Assembly Announces ART Award Winners and Creative Lab Recipients 

The Assembly Roxy Theatre (ART) Award was established in 2018 to support Scottish-based performance companies and practitioners to debut new work at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In 2020, impressed by the high quality of applications received, the Assembly programming team decided to support three Scottish-based practitioners instead of one.   The ART Award winners were chosen in 2020 but have waited until 2022 to be part of the Assembly Festival programme.

The 2020 winners are:

Kolbrun Bjort Sigfusdottir – current Mayfesto Resident Director at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow and Artistic Director of Brite Theatre, for her production Sandcastlesby Steve McMahon – a play about friendship and forms of grief that moves back and forth in time and memory to tell the tale of the lifelong friendship of two young millennials, Hannah and Beth.

Isla Cowan – Scottish playwright, director, and performer specialising in ecofeminist theatre, for She Wolf – a one-woman play about interspecies, interaction and gender/class politics in society.

Pearlfisher – for their new production Silkwormby Vlad Butucea and co-produced by the Byre Theatre – a play about two women claiming asylum from the UK Home Office from a tower block in Glasgow.

Continuing their commitment to investing in new theatre in Scotland, Assembly Theatre, based at the Roxy year-round, is also delighted to support three theatre companies with more Creative Labs following a successful pilot scheme in 2021.

Roxy’s Creative Lab Recipients 2022 are:

Paper Doll Militia – known for their pioneering and original aerial theatre. During their week-long residency at the Roxy they plan to work on the set for their new circus theatre production about mental health.

In the Making – who experiment with instant dance performance amid live music guided by shared scores, creating complex interactions with each other and the audience.

Some Kind of Theatre – based in Edinburgh who create work with literary themes and created Theatre On The Sofa which brings theatre performances into non-traditional performance spaces, including the offices, schools and living rooms.

Director of Assembly Festival William Burdett-Coutts said, “We are delighted to be able to announce the winners of the 2020 ART Award at last, and look forward to their shows being part of this year’s theatre programme at Assembly. We are also grateful to the Performing Arts Venue Relief Fund for supporting our Creative Labs for a second year and hope to see these Scottish-based companies showcasing their work at future festivals in Edinburgh. As we move towards a more ‘normal’ year for the Fringe, I’d like to wish all six companies tremendous success with their shows and look forward to welcoming back to Edinburgh the artists and visitors that we have missed so very much during the pandemic, and who have been such a big part of the Festival since Assembly began over 40 years ago.

Tickets for the ART Award winners’ shows Sandcastles, Silkworm, and She Wolf will go on sale in April as part of the Assembly Festival Fringe Programme for 2022.

Assembly Festival runs from 3 to 29 August 2022. Tickets will go on sale in early March. For more information, visit www.assemblyfestival.com

Irene Brown