Award win is first time lucky for university company

Published on Friday 22 August 2008 22:17

A STUDENT company from Edinburgh University is to take to the New York stage after winning a top Fringe award.

Eight, by the Edinburgh University Theatre Company, won the Carol Tambor Award, which takes a Fringe show to the Under the Radar festival in New York with all expenses paid.

The show consists of eight 15-minute monologues, each performed by a different actor. The audience coming into the show votes to choose which four characters' stories they want to see performed that day.

The stories range from a struggling single mother who takes a job preparing a wealthy Edinburgh woman's Christmas, to a gay man from London's art cognoscenti coming to terms with his lover's suicide.

Writer and director Ella Hickson said: "This is the first show I have ever written. I can't quite believe it at all."

The Tailor of Inverness, the story of a Scottish actor, Matthew Zajac, as he unravels the stories told by his Polish immigrant father, won the inaugural Holden Street Theatres Award to take a show to the Adelaide Fringe.