thank you so much!

Klaudia, Zun, Gabby, Lily, Lorenza, Finn, Annabel, Milly, Erica, Eva (our ex-student director), and every pupil involved!

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