New interactive game show Blue Badge Bunch is coming to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival at The Pleasance, 3rd-15th August 2022, a family friendly game show offering audiences the experience of understanding what it is like to have different disabilities through interactive games.
The “disability Taskmaster” is hosted by comedian Benny Shakes, with co-hosts Kate Lovelock and Mark Nicholas, plus star guests across the festival. The panel get to experience how it feels to have a disability by playing interactive games such as ‘Below the Belt,’ where panelists (and audiences) draw with their bare feet, work out sentences from a speaking aid in ‘Jamie’s Gamey’, and guess the price and purpose of disability equipment in ‘The Price is Wrong’.
Host Benny Shakes has cerebral palsy and has been awarded £30k from Arts Council England to develop and tour the show, with support from Attenborough Arts Centre (Leicester), The Quarry Theatre Bedford, New Art Exchange (Nottingham).
This money will crucially give disabled artists more paid opportunities and raise awareness of the issues they face through a fun and engaging way.
Host Benny Shakes said:“I am very excited about bringing Blue Badge Bunch to Edinburgh this year. The show means the world to me; it has a serious side and a funny side and the audience gets to see how disabled people live every day.
“Blue Badge Bunch started as a show for adults, but we quickly found that we could make more of a difference with young minds and developed it into a children’s show. I have struggled all of my life to be accepted in society, and I wanted to create a show that could make the next generation think differently about disability.”
