TWO Devon-based acts will be heading to Scotland this summer to participate in the prestigious Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Surreal stand-up poet Edward Tripp and BoonDog Theatre will be taking their shows to The Fringe -  the world's largest performance arts festival, which in 2018 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 different shows across 322 venues

Edward, the former Bard of Exeter,  makes his Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut in August with a brand new comedy-poetry show, Edward Tripp: No Man is an Ireland. 

Coming to Edinburgh on his Auntie’s dime, he has a dark, brooding, and frankly furious brand of ‘stand-up poetry’.

The Devon-based Northern Irishman, who has supported the likes of Rob Auton and Hollie McNish, is desperate to be taken seriously as a poet. 

To do so he plans to connect with those few [sic] people who find they switch off at poetry recitals and spoken word nights.

His new show turns his genre-bending, somewhat trippy poetic adroitness to his Irish roots, reflecting on his sense of belonging in the South West of England, the dangers of mispronouncing Ferrero Rocher, and the primordial fear you experience before visitors arrive at your home.

Fringe favourites BoonDog Theatre  will presents PISKIE, a brand new beautiful story about the tug of war between fantasy and reality. 

Written and performed by Lucy Roslyn and directed by Jamie Firth, PISKIE is a show for all those who believe there is still a little magic to be found in the world.

Ouida Burt was raised on the fantasy stories of her hometown - where the piskies of Dartmoor are waiting to lead dreamers astray. The family joked that her father - a somnambulist - was at risk. He would sleepwalk, “piskie-led” - so he said - by Ouida’s cherished imaginary friend “Bert”. But, one night, he sleepwalked out of their family home and onto the moors… never to return. 

Years later, Ouida is now a respected psychologist, an academic, and a realist. In PISKIE, the audience joins her as she leads a talk on fear. As usual, she’s here to debunk the irrational and fantastic - to explain away the inexplicable with cold, hard evidence. It is time to turn a light on all those things that go bump in the night. 

The show interrogates the entrenchment of ideas, showing that even the most rational people have irrational beliefs, and asks why it is so easy to give advice that you do not take. A beautiful story about magic versus cynicism that sends the audience away charmed, and just a little bit spooked. 

Performance details for both show can be found at www.edfringe.com.