Ozymandias is a mish-mash of the historical and literary Ozymandias. Broadway Baby has a chat.
Ozymandias has been in the pipeline for a while. The show enjoyed success at this year’s Durham Drama Festival, where it won the award for ‘Best Show’ and the chance to perform at the North East Drama Festival in Newcastle.
Tell us about your show
Ozymandias is a comic, one-man, absurdist piece, during which the audience meets and interacts with an interpretation of the titular character of Percy Shelley’s poem: Ozymandias. The character is a combination of the historical Ozymandias and the literary Ozymandias, and he wishes for little more than to impart his worldly knowledge and experience to any passing travellers.
Why did you decide to take your show to Space UK this year?
The Space UK has brilliant reputation for supporting new writing and university companies, consistently putting out high quality theatre each year. So it was an easy choice for the company’s second year at the Fringe.
Why Edinburgh? What’s the attraction?
Ozymandias has been in the pipeline for a while. The show enjoyed success at this year’s Durham Drama Festival, where it won the award for ‘Best Show’ and the chance to perform at the North East Drama Festival in Newcastle. Following these two runs it seemed right to unleash the show on the general public and what better place is there for a new piece of theatre than Edinburgh?
What makes your show unique amongst the thousands of others at the festival?
We can guarantee that this is the only show in Edinburgh during which you will get some rudimentary biology lessons, Egyptian trivia, existential angst, 12A levels of nudity and The Bangles.
How did you create your show?
The show began as a series of free-writing exercises riffing on the themes in Percy Shelley’s poem Ozymandias. Following a few sessions all the notes were compiled and gradually via an extensive cutting process, the nonsensical ramblings morphed into the show that we are presenting to you this year.
Can you tell us a bit about your company’s background?
Raving Mask is a theatre company from Durham University; we aim to put on a varied and challenging selection of shows each year, with previous shows including: Endgame, (Samuel Beckett) Waiting for Godot, (Beckett) Educating Rita (Willy Russell) and Old Times (Harold Pinter). We attended last year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival with The Noctambulist a piece of new writing, which enjoyed a successful run with 5* reviews. We are hoping to capitalize on last year’s Fringe and experience similar success this year.
Production Company: Raving Mask
Venue: TheSpace at Jurys Inn
Dates: 7th-22nd August
Times: 22:10-23:00
Twitter Handle: @ravingmask
