Kirstin Innes

The Forest Café celebrates tenth birthday

Volunteer-run café is a true original in Edinburgh

The Forest Café’s tenth birthday, happening mostly on Saturday 14 August, but spreading its shambolic, joyous tentacles throughout the rest of the month, is one of those true causes for celebration. That an entirely volunteer-run, hippy-hearted…

Andrew O'Hagan's novel looks set to be turned into a feature film

The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, And of His Friend Marilyn Monroe

The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, And of His Friend Marilyn Monroe is not your run-of-the-mill contemporary novel, and not just because the eponymous first-person narrator is an aristocratic Maltese terrier with Trotskyist tendencies, owned by the…

Dance Doctor Dance! explores our relationship with movement

Doctor of dance delving deep into artform

Peter Lovatt actually is a doctor of dance: he heads up the Dance Psychology Laboratory at the University of Hertfordshire. Given a biography that includes stints as a ballet dancer, cruise ship entertainer and expert-for-hire on The Graham Norton Show…

120 Birds tells tale of 1920s Australian dance company

Homage to Anna Pavlova and ballet’s golden age

‘This is not a history lesson,’ explains the pre-publicity surrounding 120 Birds, one of Dance Base’s specially-commissioned works for the Fringe this year. In a way, that’s true – it’s a fictional story of the travels and travails of a 1920s Australian…

Cento Cose marks multimedia dance debut for physical theatre collective

Award-winning look at day-to-day life with Aphex Twin score

Italian physical theatre collective Compagnia della Quarta’s multimedia Fringe debut is based on the idea that there are ‘cento cose’ (‘one hundred things’ in Italian) that contemporary life requires us to do each working day. ‘We started with “we do…

Derevo bring 'real theatre' back to Edinburgh Fringe with Harlekin

Fringe favourites return – and this time it’s war!

‘We just enjoy being in a city where there are more street artists than pedestrians,’ says Anton Adasinskiy, director, performer and founder member of Derevo, one of the most lauded companies to come to the Fringe in the last decade, on his decision to…

While You Lie preview

Playwright Sam Holcroft talks to Kirstin Innes about the eagerly awaited follow-up to her searing de

‘What would happen if we started being completely honest with each other, right now?’ asks Sam Holcroft. ‘You could tell me everything you’ve heard about this me and this play; I could tell you exactly what I think of The List. What would happen to that…

The Vanishing Horizon preview

Idle Motion takes you on a journey through the gateway to the globe

On the face of it, a show by some recent Oxford graduates, about... some recent Oxford graduates who attend a book group doesn’t sound like particularly special or unusual Fringe fare. However, Borges and I, by young physical theatre company Idle Motion…

Neighbourhoods, Watch! - Leith Festival Vs West End Festival

In the East corner, Edinburgh’s Leith Festival! In the West corner, Glasgow’s West End Festival! Kirstin Innes adjudicates the battle of the community fests.

Music festivals 2010: Festival profiles

Big or small, loud or quiet, dry or muddy – we love festivals whatever their size, sound or likelihood to leave you soaking wet. Over the next 20 pages we'll give you the lowdown on every major fest hitting Scotland this summer, and information on a few…

Seafood theme to East Lothian’s 3 Harbours Arts Festival 2010

Kirstin Innes finds out why East Lothian’s 3 Harbours Arts Festival has a whole new fishy wing

From the West Bank

These three short plays (two world premieres by David Greig and a revival of a work by Franca Rame) are sparse, clean and simply presented. The pared-back staging, language and performances from Cora Bissett, Ewan Donald and Benny Young (all three of…

Pedal It Pink cycle marathon in aid of Breast Cancer Campaign

If you go down to the park today, you’d better go in disguise. And that disguise had better be pink. Breast Cancer Campaign’s women-only, pink-clad cycle ride, Pedal It Pink, is set to turn Edinburgh’s Holyrood Park pleasantly pastel this…

Graffimenco combines live graffiti with flamenco

Like graffiti art? Course you do. Like flamenco dancing? Absolutely. Well, haven’t you been longing for somebody to put them together into one riotous burst of graffiti-splattered, passionate Spanish dance-art? No, we’re not entirely sure what the…

Queen’s Park hosts Glasgow's Southside Festival 2010

It’s that time of year again, when the Southside and the West End begin manouvering their respective festivals for a dance-off. It’s basically like the Jets and the Sharks with less singing and more community-based activity and marquees in the park. The…

Scottish history and art lesson at Show Scotland 2010

One of the most unfortunately underrated annual events in the country, Show Scotland is unfurling itself out across the May bank holdiay weekend again, and we advise you to sit up and pay attention. Not so much a festival as a nuanced celebration of…

The best things to do in Glasgow

Where to … … take a walk Dumbarton Road is Mecca for enthusiastic charity shoppers (tip: start off at the Salvation Army near Byres Road) – make a day of it by wandering round the junk and vintage shops of nearby Ruthven Lane first. (Kirstin…

Risky Glaswegian Business

In a city full of strong cultural scenes, Kirstin Innes argues that Glasgow’s greatest strength is its willingness to take risks The one thing that creative Glaswegians really understand is that in order to make exciting art you’ve got to take risks…

Shopping for Form and Function with The Gin Palace collective and GOOD-D

Ahead of Glasgow International, two neighbouring pop-up exhibitions appeared in the city to explore the links between art and commercial design. Kirstin Innes went rooting about in them... Over the weekend of Friday 9 to Sunday 11 April, two pop-up…

Six Short Piano Pieces

Arnold Schoenberg wrote his sparse, tiny Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke (Six Short Piano Pieces) in 1911, at a time of great personal and artistic upheaval. It’s no coincidence that Ian Spink has chosen this particular work for his first choreographic…

Kamikazi Girls (Shimotsuma Monogaturi)

(12) 103 min (Third Window Films) Kawaii-cute Momoto (Kyôko Fukada) lives in a beruffled fantasy world, more at home in 18th century Rococo France than the small Japanese farm town of Shimotsuma, until tough teen biker-girl Ichiko (Anna Tsuchiya…

Clutter Keeps Company

The title of this new young adult production from Birds of Paradise is so eye-catchingly obtrusive, it’s a surprise to come out after 80 minutes and realise that it’s really kind of irrelevant to the story. However, Davey Anderson’s packed-out script…

Dundee Rep take on Peter Schaffer's pony tale Equus

It’s not entirely down to Daniel Radcliffe’s torso that Peter Schaffer’s 1973 work Equus is undergoing something of a renaissance, but it was certainly the prospect of naked boy wizard that reignited interest in the play. It’s the kind of interest that…

Why there's life in the book trade yet

Reading and righting

Between the bankruptcy of Borders before Christmas and the oncoming onslaught of cheeky upstarts like the Kindle and the iPad, popular wisdom would have it that things are looking a little gloomy in the world of book selling. It’s certainly a…

Oxfam DIY shop to open in Glasgow

In Glasgow, the Oxfam clothes store at 231 Byres Road (just opposite Hillhead Underground Station) is undergoing something of a major makeover. In order to complement the Byres Road Oxfam book and record stores, as well as compete with the increasingly…