Breffni Holahan wins The Stage Edinburgh
Award for Collapsible by Margaret Perry
Disruption: co-curated by HighTide and Assembly
Breffni Holahan has won The Stage Edinburgh Award for her performance in Collapsible – a piece by Margaret Perry (Porcelain), directed by Thomas Martin (Ross and Rachel). It comes to Edinburgh as part of HighTide’s Disruption series, in partnership with Assembly Roxy.
Holahan comments, I’d like to say a massive thank you to The Stage for this enormous honour. No takesies backsies now! My eternal gratitude to Margaret, Tom, Ellie and everyone on Team Collapsible. I was nervous I’d feel lonely performing solo for the first time, but I’ve made wonderful friends in you all, and in Essie.
Producer Ellie Keel adds, It’s been a joy to produce this complex, surprising, wonderful play in partnership with HighTide, and one of the best parts of that process has been seeing Breffni’s performance amaze and dazzle so many people. I can’t wait to take the show to Aldeburgh, the Dublin Fringe and finally the Bush Theatre in 2020!
The Stage Edinburgh Awards are presented throughout the festival. They are not defined by category but recognise an outstanding performance at the Fringe. In her review for The Stage, Natasha Tripney wrote, Breffni Holahan is mesmeric as Essie. A little wide-eyed even in the beginning, her performance builds gradually in intensity.
Collapsible (winner of VAULT Festival 2019’s Origin Award for Outstanding New Work) is a funny, furious new monologue about holding on. It follows the life of a complex, funny bisexual woman and looks at finding connections to people when you don’t feel connected to yourself.
Perry’s writing uses soaring imagination with sharp observation to take a tender look at one person trying to be normal. Blending a fearless, psychologically acute female performance with a set intervention that appears to float the performer in the air, we see that Essie Nutting, despite everyone’s protestations, quite literally doesn’t have her feet on the ground.
Also part of the Disruption programme are Kenny Emson’s Rust, Pops by Charlotte Josephine, and a double bill of shows presented with The Queer House from writers Teddy Lamb and Mika Johnson, as Kevin P. Gilday’s Suffering From Scottishness completes the curated programme.
The shows by Kenny Emson, Margaret Perry, Charlotte Josephine, Teddy Lamb and Mika Johnson will headline HighTide Festival, Aldeburgh 2019 (10th – 15th September).