Emily, along with fellow artist and collaborator Andreia Simões, spent two weeks in Mareel developing her one-woman show Garbanzo.
The residency provided intensive studio time to develop the show's movement language, and the opportunity to share their creation practises by facilitating two community workshops.
How did Garbanzo come about?
"This iteration of Garbanzo is a restaging of an existing project. Some years ago, Emily began developing Garbanzo as a one-woman show and it had one small work-in-progress sharing at a local bar in Sitges, Barcelona.
Then, in late 2024, Andreia joined the Garbanzo team as a director/co-devisor, to help develop upon this fun (but very rusty!) idea, and it’s been all up since then! Creative collaboration and second-opinions help projects grow much faster and become much richer, so in the months that we have been working together we have delved deep into the characters and their stories in order to completely rebuild the show in a new way."
What was the creative process?
"The first week was mostly about brainstorming and playing with ideas. We started creating the show from the characters’ physicalities, using the techniques of Corporeal Mime.
In the second week, it was about setting up the material we found and solving problems, while re-writing the script at the same time. In other words, we crammed so many ideas into these two weeks that it felt more like a month! And we would absolutely do it all over again."
What was it like doing a residency at Mareel?
"Mareel’s team were friendly and welcoming at every stage of the residency. The facilities are amazing, which contributed to a productive experience. This is truly a great space to be making new art.
Besides the research and development for Garbanzo, we also did some physical theatre workshops for the community- one for adults and one for young people from S1-6. We were delighted that so many people came and were amazed with everyone’s can-do attitude. Thank you to everyone who came for creating such a trusting space- we were so happy to meet you all and see a group come together to help each other reach outside their comfort zone.
The final part of the residency went even better than we could ever have imagined, as we were fortunate enough to perform our work-in-progress sharing to a sold out room. Furthermore, we were humbled to see so many audience members stay for our post-show Q+A, where they supported the project by giving some truly valuable feedback. What a conclusion!"
Where can you find Garbanzo next?
"With the support of Keep It Fringe, Garbanzo is making its Fringe debut this August! We would love to see you all there!
Find us at Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 11th-16th August 2025 at 11.45am at Greenside @ George Street, Fern Studio.
We are an intimate show with very limited seating at the venue so we highly recommend advance booking. Tickets are available here, or via the Edfringe App."
