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Dateline: 9th June, 2002 Fringe Programme Launched Shows in response to September 11th, stuttering successes, hard-hitting political satire and World Cup-inspired theatre are just some of the events in this year’s festival line-up as art imitates life for Fringe 2002. The 56th Edinburgh Festival Fringe (which runs from 4-26 August 2002) boasts 20,342 performances of 1491 shows in 183 venues. From the powerful and poignant to the funny and frivolous, this year’s line-up projects and dissects a year gone by, affirming the Fringe’s position as a completely open platform for artistic debate and expression. The attack on the World Trade Center resonates throughout the programme. Project 9/11 relates seven personal accounts of living in NYC on the day of the tragedy, whilst Jumpers follows four New Yorkers coping with its aftermath. Dance, poetry and music are used to examine the attack’s ramifications in Bodies in Crisis, as are physical theatre techniques in The Art of War. Most of the headlines will be reserved for political provocateur Michael Moore, however, who delivers his own take on the events in his first ever live one-man show; and drag-star Tina C, who performs a biting satire on the media reaction to the event in her Twin Towers Tribute. Appearances from Rory Bremner and Tony Benn, the return of America’s premier political comic Will Durst, the secretly taped girl-talk between Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp in Snatches and Perrier-winning Rich Hall and Mike Wilmot’s Pretzel Logic ensure that politics at home and abroad is also high up the agenda. Football and the World Cup are the inspiration for five Fringe shows this year: An Evening with Gary Lineker, The World Cup is Not Enough, My England, Owen O’Neill’s My Son the Footballer and Theatrum Botanicum’s outdoor spectacle The Boy with the Magic Feet. Commenting on the launch of the Programme, Fringe Director Paul Gudgin said: “It’s headlines that sell shows at the Fringe, but this year the headlines are the inspiration for many of the shows themselves. Supporting this strong news theme, however, is an exceptional programme of home-grown and international performances, of which a quarter are world premieres”. Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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