October 1, 2009
UW students win ‘Best Newcomer Award’ at Edinburgh Fringe Festival
The UW School of Drama’s TBA Collective has won the Edinburgh Festival Insider Best Newcomer Award for its production of The Grind Show 2009.
According to the Edinburgh Festival Insider, the performers were chosen “For their infectious enthusiasm, for their dark and cleverly-realized vision, for their patronage of fellow performers throughout their visit, for their encapsulation of the spirit of the Fringe – and most of all for the fact they deserve all the encouragement they need to return here again next year with another show which will no doubt surpass the already wonderful Grind Show.”
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the biggest arts festival in the world and the number one tourist attraction in Britain. The festival includes theater, comedy, music, dance, exhibitions and much more. The 2009 festival featured a total of 34,265 performances of 2,098 shows with an estimated 18,901 performers taking the stage.
Sponsored by the UW’s Exploration Seminars, students in the Theatrical Futures Seminar traveled to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival the past three years. But the summer of 2009 marked the first time an actual show toured to the festival. The Grind Show, an original work inspired by the previous trips, was developed by the TBA Collaborative, a student-run ensemble group, and has been in development over the past two years at the School of Drama. Together, students produced, directed, performed, and toured the show to Edinburgh.
Opportunities in set, costume, lighting, sound, stage management, marketing, running crew and more were available for this project. It was a one-of-a-kind opportunity to learn how to put together a show and take it abroad, something that cannot be learned in the classroom. In addition to this, the seminar included a section devoted to studying global performance. Students saw more than 25 shows in three weeks, attended lectures and workshops while comparing and contrasting international performance trends.
Producer for the project was Andrew Tsao, an associate professor with the School of Drama.
