Edinburgh Festival offers cheap seats

Edinburgh Festival offers cheap seats

Traditional Korean theatre will be featured

The Edinburgh International Festival has launched its 2003 programme with cheap tickets to win new audiences.

Organisers have revealed a £5 ticket scheme will be available for every performance.

This is being extended from last year's series of late night, cut-price concerts, which brought in more varied crowds.

For the 2003 event 50 tickets for every show will be available at the £5 price tag.

Festival Director Brian McMaster said the times of many performances will also be adjusted.

"Our lives change and you need to take account of that in programming, so we're trying an experiment," he said.

"There will be concerts at six o'clock and concerts at nine o'clock."

The festival will include productions from as far afield as America, China, Korea, Sweden and Japan.

But actors' union Equity has raised concern that the festival is not showcasing enough home grown talent.

The union's Lorn Boswell believes Scottish work has been overlooked, with only one major production in this year's programme.

Scottish Opera are performing Wagner

"It is an international festival because we want the work that's produced in Scotland to be seen on an international stage" said Mr Boswell.

"We think it's rather like winning the rights to stage the World Cup, because it's a fantastic festival, and then not fielding the home team."

Festival organisers insist Scotland is well represented across the art forms, in particular opera.

The Scottish Opera company presents the final part of Wagner's epic Ring Cycle, which has already sold out all of its advance tickets.