Active Inquiry

Next In Line – Performance at Leith Festival 2011

24th June, 2011 - Posted by Gavin - Comments Off on Next In Line – Performance at Leith Festival 2011

Active Inquiry’s Flashback Drama Group had a very successful show in this year’s Leith Festival with their production of Next In Line which ran from the 16th-18th June 2011 at The Out of the Blue Drill Hall.

 For those of you who don’t know, the Leith Festival is an annual community festival in Leith, Edinburgh which takes place every June for 10 days and has a lively mixture of music, talks, tours, exhibitions, sport and theatre. Flashback Drama has been producing a new show for the Festival every year since 2008.

This year’s offering, Next in Line, was set in the mysterious “Waiting Room”. The Play told the story of John (Paul Hughes) who woke up in this place and had to decide where he was and whether to move on to Level 2! Throughout the piece his ideas on order and queuing were continually challenged by the mysterious Ali (Meghan Jeffrey). John was also not able to get much help from his fellow “waiters” – Ian (Dave Millar), Poppy (Donna Syme), Gerry (Jamie Gordon), Mary (Colleen Garrett) – or from the appropriately named Jobsworth (Sharon May).

Throughout the Play Ali conjured up various scenes from her bag of tricks to make her point to John that his notion of fairness does not exist including a memorable scene where John had to face different versions of himself at different points in his life and got a glimpse at his possible future.

At the end of the Play John’s number was called and he had to decide whether to move on to Level 2 or to take the side door.

 The three performances were all sold-out and the 50 strong audience each night gave a very warm reception to the Play. We have had a lot of positive feedback afterwards with some audience members saying that this was the best show from Flashback Drama! Thank you to everyone who came along and supported us as well as to Out of the Blue and the Leith Festival.

We had one very glowing review from STV and one not so glowing review from The Scotsman! We would love to know what you thought of the piece so please fell free to comment below.

Flashback will start up again in September and is open to anyone who wants to be part of creating a brand new piece of theatre for the Leith Festival in June 2012!