Letters Home

A co-production between GRID IRON and EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL

Part of the Glasgow 2014 Cultural Programme
Also part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

9th – 25th August 2014

Charlotte Square Gardens (and various buildings around Charlotte Square)
Fringe venue: 383

AWARDS

Winner Scotsman Fringe First
Nominated Creative Edinburgh Collaboration Category

What does home mean to us, especially when we’re away from it?

Multi-award-winning site-specialists Grid Iron and the Edinburgh International Book Festival bring you stories from around the world. Written by exceptional Commonwealth writers and adapted and directed by four exciting Scotland-based artists, Letters Home is a verbal, visual and musical journey in and around Charlotte Square.

The writers are Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, best-selling author of Orange Prize-winning Half of a Yellow Sun and now one of the best-known writers from Africa; Kei Miller, the acclaimed Glasgow-based Jamaican poet and a winner of the 2014 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature; Kamila Shamsie, the brilliant Pakistani-British author who was included in Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2013;

and Christos Tsiolkas, the Australian author whose bestselling novel The Slap painted an entertainingly shocking picture of multicultural Australia.

Their pieces build into a stunningly moving evocation of dialogue as it has shaped relationships all over the world, and throughout the history of humankind.

Directing the pieces are Ben Harrison, Joe Douglas, Michael John McCarthy and Alice Nelson, working with co-ordinating director Zinnie Harris, designers Becky Minto and Rebecca Hamilton, lighting designer Colin Grenfell and composer Philip Pinsky.

Production photography by Janeanne Gilchrist.

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What The Press Said

“At a time when the Fringe is muscling into spoken-word territory, Letters Home is a stylish counterstrike for the book festival, examining the theatrical potential of narrative.”

The Guardian★★★★

“The intimate art of letter writing may have given way to the impersonal pings of social media over the last decade or so but this quartet of short works presented by site-specific maestros Grid Iron in a unique collaboration with Edinburgh International Book Festival goes some way to claiming it back… stories with themes of exile and the umbilical link with home are taken off the page and brought to life in this gentlest of fusions between forms… all four pieces are rendered exquisitely. It is Zinnie Harris’s final postscript to the show, however, which moves the most, as the audience is allowed to eavesdrop on the cast’s post-show state of mind. There’s something touching about seeing and hearing such personal bon mots spoken out loud in a show that shows off Grid Iron at their finest.”

The Herald★★★★

“From the oral traditions of ancient culture to the tap-tap-tap of keyboards of the digital age, Letters Home celebrates communication across space and time in a unique collaboration between Scottish theatre company Grid Iron and Edinburgh International Book Festival… imaginative multimedia promenade…visually arresting… These four brief, poetic fictions overlap in a moving coda, which brings together the throng to eavesdrop on backstage banter, where our experiences become delicately entwined with the magnificent cast.”

The Metro★★★★

“To enjoy Letters Home to the full go with the flow and surrender to its surprises as you go on an adventure across the world and through the ages… the programme works exceptionally well as a whole through the dialogue in which all the characters betray their real selves.”

The Independent★★★★

“Some of the most enduring fictional works have been structured around correspondence, but can the epistolary form also create compelling theatre? Grid Iron’s portmanteau of short dramas in the form of letters, the first collaboration between a theatre company and the Edinburgh International Book Festival, suggests so.”

The Times★★★★

“As the conventional hand-written letters falls from favour, what is the future for correspondence? The question seems to hover behind Grid Iron’s ambitious Fringe project, created in collaboration with the Edinburgh International Book Festival and Culture 2014, to engage four Commonwealth writers to write in an epistolary format and stage them in spaces around Charlotte Square… the scope and ambition of the project, and the quality of the writing, speak for themselves.”

The Scotsman★★★★

“Letters Home combines inventiveness, variety, sophisticated writing and sheer visual magnetism. The Edinburgh International Book Festival’s first foray into theatre, a site-specific piece in collaboration with Grid Iron, uses Charlotte Square to stunning effect… Each piece on its own would be a satisfactory experience. Together, they make a magnetic whole. There are so many others whose contributions should be noted – Philip Pinsky’s music and sound design, technical staff in all of the venues, and not least the front of house staff who shepherd the audiences around the Square… The skill, variety and sheer emotional power of the evening as a whole make it almost overwhelming. It is to be hoped that those not lucky enough to get tickets will have a chance to see it on some other occasion.”

AllEdinburghTheatre.com★★★★

Cast & Creative Team

CAST

Chisara:
Muna Otaru

Oyin:
Rhoda Ofori-Attah

DETAILS

Written by:
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Director:
Joe Douglas

Movement Director:
Vicki Manderson

Composer/Sound Designer:
Philip Pinsky

ENGLAND IN A PINK BLOUSE

Written by:
Kei Miller

Director/Composer:
Michael John McCarthy

Video Designer:
Tim Reid

VOICES:

Maxine:
Lorna Anders

Nicky:
Katrina Beckford

Kei Miller:
The Writer

EVE AND CAIN

Written by:
Christos Tsiolkas

Director/Adaptor:
Ben Harrison

Composer/Sound Designer:
Philip Pinsky

CAST

Bondmaiden/Eve:
Charlene Boyd

Bondman/Cain:
Gavin Marshall

Voice of Eve:
Joanna Tope

WAR LETTERS

Written by:
Kamila Shamsie

CREATIVE TEAM

Film Director:
Alice Nelson

Film Producer:
Lili Sandelin/ North Isle Productions

Director of Photography:
Ian Dodds

Editor, Motion Graphics:
Lewis Gourlay

Sound Design:
Zoë Irvine

Sound & V/O Recordist:
Ali Murray

Costume, Make-up, Production Assistant:
Calum MacDonald

Costume Assistant:
Lindi Wright

CAST

Wahid:
Adam Buksh

Qasim:
Bhav Joshi

Nurse:
Lili Sandelin

Hospital Soldiers:
Tarun Purba, Mitchell Cobb, Justin Armijo, Ryan Hagen, Calum MacDonald

Across Production
Creative & Production Team

Producer:
Judith Doherty

Creative Co-ordinator:
Zinnie Harris

Lighting Designer:
Colin Grenfell

Composer/Sound Designer:
Philip Pinsky

Set & Costume Designer:
Becky Minto

Assistant Set & Costume Designer:
Rebecca Hamilton

Finance & Development Manager:
Deborah Crewe

Production Manager:
Fiona Fraser

Technical Manager:
Roy Fairhead

Stage Manager:
Mickey Graham

Deputy Stage Managers:
Samantha Burt, Alice McKay, Anne Page

Design Assistants:
Emily Bates, Elspeth Chapman

Technicians:
Dave Cooper, Kieran Diamond, Chris Ferrie, Francis Stevenson, Andy Reid

Front of House:
Bangs (and PostScript), Alex Dickson, Jack Kinross (and PostScript), Rob McDonald, Laurence Motherwell, Seth Oberlander, Steph Smart, Beata Zemanek

Set Build:
B Scenic

Programme design:
Emma Quinn

Pop-up Banner Design:
Beata Zemanek

Programme photography:
Douglas Jones

PRODUCTION PARTNERS:
Letters Home is the result of a close partnership with the Edinburgh International Book Festival, who have been involved in the project from its inception. The production would have been impossible without the creative and practical work put in by each and every member of the Book Festival team.