Throughout August, every time I spoke with someone who
wasn’t in Edinburgh about the Fringe I had trouble describing it. As I wrote
previously, it’s a massive affair with nearly 50,000 performances of 3,000
unique shows in four weeks. Many of those shows are free, and there are
hundreds of venues nearly all of which are makeshift spaces such as classrooms,
lecture halls, bars, basements, parks, and temporary buildings. Still, the
entire month felt like a blurry frenzy since there wasn't a single tone to
which you could acclimate. This was partially owing to the fact that our intern
schedule changed each day but also due to the greater ever-changing festival. Some
shows were one-offs, others one weekend, one week, everyday, or even multiple
times a day. Plus the number of tourists is consistently high but even that
ebbed and flowed every few days as new spectators sampled the Fringe’s
offerings.
My main duties were marketing and technical support for
the shows which boils down to four to five hours a day of lifting set pieces,
distributing email slips for a raffle, handing out programs, and trying to get
tourists to take a flyer by offering up free candy or “sweets” as they say in
the UK (the improv troupe’s name is Baby Wants Candy). While not the most
glamorous work, it introduced me to a number of young theatre enthusiasts also
interning for Baby Wants Candy and it enabled me to see the Fringe through its
entirety, giving me a fuller understanding of the festival than I would have
gotten from a weekend visit. Plus we had free passes for all shows in Assembly,
one of the largest multi-venue operators at the Fringe, so out about 30 of the
51 shows I saw were free.
A surprising element of this month was the place itself. Edinburgh
is a magical city; it's no wonder it inspired Harry Potter.
Taken from Arthur's Seat:
The Edinburgh Castle (ft. Mary's Milk Bar ice cream):
Pentland Hills:
Loch Ness; a few of us spent our last day in the heather-coated Highlands:
I also participated in a three-day beginners’ intensive with
Baby Wants Candy, and a musical improv workshop. Both watching BWC’s shows and
taking their workshops led me to realize how many important skills one learns
from improv. It demands attentive listening, open-mindedness towards others'
ideas, trusting one's own intuition, and a positive, “yes, and” attitude, so I
would encourage everyone to try it out.
Theatre at the Fringe felt
more alive and impactful than anywhere else I’ve been. Tens of thousands of
theatre-artists from all around the world converge to watch, perform, and
celebrate theatre, an art form that has been revered since the festival of
Dionysus in ancient Greece. The Fringe reminded me that theatre demands what
few things do in this day and age: complete attention. You cannot mute, pause,
or rewind a play; stubbornly tethered to the time and place, theatre requires
us to listen and to imagine. The festival served as the ultimate prologue to my
documentary play project since it enabled me to dedicate an entire month to
theatre-going, a rare and fortunate occasion.
Now
I better understand the process and expense of getting a show to the Fringe and
depending on how things go this year I may return to Edinburgh next August!
Also, here's a write-up on Princeton interns at the Fringe with other student's reflections: http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S44/18/97E73/index.xml?section=topstories
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