Three award-winning plays for Perth arts festival

Perth Festival of the Arts has increased its dramatic offerings to audiences this year in the form of three award-winning plays brought from Wales, Teeside and the USA.

With Perth Theatre back in play again, two of the plays tell true stories of the lives of remarkable individuals living in the last century, as the 10-day Festival hopes to inspire, inform and entertain audiences with carefully-selected production that wouldn’t otherwise be performed in Perth.
The trio opens with A Regular Little Houdini for a one-off matinee performance on Saturday 18 May at 3pm.

The Flying Bridge Theatre production is a beautiful one-man play set in South Wales at the turn of the last century and is a coming of age story. Written and performed Daniel Llewelyn-Williams, the play follows a lowly dockworker’s son who idolises his hero Harry Houdini and commits himself to a life of magic. But as the harsh reality of working class life in Edwardian Britain gets in the way, audiences watch a young man trying to follow his dreams while poverty weighs him down like mud.

The production has taken home no less than five awards, including ‘Best Actor’ in Wales Theatre Awards. The one-hour play will be followed by a post-show Q&A with the actor/ writer.

The Festival’s second theatre pieces come together on the evening of Thursday 2 May in Perth Theatre, offering a special double-bill. Hailing all the way from Los Angeles, is the internationally-acclaimed Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany. The short play, written and performed by Ingrid Garner, is a theatrical adaptation of her grandmother Eleanor Ramrath Garner’s award-winning memoirs, detailing her youth as an American caught in WWII Berlin.

A Regular Little Houdini is coming to Perth

During the great depression, when she is nine, Eleanor’s family moves from her beloved America to Germany, where a new job awaits her father. But war breaks out as her family is crossing the Atlantic and return to the United States becomes impossible. Eleanor struggles to maintain stability, hope and identity in a world of terror and contrasts.

This true story, with its themes of social and political turmoil, is strikingly relevant almost 80 years later. Ingrid Garner enacts the universal yet seldom reported experience of civilians in wartime. In a thoroughly physical production, accompanied by sound, images and video, the audience will be immersed in her grandmother’s harrowing journey of survival.

The production has achieved great acclaim in Fringe Festival circuits around the globe, including Hollywood, Australia and in 2017, Edinburgh Fringe, where Perth Festival of the Arts first spotted and reviewed the outstanding production. In an interview with Hollywood Fringe, actor

Ingrid explained: ‘I hope my audiences feel inspired to inquire with their own parents and grandparents about their experience of war. Many people fall silent after a war… It took my grandmother 60 years to share her story. This is a story about how citizens, especially innocent children, are affected by war.’

Ingrid Garner performs an adaptation of her grandmother Eleanor Ramrath Garner’s award-winning memoirs

The trio of plays culminates on 23 May within a piece of unique modern folk theatre with five-star reviews. Presented by three-time BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winners, The Young’uns, The Ballad of Johnny Longstaff is the true story of one man’s adventure from begging on the streets in the north of England to fighting against fascism in the Spanish Civil War, taking in the Hunger Marches and the Battle of Cable Street. It’s a timely, touching and often hilarious musical adventure following the footsteps of one working class hero who witnessed some of the momentous events of the 1930s.

The production has a touching back-story. At the end of a gig in 2015, folk singers The Young’uns were approached by Johnny Longstaff’s son who was in the audience and asked to tell the story of his father’s remarkable life. With their trademark harmony, honesty and humour the Teesside trio then brought together 16 specially composed songs, spoken word, striking imagery and the real recorded voice of Johnny himself to tell a remarkable human story oozing with modern relevance.

Tickets for the plays and all Festival shows are on-sale via the Horsecross box office 01738 621031 or online www.perthfestival.co.uk. The Festival runs from 16-25th May 2019 in venues across the city and has 35 events running this year.

Perth Festival of the Arts is an annual 10-day May Festival, founded in 1972, and taking place in the City of Perth in Scotland. Now in its 48th year, it is one of the leading independent arts festivals in Scotland. It started as an opera and classical music festival in the early ’70s and now covers all art forms. The Festival programmes top international and national artists, as well as supporting young emerging talent in Scotland.

The 2019 Festival begins on Thursday 16 May and runs until Saturday 25 May 2019 in venues including Perth Concert Hall and Theatre, St John’s Kirk, St Matthews Church, Perth Cathedral and The Loft nightclub.

Click HERE for more details on the Perth Festival of the Arts.