Underbelly, New Diorama Theatre and Concord Theatricals are thrilled to announce this year’s winners for the hit-making Edinburgh Untapped Award – designed to support and discover theatre makers at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The three winning companies who will receive a £10,000 cash grant to support their show in Edinburgh are, Counterfactual, piss / Carnation and Our Day. Tickets for all shows are on sale now and available from https://underbellyedinburgh.co.uk/untapped.
The partnership with Underbelly, New Diorama and Concord Theatricals aims to discover and support early and mid-career theatre makers at the Edinburgh Fringe and this year proves no different as the companies prepare to present game-changing work this August. Over the years, the Edinburgh Untapped Award has become a major launchpad, nationally recognised for its success in identifying and platforming brilliant new talent with winners going on to embark on successful tours, show transfers, securing international opportunities and win awards!
Counterfactual, a company founded in London and headed up by Nikhil Vyas and Jessie Anand, will present The Mosinee Project which sees paranoia and politics collide in this stranger than fiction Cold War drama. Mosinee, Wisconsin, 1950. An idyllic Midwestern town wakes up to find themselves in a nightmare. Armed Communist forces have taken over everywhere – imprisoning townspeople, cutting off communication, marching through the streets with nobody to oppose them. Prices are changed, barbed wire fences erected, and the Mayor is being held at gunpoint. Or so it appears. This is just the start of the story.
The critically acclaimed and award-winning piss / Carnation dance between performance art, alt-comedy and theatre. Performers Laurie Ward and Charli Cowgill present Ugly Sisters as their latest offering: a brutal ritual for a new kind of sisterhood forged from sleepover confessions, smashed toilets, and the death of Germaine Greer.* (*Germaine Greer was not harmed in the making of this show).
Having premiered at Omnibus Theatre to critical acclaim, Our Day’s DRUM, from founder Jacob Roberts-Mensah is a joyful and poignant play fusing storytelling, music and dance, capturing a unique snapshot of the swinging sixties inspired by real events. As the afternoon sun hits London’s BBC Broadcasting House, photographer James Barnor encounters broadcaster Mike Eghan for the first time. Thrown together far from home, two rising Ghanaian creatives navigate their perception of identity, success, assimilation and home.
The award has a remarkable record identifying stand-out companies presenting exceptional shows. Previous successes including Fringe First-winner It’s True, It’s True, It’s True by Breach, since adapted for BBC television; Nouveau Riche’s Stage Award-winning Queens of Sheba, recently performed at New York’s Public Theater as part of the prestigious Under the Radar Festival. Most recently, the 2023 cohort included Popcorn Writers Award winner Dugsi Dayz by Side eYe Productions.
piss / Carnation said today: “We are beyond thrilled to be recipients of the Untapped award this year alongside some really amazing companies. I mean, when we found out we were just in disbelief. We both cried. To actually have money and support to create the show that we want, to find our dream space and get access to a huge audience is just mega. We can’t wait. And already, the award has really allowed us to take some risks with the kind of work we are interested in. It has freed us up to try something new and we can’t wait to have some fun and hopefully cause a little bit of chaos.”
Counterfactual also commented: “At a moment when being able to make original theatre, even at fringe-scale, feels harder than ever before, receiving the Untapped Award has given us a tremendous sense of validation, and concrete, meaningful support towards realising our ambitions. We’re so grateful to New Diorama, Underbelly and Concord for their faith and trust, and can’t wait to be able to present this show to audiences in Edinburgh this summer.”
Our Day added: “It is great to have won this award. Untapped has clearly provided a step-up opportunity for previous winners and we hope to steward this opportunity well in order to make similar progress.”
Along with the £10,000 cash grant, Counterfactual, piss / Carnation and Our Day will also receive a package of paid-for PR and marketing support, an enhanced venue programming deal from Underbelly at the Edinburgh Fringe, and publication by Concord Theatricals under their UK imprint Samuel French Ltd. The expanded package directly responds to the challenges experienced across the festival by marginalised and under-represented artists attending the festival.
