Wee Pod takes the high road
A VALUED bit of Manchester theatrical history travels to Edinburgh next week as Manchester-based production company, Cyclops Events, bravely set about running a new temporary venue at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival.Called The Pod, it's the Fringe's only purpose-built performance space in-the-round - but it should be more familiar to north west theatre-goers as the Royal Exchange Theatre's mobile touring theatre.
After providing a much-needed home for the company after the IRA bomb in 1996, it has spent the last four years in storage since the company returned to their rebuilt theatre.
Now the seven-sided tubular aluminium structure - "like a cross between a garden shed and a spaceship", suggested one observer - is being sent north to Edinburgh's Festival Square on the back of two articulated lorries next Monday.
Once there it will take a team of 10 men 10 hours to build and will be used to stage over 250 hours of live performance.
Some of the biggest names on this year's Fringe, including last year's Perrier Award Winner, Daniel Kitson, David Hadingham, Tommy Tiernan, Stockport comedienne 'Mrs. Barbara Nice', and the jazz-based play The Buddy Bolden Experience (as recently seen at the Royal Exchange Studio Theatre), will perform under its flame-retardant, PVC-coated, nylon roof.
The Pod
The idea of The Pod, says Cyclops co-founder and Project Manager Heidi Mavir, "had been floating around in the back of my business partner Andrew Waddington's mind since he worked at the Royal Exchange, when he toured with it as the Royal Exchange Mobile.
"Then when the Gilded Balloon suffered a fire at the end of last year, quite a lot of valuable performance space was lost and the feeling was that there needed to be a new venue to take up that slack.
"So it kicked in properly after Christmas and we spent January and February assessing where we might put it, who we could book and so on.
"The Royal Exchange have been quite keen also to put it to some use. But the cost of putting it up for a relatively small amount of time is considerable and also you need a crew who know what they're doing.
"There's never been anybody who's been able to put together all the original touring crew together until Andrew now.
"It's risky in that this is a costly venture but, because it's the Edinburgh Fringe where everyone is looking for space to perform and there's a million people looking for entertainment night after night, you've got a much better chance of making it work, especially if you can attract big names like Daniel Kitson to perhaps offset the chance you take with the smaller shows," Heidi reveals.
"The hope is that if The Pod is a success then we'll be working long-term with the Exchange on using it more around the country.''
Previews in The Pod, Festival Square, Edinburgh, begin on Wednesday, July 30, with performances every day from 11am-1am until Sunday, August 24.
Published: Fri, 18 July, 2003
Comment on this article
You need to be logged in to comment. Login | Register