New Play at the Edinburgh Fringe Will Feature Buffalo Playwright, Director and UB Cast

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- "Playing it Cool," a new one-act play by University at Buffalo alumnus and Buffalo native Rachel Lynn Brody, will premiere at Scotland's high-energy, often controversial Edinburgh Theatre Festival Fringe, which will take place next month.

The Fringe, which sells one million tickets a year, takes place in and around the prestigious annual International Edinburgh Theatre Festival. This year the International Festival is a three-week affair that will present major productions of theater, opera, music and dance from Aug. 16 to Sept. 5.

The Fringe, on the other hand, will run Aug. 8-30 and will present a staggering 1,695 performances of nearly 200 theater, children's theater and opera events in smaller venues in Edinburgh. In addition, the city's "Royal Mile" will become a massive street stage hosting every type of Fringe performer, from musicians, street artists, fire eaters and tightrope walkers, to "Auld Reekie" and his terrifying tour of the city's ancient haunted underground.

The plays to be seen here may be new or familiar, but comedies traditionally make up a very large part of the menu, and this year there will be 98 of them.

Among them will be "Playing it Cool" at Edinburgh's Gateway Theatre, under the direction of Joyce Stilson, a UB Theatre and Dance alumnus now affiliated with the city's Alleyway Theatre. It will star Melinda Wright of Honeoye Falls, N.Y., and Stephen Stocking of Buffalo, undergraduate students in the UB Department of Theatre and Dance.

The comedy/drama is set in Buffalo and addresses the issue of emotional honesty through the plight of a young man who falls in love with his best friend -- a girl who has no idea how he feels. A workshop production of the play previously was presented at Edinburgh's Queen Margaret University College, where Brody is pursuing a joint Master of Arts and Master of Fine Arts degree in dramatic writing.

Brody graduated with honors from UB in 2003 with a bachelor's degree in media study (video production). She also studied playwriting under Anna Kay France, Ph.D., adjunct instructor and associate professor emeritus in the UB Department of Theatre and Dance

While attending the university she edited the Arts & Entertainment section of The Spectrum, and wrote theater reviews for the paper's Prodigal Sun supplement and promoted The Spectrum's coverage of theatre performances on campus and off. Brody previously had two short films and a radio play produced, and reviews Scottish theatre for the online British Theatre Guide.

Travel and accommodations in Scotland for the actors and directors will be funded primarily by the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at UB, and by the Vice Provost for International Education and the Department of Theatre and Dance.