Jake Mace
Truman Capote was famous in his time for staging parties that would simultaneously delight and and scandalise 1960s US high society. Alessia Siniscalchi and Paul Spera from Kulturscio’k Live Art Collective have put together their own garden party for this year’s upcoming Edinburgh Festival Fringe, aiming to capture the spirit of what they call Capote’s ‘great social coup’, a star-studded black and white masquerade ball in 1966. We caught up with Alessia for a pixelated pint to find out how they’re doing it.
You can catch Garden Party – Truman Capote’s Black and White Celebration from August 1st to 9th at Annexe at theSpace @ Symposium Hall from 16:05 (50mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.
Jake: Hi Alessia – your upcoming EdFringe show explores Truman Capote’s relationship with championing and embracing the Queer. Tell us about what inspired the show and why you decided to tell this story now.
Alessia: Garden Party is a performative celebration of Truman Capote’s obsession with beauty, scandal, and the masks we all wear that are not for aesthetics reasons. What fascinated me about Capote was how he embraced queerness not only in his personal identity, but in the way he carved out space in elite social circles as an outsider. Today, with increasing tensions around gender, class, and identity, it felt urgent to revisit a figure who blurred boundaries with such flamboyant elegance — and to question the price he paid for it. The show is also deeply personal — a tribute to chosen families, to exile, to freedom — and to the loneliness that sometimes sits beneath glamour.
Jake: Tell us about what the audience can expect coming into the show, and what they might not expect about the show.
Alessia: Expect to be transported into a surreal, immersive “black and white” dreamscape — an echo of Capote’s infamous 1966 ball. But this isn’t a historical reenactment. The audience walks into a cabaret where ghosts of the past flirt with contemporary rebellion. Expect live music, confessions, and theatrical experience. What might surprise you is how emotionally raw it gets — behind the spectacle, there’s a real confrontation with betrayal, failure, and erasure.
Jake: What are you hoping the audience might take away from the experience, if anything?
Alessia: I hope they walk away questioning who gets to tell stories, who gets remembered, and at what cost. But I also want them to feel a sense of joy — joy in reclaiming identity, in celebrating differences , in resisting money power. If they leave with glitter in their minds and something unsettled in their heart, I’ll be happy.
Jake: With Edinburgh Fringe 2025 just around the corner, what are you most excited for?
Alessia: Honestly? The madness. The chaos. The alchemy that happens when artists from everywhere cross paths. I’m excited to be surprised — to discover unexpected collaborations, to be challenged by other work, to feel that pulse of creative urgency that only the Fringe has. And to join a wild party every night, of course!
Jake: Given the themes of Binge Fringe, if your show was a beverage of any kind (alcoholic, non-alcoholic – be as creative as you like!), what would it be and why?
Alessia: It would be a dirty martini with a twist of absinthe — elegant, intoxicating, slightly dangerous. Something you sip thinking you’re in control, until suddenly the room spins and you find yourself confessing your darkest secrets to a stranger. It’s decadent and a little tragic — just like Truman. He liked Chrystal…
A reminder, you can catch Garden Party – Truman Capote’s Black and White Celebration from August 1st to 9th at Annexe at theSpace @ Symposium Hall from 16:05 (50mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.
Lamesha Ruddock
Jasmine Silk
