The Barn Theatre will be welcoming some of the best performers from the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe Festival for the inaugural ‘Fringe at the Barn’ event that gets underway next month.

Comedians, magicians and improvised drama acts will appear at the theatre during the four-day event, which begins on Wednesday September 12th. Iwan Lewis, Artistic Director of the Barn Theatre, recently travelled to Edinburgh to choose his favourite acts and is confident the performers will be a real success when they take to the stage at the Barn Theatre.

He said: “I drove up to Edinburgh with the producer of the Barn Theatre for the opening couple of days of the Fringe. We booked tickets for every show that was highly recommended. We ended up seeing 35 shows over the weekend which was quite an experience! We saw some incredible performances and we’re very excited to announce that our favourite acts will be performing at the very first ‘Fringe at the Barn’.

“The ‘Fringe at the Barn’ event is something we hope to run every year. We’re bringing four of the best acts that we saw in Edinburgh down to Cirencester so that the people who didn’t get the opportunity to get up to Edinburgh can enjoy seeing some top-class performances. The Edinburgh Fringe is the world’s largest arts festival, the variety of performances is what sets it apart. Some people see the Edinburgh Fringe as just a load of stand-up comedy acts but there’s so much more going on and our choice of acts reflects that.

“It’s encouraging to see the reputation that the Barn Theatre has already built in such a short time, and we’re very excited by the diverse talent that we’ve managed to secure to launch our second season. It’s essential for us to continue building on our vision of making the theatre accessible to as wide an audience as possible and I’m confident that these gifted performers will provide brilliant entertainment for all ages.”

“We’re in the process of revealing the line-up for ‘Fringe at the Barn’ in the coming days. What I can say at this moment in time is we’ll be welcoming a supremely talented magician who is a superb performer. One of our comedy acts is a female comedian and a theatrical performer, she writes songs which are laugh out loud funny and is a brilliant performer. Another act we’re excited to be hosting is an improvised show that were very popular at Edinburgh. All of the acts we’ve booked are going on international tours so to be able to host them in our theatre is extremely pleasing.”

It’s an exciting time for the theatre, who will be announcing plans for their new season in the coming few days. Iwan added: “We’ve got a lot of big announcements to make in the very near future. We’re all thrilled with the plans we’ve got in place and hope we can carry on building on the momentum of our successful first season.”

The most recent production to be held at the theatre was ‘The Rise and Fall of Little Voice’, which proved extremely popular with audiences, so much so that the theatre extended the show for a further week. Iwan added: “I was delighted that we were able to end our first season off in style. The reaction to the show was incredible, which resulted in us extending it so more people could see it. It shows the appetite people have for quality theatre productions.”

The good news keeps coming for the Welsh director, whose talents have been recognised with a nomination by the Stage Debut Awards. The awards recognise breakthrough theatre talent, with Iwan being nominated in the Best Director category for the production of ‘One Minute’, the play held at the Barn Theatre earlier this summer. Iwan added: “I’m thrilled for the theatre more than anything. It’s a great achievement for me of course, I’m proud to be nominated alongside so many talented directors.”