UW Students Win Prestigious "Best Newcomer Award of 2009"
at Edinburgh Fringe Festival
at Edinburgh Fringe Festival
The UW School of Drama is proud and thrilled to announce that the UW’s TBA Collective’s production of The Grind Show has won the Edinburgh Festival Insider Best Newcomer Award 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 theatre, 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 and now in its third year, the Theatrical Futures Seminar brought, for the first time, a world premiere original show to the festival. Already in development in the School of Drama, The Grind Show is an original work developed by the TBA Collaborative, a student-run ensemble theatre group. Together, students produced, directed, performed, and toured the show to Edinburgh as a special class in producing live theatre.
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 over 25 shows in three weeks, attended lectures and workshops while comparing and contrasting international performance trends.
Program director and Instructor for the project was Andrew Tsao, an associate professor with the School of Drama. He has directed professionally in theatre and television for the past twenty years, both nationally and internationally. He teaches dramatic structure and creativity, acting, directing, and screen acting for the Professional Training Program.
Additional information:
UW Exploration Seminar website: http://depts.washington.edu/explore/programs/2009/scotland.htm
UW Drama: drama.washington.edu
Performance website: http://www.thegrindshow.com/
The Award: http://edinfest.blogspot.com/2009/08/edinburgh-festival-insider-best.html
Edinburgh Fringe Festival: http://www.edfringe.com/
