FORMER pupils of the Cherwell School in Oxford are treading the boards of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for a second year.
After a successful run at last year’s Fringe, their theatre company, Idle Motion, has created a piece called Borges and I.
The company returned to their old drama studio at the North Oxford school to rehearse.
The company includes the pupils’ former drama teacher, Paul Slater, who has helped guide and direct his ex-pupils in the creative process.
He said: It’s fantastic for a school to have a kind of extended network that is beyond A-Levels.
“The work that Idle Motion do is accessible to the students and something for them to aspire to.”
Borges and I is inspired by the life and work of the Argentinean writer, Jorge Borges and combines the themes of reading and blindness, focusing on a couple who meet at a book group.
Idle Motion weave the words of Borges with physical theatre, puppetry and dance, to tell the story.
Mr Slater added: “Even though I have seen it so many times I take away something different from every performance, but that partly lies in the quality of Borges’s writing.”
The company – which comprises Kate Stanley, Ellie Simpson, Sophie Cullen, Grace Chapman, Joel Gatehouse, Julian Spooner, Robbie Wilson – met while studying drama at Cherwell.
Drama graduate Miss Stanley, of Blenheim Drive, North Oxford, said: ‘We are massively excited to be returning to the festival.
“It feels likes a real step up, we wanted to really test ourselves this year and make things harder in order to reach the height of our abilities.
“The fact most of us were doing our final year of university this year and organising the production has made the whole thing massively challenging.”
Heidi Vaughan, from the Oxford Playhouse, said: “Idle Motion are an inspired and welcoming company with an extraordinary ability to make audiences warm to them instantaneously”.
The company is a non-profit organisation and has had to raise £6,000 for the festival trip next month.
The group raised the money through a series of club nights, raffles, garden parties and previews of the show for family and friends.
Borges and I runs at the Edinburgh Fringe between August 7 and 28 at the Zoo venue.
news@oxfordmail.co.uk For more information visit idlemotion.co.uk
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