Friday 3 May
FRIDAY 3 MAY
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12pm Workshop: The Actor's Studio - Clare Prenton
2pm Music: Singing for Wellbeing - Katie Forbes
4pm Film: A Bear Named Wojtek
5pm Cabaret: Insufferably Love - Stuffed
5.30pm Play: Why Doesn’t Anything Ever Happen in Duns
6.30pm Music: Anne Gair Music
7.15pm Play: A Room of One’s Own - Firebrand
8:15pm Music: Antic Hay
9:00pm Play: The Honourable Gentleman - Tideline Runners
12-2pm The Actor's Studio
The Actor’s Studio is an exciting new, fun, adult improvisation-based workshop for 16+ from Borders-based director, Clare Prenton.
Based out of Eastgate Theatre Peebles, but visiting Duns for the festival, The Actor’s Studio is a London/New York style ‘drop in’ workshop class for anyone aged 16+ to learn new or hone old skills, based on the premise of Peter Brook’s seminal theatre text ‘The Empty Space’ - that to create fresh, vital and meaningful theatre we simply need :
the actor [present and alert] + the empty space = good theatre
No preparation is needed. No script will be used. Just bring yourself, comfy clothes and, if you wish, a water bottle. Each session starts with a fun ice breaker warm up and then learning improvisation through focusing on a provocation, a genre, a concept, an idea or a contemporary story from the news.
We’ll be looking at the ‘don’t deny’ rule in improvisation in this session, a positive approach to bringing fresh stories alive through the ‘Yes and...’ approach. The sky’s the limit with this exercise and it’s a lot of fun. Join us.
[Suitable for beginners to professionals aged 16+ and all levels between]
2-4pm Main Stage
Singing for Wellbeing, followed by music by Katie Forbes
This skilled and prolific song writer will be leading a dynamic set and workshop that will help you build confidence with your own song writing and help you to know where to start.
A fantastic opportunity to take part in a singing and songwriting workshop to get inspired and creative for 2 hours with likeminded creatives.
A great experience for budding songwriters, musicians and even beginners to come and have an explore into their journey into songwriting with an opportunity to perform and share their creations in a final show back.
We will look into song writing techniques, presenting opportunities to develop singing skills, evolve lyric writing and perform their ideas both individually and as a team.
Workshops are fun and inclusive, involving warm up activities, games and discussions. We will think about how words, sounds and music make us feel.
Our workshops are safe, nurturing and non-judgmental environments open to all levels.
All ran by experienced workshop provider Katie Forbes.
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4pm Main Stage
A Bear Named Wojtek
A BEAR NAMED WOJTEK tells the fantastic journey of an orphaned Syrian brown bear who was adopted by Polish soldiers during World War II, becoming a beacon of hope and an emblem of their fate.
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The film will be followed by a Q&A with the animation team and special guests.
5pm Cabaret Stage
Insufferably Love-Stuffed
FREE
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'Insufferably Love-Stuffed - a cosy cabaret with Harriet Spence-Reid and Susanna McEwen. Half an hour of song and speech all about our hearts, either blooming or breaking.’
5.30pm Main Stage
Why Doesn't Anything Ever Happen in Duns?
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'Why Doesn't Anything Ever Happen in Duns? is a tribute to Bob Noble's locally lorded "Nothing ever happens in Duns" series in which - as usual - we discover that as it turns-out quite a lot happens in Duns. Set in the bar of the Strip and Waddle pub, PC Peter Peterson our plucky policeman is pursuing people for petty pilfering when disaster strikes and as they always do, the good folk of Duns pitch-in and prevent pandemonium!
Written by Bob's great friend Peter Lerpiniere, Why Doesn't welcomes back old friends and adds few new ones to bring a bit of mayhem to the order that PC Pete is trying to create.'
6.30pm Cabaret Stage
Anne Gair Music FREE
Anne Gair is 'One of Scotland's most promising singer songwriters'. She has been described as Scotland's very own Joni Mitchell with a dash of Norah Jones and Sarah McLachlan.
7.15pm Main Stage
Firebrand
Presents
A Room Of One's Own
Adapted from the writings of Virginia Woolf. Building upon the success of its production of Nassim Soliemanpour’s White Rabbit Red Rabbit at DunsPlayFest in 2023, acclaimed Scottish Borders-based Firebrand Theatre Company is delighted to return to the Festival in 2024, this time with its own new theatrical adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s famous feminist essay, A Room of One’s Own. As profoundly thought-provoking as White Rabbit, but this time directed by the award-winning Richard Baron, this ambitious one woman show will once again feature the versatile Ellie Zeegen and engagingly reveal why Woolf’s brilliant and richly entertaining 1929 polemic has become one of the most significant feminist manifestos of this present time, and any time.
8.15pm Cabaret Stage
Antic Hay FREE
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Keith Crook (Fiddle, concertina, vocals),
Barny Maddox (Banjo, guitar, vocals), and Jimmy Manningham (Bass, vocals).
They will be playing souped-up, low-down, hoe-down music and hillbilly Cajun swamp pop gumbo.
A combination of original songs, traditional tunes with a twist, and off-the-wall covers.
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9pm Main Stage
RJ Flynn and Tideline Runners
present
The Honourable Gentleman
'Tideline Runners are back at their brutal darkly comic best following 2023s lauded The Smallest Story. Based on true events, this sharply written and darkly comedic two-act dramatises the aftermath of the political scandal involving Northumberland MP Lord Lambton and high-class call girl Norma Levy that rocked the UK in 1973. The play examines our fixation with public forgiveness, shame, and the social barriers that prevent forgiveness traversing the gender divide.'
