• FORGET Edinburgh, the main theatrical calendar event kicks off in Camden next week. The Camden Fringe Festival is in its fourth year. Dozens of acts – comedy and theatre – are performing throughout August at the Roundhouse Studio Theatre, Camden People’s Theatre, the Etcetera Theatre, the Camden Eye and the Camden Head. The festival starts on August 3. For more information or to book tickets visit www. camdenfringe.org
• VOCAL auditions to work alongside professional actors in a musical set during the 1916 Easter Rising are being held at the London Irish Centre, Camden Square, on August 18 to 20. The multimedia production about a fictional romance blossoming out of the bloody Irish rebellion against English rule invites audiences to “relive the nightmare, believe the dream”. For more information see 1916themusical.com
•“SERIOUS” young actors are performing a new adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet at a new arts venue in Islington. The Gloucestershire Youth troupe perform in the Nave, St Paul's Road, Canonbury, on August 1 from 7pm. Tickets are £10, contact 07805 813553.
• PORNOGRAPHY, a new play by Simon Stephens, won high praise from critics at the Edinburgh Festival last year. Set in July 2005, between the announcement that London has been awarded the Olympics and the July 7 bombings, it tells an imagined story of the a bomber coming to London to commit an act of terrorism. It opens at the Kilburn Playhouse on August 5.