Teepee Productions’ debut show at Buxton Fringe, Fluff, developed with Alzheimer’s Society, Herts Musical Memories and Trauma Breakthrough, has picked up the Fringe’s theatre production award.
Writers and producers Tayla Kenyon and James Piercy created the show after their meeting on an online writers’ course. Kenyon trained as an actor and worked as a drama teacher but always fostered a love of writing. Piercy wrote short plays and films but had never tackled a one-person show.
Teepee was formed after Kenyon, who appears in the show, and Piercy received funding from Watford and Hertsmere Council to take Fluff to small community venues around Watford.
Emily Carding won the female actor award for the Brite Theatre and Sweet Productions’ presentation of Richard III (A One-Person Show). It was created by director Kolbrun Bjort Sigfusdottir and Carding during a theatre residency in Reykjavik, Iceland in November 2014.
Patrick Kealy won the male actor award for The Life and Rhymes of Archy and Mehitabel. A Theatre Nation and Sweet Productions show, it celebrates the humour and satire of New York's jazz age as a one-person show.
The Pendleton Codebreakers from Salford won the youth production award for Hugh Whitemore’s Breaking the Code, which charts the life and work of codebreaker and father of the modern computer Alan Turing. Sam Bates won the new writing award for Sessions, while the John Beecher Memorial Award for “original, challenging work with high production values” went to Australia’s Nuworks for The Shoemaker of Havana.
The street theatre award went to Corinne Coward and Discover Buxton Tours for Sex and Sensibility.
Outgoing Buxton Fringe chair Stephen Walker hosted the awards ceremony for the last time and was full of praise for the Fringe’s 190-plus entrants. He noted that “genuine quality across the board” had made for long discussions among the judges.