The Arts Diary: Come to the booths for a cleaner peep

NEW venue at the Edinburgh Fringe this August: a peep show. For the production, PEEP, audience members will sit alone in 12 private booths specially constructed outside the Pleasance Grand theatre, and watch plays about sex through a two-way mirror.

Dirty raincoats not provided.

Sex sells at the Fringe, of course, but the makers of this show carry the most serious of theatre credentials, and puerile voyeurism is out of the question.

Director Donnacadh O’Briain has major productions in London, Edinburgh and Rome under his belt, as well as working with the Gate theatre in Dublin and Michael Boyd, at the RSC.

Playwright Pamela Carter has had commissions for the Traverse and the Dresden State Theatre while Kefi Chadwick won Best New Play at the Brighton Festival in 2011 with Mathematics of the Heart.

The production, by Natural Shocks theatre company with Scottish partners ek, is said to throw up all kinds of “interesting questions and theories about shared experience vs solo voyeurism”.

“While peep shows traditionally allow the audience to see sexual bodies, PEEP will reveal the sexual psyche,” the blurb promises. “This is a truly exhilarating experience of viewing the most intimate of moments – simultaneously being alone in your voyeurism while also partaking in an illicit shared experience.”

Graham’s So funny

The Fringe, which launches its programme next week, was an early pitstop for Graham Norton, apparently when he appeared as a tea-towel-clad Mother Teresa of Calcutta. He’s back this year in the position of producer for the first time, with Shirley & Shirley, a comedy duo doing a sketch show promising gags from “desperate Scouse wives to manky women”.

The show is brought to Edinburgh by So Comedy, an arm of So Television, set up by Graham Norton and Graham Stuart in September 2000 to make high quality entertainment television.

Festival of light

For an entirely different kind of festival, Luminate is the name for Scotland’s “brand new national festival” – aimed at showcasing arts, creativity and, above all, ageing – in the autumn.

It is backed by Creative Scotland, the Baring Foundation and Age Scotland, and driven by research showing older people are less likely to take part in the arts. Luminate was chosen from over 20 names suggested by the general public and creative and care industry insiders.

Festival director Anne Gallacher says it “expresses a sense of light and energy and reflects the feeling of optimism and anticipation that we are looking to achieve”.