the almost edinburgh festival

Those of you who have been to Edinburgh not during the festival (quite rare, I know) will have undoubtedly noticed the difference between an Edinburgh rush hour and a London rush hour. In London, Bendy Busses are squishing cyclists and pedestrians like tropical bugs and Black Cab drivers are taking road rage to a whole new level.

Edinburgh is a breeze of a metropolis. Queues at traffic lights are an average of three cars. Cyclists and buses treat each other with utmost of British respect creating a striking harmony and pedestrians obey the crossings like children watching Finding Nemo.

However, all has change. The ‘Festival Rush Hour’ is ongoing daily. Cars have loaded into the city in large convoys, bus stops are becoming a haven for petty crime between tourists and blue-rinsed old ladies and cyclists are obeying the traffic laws as it’s becoming more like ‘Tour de Ed.’

They say during the festival the town population doubles, and although it hasn’t quite reached that level yet, it’s certainly well on its way.

Technical rehearsals have been in full swing and running like clockwork. I have small theory that the sun and risen population haven working in tandem to lift and burn off the dense fog that’s been plaguing for the past couple of days (although, I very much doubt bikini sales are going to jump up – one can only dream of such things).

So, bring on the punters! Things are nicely slotting into place – metaphorically and literally as every sizeable building in Edinburgh completely transforms. Every other shop front has been bombarded with posters so it’s mini challenge in itself trying to work out what the shop actually sells. The restaurants, cafes, and other such eateries are doubling their stock as queues file out of the doorways – soon to expand even further.

Today being the first day of previews, it’s almost all in place. Almost being the keyword because as long as the tickets keep on selling with streams of paper to be printed on, then the almost will gradually fade away just as the fog has upon Arthur’s Seat.

bums on seats or a bit bummed out?

Yes I know it’s been a week, but what a week it’s been. Tough, grinding, fun, long, tiring, sweating and smelling, lifting and shifting, building, scaffing, painting, sticking and eating (of course you have to eat during all this!) are just a handful of some of the verbs and adjectives that could describe the last days.

The mass of staff arrived yesterday to lift spirits and blaze through what still had to be worked on. There is still a vast amount to be done but what has been achieved is both amazing and overwhelming at the same time. Things have certainly fallen into place nicely and now it’s time to move onto the next stage of the Edinburgh festival – the company arrivals.

From tomorrow, the long and laborious, but extremely essential work takes place with setting up the productions in each of the venues. These next few days are a crucial and pivotal point during the festival duration and for many people are the potential make and break of their time here. There will be tears and tantrums all over the shop with ego clashes a-plenty but then what would the arts festival be without them?

This is, of course, a very false picture that I’m painting of how the work will go because, in fact, it will be more first class teamwork to put the finishing touches to these shows and make them all look, sound and feel amazing. I will very much be involved in this process and will be knee deep in much deliberation of sorting the shows out and this is where the next phase of my quest will begin. I’ll be finding out why exactly the companies invest their long and hard earned cash to come to the place where the average audience attendance is just three.

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the official organisers for the fringe festival, give their opinion on why performers should come to the festival:-

You will not only face competition for an audience from around 1,800 different Fringe shows but also from the Edinburgh International, Film, Book and Jazz Festivals, plus the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. So although many people travel to what is generically known as the ‘Edinburgh Festival’ there are many things to distract them from buying a ticket for your show. In addition, the costs of hiring a venue, travel, accommodation, publicity material, etc mount up quickly.

However, financial gain isn’t the number one reason to come to Edinburgh. Most performers come to the Fringe as an asset for their future careers. The Fringe is well-known for springboarding people’s careers, providing numerous opportunities for networking, and ‘fast-track’ learning some tricks of the trade from other performers from all across the globe.

As obvious as this may seem, it is the latter paragraph that is so blindingly true and something that runs across the fringe platform no matter where you are in the world. This is what makes the arts so good because it is consistently like this. However, this doesn’t satisfy my appetite enough and so I want to see the rabbit hole go further and receive a much wider perspective on why Edinburgh exists as it does today.

are we all up four laughs?

The first and, arguably the all time, big news of this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe is that the big four venues – Pleasance, Assembly Rooms, Gilded Balloon and Underbelly, have teamed up to promote a brand new ‘festival within a festival’. No prizes for guessing what the new festival is – Comedy. Of course, the ‘art-form’, should you wish to call it that, which makes up roughly 31% of the whole festival programme, will feature in the original Fringe brochure however it will also provide its own brochure – Edinburgh Comedy Festival.

Deemed as the biggest venture to happen in the festival’s history, it will certainly give this year’s Scottish capital a different kind of buzz. Breaking away in such a clear and active way will bring the demise of many of the great reasons for the festival’s happening – performers and event organisers of many sorts, coming together to share and indulge in a rich sense of well-being through the performance art. When August comes around, appreciation for the finer things on a stage certainly take a rise, with no real place for hierarchy and capitalism. Nations, backgrounds and a vast array of opinions come together without question to provide performance and, through this, new relationships are formed which can only be a good thing.

The introduction of a separate festival will encourage a vast hollow between different performers and more importantly, audiences. The Fringe is about the breaking down of these walls where Theatre, Dance, Music and Comedy co-exist with each of them complementing one another. Of course, it doesn’t stop the audiences from seeing each of the forms, however, it provides a stop-gap in their own minds and begins to channel them, which I feel can’t be healthy for the performing arts on the whole. What about the other 11 months of the year when the punters are back down in London? Is it here where the divide will stay and comedy enthusiasts will turn away from theatre and dance even more? I hope not, but it seems a little inevitable.

The driving reason behind the four companies creation is understood to be that they want to land big sponsors. As much as they want to find more funds, surely the record of the 2007 1.6 million tickets sold, of which the big four sell just under 50%, is enough to keep them going? And what about the sponsors they already have – will they be deterred? The punters may also be put off by big name sponsors destroying the spirit of the fringe – another capitalist invasion. Who wants to see McDonald’s promoting a festival in which it has entirely nothing to do with?

I’ve made my feelings quite clear on the situation and that’s because I’ve been there and know the feeling that I don’t want taken away. I worked as Theatre Crew for the Pleasance last year and saw the many different connections between the entirely vast array of people and I can see this crumbling away. While last year, as each new day dawned, I couldn’t wait to find new connections with those around me. This year, I just can’t see that happening.

As pessimistic as my view is, I think it’s about the spirit of the fringe that is most in danger and what I’m wary of – I just hope I put my money where my mouth is!