Features / Starring role in Edinburgh musical for Christie
A SHETLANDER is playing a lead role in a theatre production of the multiple award winning rock musical RENT, which starts a five-night run in Edinburgh tonight.
Joe Christie will take to the Church Hill Theatre stage in the Morningside area of the city for five nights from 10-14 February as one of the main cast members in Edinburgh University Footlights’ production of Jonathan Larson’s musical.
Directed by Elske Waite, it chronicles a year in the life of a young Bohemian group of friends – plotting their fight for personal and artistic freedom from commercialism under the oppressive shadow of HIV/AIDS in 1980s New York.
Christie takes on the role of struggling filmmaker Mark Cohen, who documents a time and movement which “irreversibly altered the face of American social progress in the late 1980s”.
The 20 year old, from Levenwick, is currently in the first year of a French and English literature degree at Edinburgh University. He said it had been demanding trying to balance the show with his coursework, but “completely worth it”.
“It’s been such a phenomenal experience working on RENT over the past six months,” he said. “It’s a challenging show, both vocally and emotionally, but it’s forced me to push myself in a way which has been immensely rewarding.”
He added: “The themes which RENT was groundbreaking to tackle in the mid-90s – poverty, gay rights, the HIV/AIDS crisis – continue to have so much relevance today despite the fact the musical is roughly as old as I am.
“The production is working in partnership with Waverley Care, Edinburgh’s HIV/AIDS charity, and they’ve been fundamental in helping us understand the psychology of the characters.”
RENT was first given a workshop performance 20 years ago. Footlights was founded by West End and Broadway producer Colin Ingram in 1989 and has gone from strength to strength, recently being described by the Edinburgh Evening News as “one of the most respected theatre groups in Britain”.
- Tickets to see Joe Christie starring in RANT between Tuesday 10 and Saturday 14 February at 7.30pm (with a 2.30pm matinee on Saturday) are available at www.edfootlights.co.uk.
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