Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Every year, Scruffy Penguin take a cast to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. This is a fantastic experience for all the pupils and staff involved in the trip.  Thank you to Mrs Jenny Nunes for providing the following report:

‘This year, Scruffy Penguin decided to take a comedy up to the Edinburgh Fringe festival to try and compete with the ‘big guns’ at the toughest comedy arena in the world! They began the process by watching the TV programme ‘Child Genius’ for inspiration before improvising around some of their favourite character ideas. A script, entitled ‘Teen Master Brain, was then put together. It featured some hilarious characters such as Gerald, the father who loves to juice weird and wonderful vegetables in order to enhance his son’s synaptic transitions; Gandalf, the eccentric son of Father Walter who loves Lord of the Rings so much he called his son Gandalf “powerful you know!”; and Debbie, the highly disorganised and overwhelmed mother!

The crew spent an intensive week at Shiplake College putting the show together before venturing up to Edinburgh early Saturday morning. The 50 seater venue was central to the city and therefore meant that flyering for audiences every day before and after the show was lucrative and Scruffy Penguin experienced some of its biggest audiences to date as the week progressed. A particular highlight of the week was when Gerald juiced the only cucumber at the beginning of the show, leaving Walter to eat 6 raw Brussels sprouts in one mouthful!

The group also experienced some first class theatre, including comedy, musicals, circus acts and mask shows. Off the back of the trip, one of the best performances that we have seen are now coming to Shiplake College to perform their show and do a workshop for our students! This was overall a hugely successful trip!’

Everyone will get the chance to see Teen Master Brain as it will be performed at the senior production this year. The show will be running from Wednesday 8 November to Saturday 11 November and will start at 7.30pm.