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.

many hands make lights work

It’s all going. Everything‘s kicking off. The trucks have arrived and been unloaded and there’s still more to come. Plenty of bodies are grinding away getting the prep work for the venues done. It’s not quite full swing just yet, as the mass of workforce don’t arrive until Saturday but it’s certainly going.

In my last post, I posed the question about why the Edinburgh festival has become what it has become. The world’s largest arts festival doesn’t just pop up in a few years – Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know! Year after year, the staff, companies and punters (in that order) all trek up to bonnie Scotland to basically have one big fat arts party and kick some cultural butt.

Speaking to some of my colleagues, I managed to get a real understanding of why some of the people came. For example, one person, among many I’m sure, could have taken approximately five days of site work and earned twice the money that you would in Edinburgh. Granted, everyone knows that the money isn’t great, and certainly not the reason why people come. However, the five days, basically corporate work, that he would have taken on wouldn’t have had anywhere near the amount of interest, spontaneity, diversity and shear passion for theatre and the arts as here. It’s incredibly fulfilling and by far beats most corporate work, no matter what the money.

Respectively, there are others who don’t have the skills and experience to be able to take a large money job at the moment. There are many students helping run the festival where the opportunity will, without a doubt, further their skills and experience for higher profile work later in their careers. I certainly have come to Edinburgh for this reason as one of many. I’ve been here less than two days and already learning a vast amount.

To give you an idea, 90% of the venues across the site’s are not purpose built theatres – far from it, in fact. They have to built from scratch to a highly professional specification. Everything from the lighting, sound, seating rig, stage, floor, drapes and fire exit signs are built in each venue which takes a great amount of effort. Take a look at the photos for some evidence of how they being to shape up. But as I said before, as you learn whilst doing this it, makes it a truly invaluable experience.

That’s the rough progress report so far and also a bit of reasoning behind how and why the festival takes place. As it continues and I digress over a beer with my colleagues and others, I’ll discover more of the many reasons why Edinburgh exists as it does.

who’s getting that edinburgh feeling?

          

The Edinburgh International Festivalhas released their new programme for this year’s festival (wahey!) and I have to confess, nothing gets me more excited. The fact that it features 11 major pieces of theatre, making it the most theatre focused programme in years, also gets my vote of confidence – especially with the daunting International Comedy Festival threatening theatre reputation at the festival.

Rumours were that Jonathan Mills, artistic director of EIF, was going to feature a lot of music, and so the theatre packed programme has come as a welcome surprise. Speaking to The Stage newspaper, Mills said:-

 “A lot of people said, ‘Oh, this guy from Australia is a muso, he’ll do a lot of music’. But, actually, I am as interested in the theatre programme as I am in the dance programme.”

Good on him.

There is also a potent feature of dance, which further strengthens theatre and dance as a major player of the whole Edinburgh festival – International and Fringe.

Mills also speaks about his “maturation of the relationship” with Matthew Bourne (Nutcracker! appeared in the 1992 EIF). Bourne will return to this year’s festival with his company New Adventures and this sort of household name is a welcome boost – let’s hope we see some other names up there in years to come, where Mills calls Edinburgh a place that “has nurtured many people’s careers.”

Now all we have to do is wait for 5 June – the launch of the Official Fringe Programme. It’ll be a first glance at who’s there and who’s where – for those who aren’t, they’ll certainly be missing out. I just can’t wait for the programme to drop through the door!

n.b. for those of you who read the post chiefs say – “no rain in our theatre!” – it was an April fool – of course you knew that though, right?