UNCSA goes to Edinburgh Fringe

For the first time in a very long time a group of UNCSA Drama students will be taking a play to the largest play festival in the world: Edinburgh Fringe Festival. We have been offered to perform at the Bedlam Theatre, in the heart of the festival, for 12 nights. The theatre is a converted neo-gothic church that has participated in the Fringe since 1980. Since 1937 its been run by students at the University of Edinburgh, who we hope to make a strong connection with so that UNCSA Drama can perform at the festival for many more summers to come.

Our company is called What Time Is It? Productions and is presently made up of Darah Barenholtz, Julian Rees, Grace Woosley, and Aidan Roche (me). Around a year ago, I wrote a play called "Why Did I Crush My Balls? And Other Tales From The Generation of Too Much" (see below for a full description of the show), it's a dark comedy that points at and calls into question the bankruptcy of intimacy and nuance we so casually experience in our day to day lives. And that is the play we four will be taking to Fringe.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (as mentioned) is the largest play festival in the world (and the third biggest globally ticketed event in the world, beaten only by The Olympics and The World Cup), it is the ultimate hub for new and weird theatre; anyone can perform anything at the festival... so long as you can find a venue that will put it up. The benefits of going to the festival are boundless; many careers (of both actors and playwrights) have been jump started through the Fringe, there are new plays happening literally 24/7, and the attendees range from global tourists to top industry professionals and stars.

Presently, UNCSA has little to no connections to the Fringe, so it seems like a no-brainer as to why it would be advantageous for the school's students to get their feet in the festival's doors. Its been a personal dream of mine since my freshman year of high school to go the festival, and when I wrote "Why Did I Crush My Balls?..." last year, I immediately knew: this was the one. This was the one that was weird enough to get people's attention at such a huge festival. So, with the encouragement of many mentors and friends, I began the application process in October. Five months later and we officially have a contract with the Bedlam; however, because it is such a huge event and because we have such a prime time slot (9:30pm), it is a rather expensive journey for a few college students.

We are asking for $5,000 USD mainly for the venue fee. During the more popular time slots in the festival fees for the venues get much more expensive, and since we have been offered such a sought after slot, the fee sits at around $4,500 USD. The rest of the money will be distributed amongst the company to help with air fare. While there are obviously other expenses (housing and the like), we are hoping to cover the venue fee first, as payment happens in 3 installments. The first of which is mid April.

If you can contribute anything it would be greatly appreciated. If you cannot, please share it with those who you think can. Thank you so much.

We hope we can pave the way for future UNCSA students to share their work with the world.

Description of the show:

Imagine if John Leguizamo’s “Freak” and Steve McQueen’s “Shame” had a baby. That baby would be titled “Why Did I Crush My Balls? And Other Tales From The Generation of Too Much.” The play starts off as a one man, gory stand-up act that pokes fun at what we do and do not deem socially acceptable in a culture that is constantly balancing both radical acceptance and scathing exclusivity. But as the night goes on, blood gets lost, and GUY (our protagonist) tries progressively harder to convince the audience that his knack for crushing his nuts is not as outlandish as it might appear (acting out scenes of his life, from his first time all the way to his most recent relationship), it becomes clear that the gimpish situation he finds himself in is a Trojan horse for a much larger cultural dilemma. When the postmodern world we live in allows us to scratch every itch we have… when do those itches become more? When do they become things that invade our lives and impede our well being? And while internet culture spreads a new gospel of rejecting masculinity, do we still practice what we preach behind closed doors? With scalpel precision, clownish humor, and the chaos of a firecracker the play examines the cognitive dissonance between our holistic selves and our sexual selves within an era of mainstream media telling us to do one thing, while the open web fully encourages another. Ultimately the story wraps itself into a castrated cautionary tale about what it means to learn all the wrong lessons from the world of too much.