每两年举办一次的爱丁堡艺术节优秀戏剧节目展演由英国文化协会主办，作为爱丁堡艺术节的重要一部分，今年已经进入其10周年。该展演汇集了来自英国各地的最新及最有创意的视觉及形体戏剧作品、新型写作、实验话剧及现场艺术等，并为全球的戏剧推广者提供了一次难得的交流契机。今年中国地区将有来自北京，上海和香港的16位戏剧界人士参与展演，共同体验英国最新的戏剧创作，结交世界各地的戏剧界同仁。
British Council’s Edinburgh Showcase enters its 10th Anniversary this year – featuring the latest, most interesting and innovative UK theatre available for international touring. The Showcase happens every other year and is a unique opportunity for international promoters seeking to engage with UK theatre to see up to 20 productions in just one week and take part in networking events with theatre companies, other promoters and British Council officers. There will be 16 Chinese delegates from Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong to attend the Showcase this August.
Sally Cowling has had plenty of experience getting people across borders. As the British Council's director of drama and dance and instigator of the Council's Edinburgh Showcase, which has run bi-annually during the final week of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for the past decade, she's used to the 3am phone calls from theatre companies attempting to bridge frontiers on the other side of the world.
The day Cowling arrives in Edinburgh following the launch of 2007's Showcase and an accompanying publication, however, her difficulties are altogether more local. The delay on her London to Edinburgh flight is only two-and-a half hours, but such a schedule hiccup illustrates the potential for disaster in showing the wares of more than 30 theatre companies to several hundred delegates, producers and bookers from around the globe.
"At the time we started in 1997," Cowling remembers, "theatre was perceived to be the declining strand of the Fringe. That's not to say there weren't a lot of shows on - it's just that some of the more interesting companies weren't coming to Edinburgh any more. There wasn't enough guarantees that they would get anything out of it in terms of career development. The way we work at the British Council is very much about working with partners overseas, and letting them make up their own minds about what work they want.
"So it's about us, if you like, helping to bring a set of choices in front of them, though it would be naive of me to think that we aren't making choices too, or editing, because we're choosing what we think is the best work from a very broad palette. I hope we're eclectic about it, because we're not a funding body like that. So the Showcase became a place where people who bring shows to Edinburgh will have upwards of 150 promoters from across the world looking at their work. It's about matchmaking, really."
Originally designed to be a one-off event to give theatre a boost in a climate in which the Fringe was seen as being dominated by comedy, the British Council Showcase's success story can be gleaned from the companies it backed in its first year. While established names including Steven Berkoff, Nottingham Playhouse and the Traverse Theatre (the only company to consistently feature in every Showcase so far) featured, relatively new kids on the block such as Suspect Culture and Frantic Assembly were also put in the frame with Out of Joint, the Wrestling School and Northern Broadsides.
From that first year alone, David Harrower's play Knives in Hens toured Germany, and has since been translated into 25 languages. Also from the Traverse programme that year was Mike Cullen's controversial play, Anna Weiss, which toured 10 countries and was translated into 12 languages. At that time, such international exchanges were relatively rare; these days it's more common.
"The thing that's been really interesting," Cowling maintains, "is the relationships that have developed out of initial meetings. Sometimes things don't happen for four or five years, and then there might be a co-production, or some kind of follow up. When Improbable Theatre did the first Showcase, they got a couple of American dates. When they were over there they were offered two tours. So there's this huge arc of success. That's really gratifying to see, because quite often we deliberately choose relatively young companies, like Improbable were then, because international promoters know about Cheek by Jowl and will already have a relationship. What's more interesting, for us and them, is to watch the next generation of companies coming through. We try to support them at that stage, because it can be quite scary, showing off your work to a couple of hundred promoters in that way."
This is part of the reason why the number of companies in the Showcase is limited - so promoters and artists can meet face to face during a busy time in a manner that isn't too much of an attention-seeking scrum. While the 2007 Showcase features two plays by David Greig and Tam Dean Burn's adaptation of Luke Sutherland's novel, Venus as a Boy, for The National Theatre Of Scotland, new works by Stan's Cafe, Filter and Gecko also make an appearance.
In terms of developing relationships, the Traverse followed up its Balkan tour of Henry Adam's play, The People Next Door, with a return visit to Kosova with Adam's follow-up, Petrol Jesus Nightmare #5 (In the Time of the Messiah). Vanishing Point's Lost Ones also visited the Balkans en route to Sri Lanka, and the company stumbled upon a Balkan band who will now take part in the company's forthcoming production later this year.
Similarly, when Grid Iron visited Jordan, they not only introduced site-specific work into a culture with no history of such a way of working, but they then employed an actor from the Arab world to appear in Roam, the company's airport-set exploration of national identity.
For all the Edinburgh Showcase's success stories, there have also been some disappointments over the years. Some shows inevitably haven't lived up to their potential, while others don't transfer or translate well in a new venue. "I never find it easy to explain why you choose something," Cowling admits, "but even with lots of advisors and the best will in the world, there's bound to be things that don't work." Some might also argue that creating a selected tier of work in the manner that the Showcase delivers goes against the democratic spirit of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It is also observable that some companies deliberately gear their schedule towards the Showcase, skipping non-Showcase years in order to maximise their potential for inclusion.
Cowling acknowledges both perceptions, but defends her project stoutly. "It's no different from a venue choosing what it programmes. By definition, when you curate something, there are things that aren't being curated, but we come up early and see as many shows as we can that we don't know about. We're constantly trawling what's going on, and if something appeals we will recommend that promoters go to see it. "We don't put big British Council signs up everywhere, because we don't want shows to be just things that promoters go to. It's good for promoters to see audience reaction, so we try and cement the experience and make it as normal as possible."
Cowling's personal favourites over the past decade include 70 Hill Lane, by Improbable Theatre, who would later go on to collaborate with The National Theatre of Scotland on The Wolves in the Walls. She is keen that the Edinburgh Showcase continues to pick up on theatrical trends, be they in site-specific, verbatim, cross-platform work or new writing.
"What we want," Cowling says, "is for countries to take work that surprises them, and not necessarily just take work that we might think fits in with our perceptions of their culture. We want to generate and encourage a mutual form of curiosity, and that can sometimes take years to bear fruit. When it does happen, and when it works, it's a real pleasure." In the meantime, Cowling has a plane to catch, and many other borders to open.
British Council Edinburgh Showcase 2007, August 20-25.
For more information, visit www.britishcouncil.org/ edinburghshowcase
