Three different writers provide three different perspectives on the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Working at the Fringe
Anna Harington
I was heading into a very long summer with no plans so decided to work as front of house and box office staff in C venues, one of the biggest venues at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It’s a wonder they get any employees, given the daily twelve-hour shifts and a meagre wage of £200 for six weeks. However, they did provide accommodation and free shows, and there was something nice about being “behind-the-scenes” of the festival; meeting theatre companies, hearing about the best shows, casually sipping Red Stripe with Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman in a “VIP” bar. Aside from the fit-up and get-out of the first and last week, which involved heavy construction work, the work was very easy and involved little more than ripping ticket stubs. I probably would have felt that I was cheating the company if I was being paid more than 50p per hour.
Living in Edinburgh was essentially the same as walking through Trinity; the entire population of our campus seemed to relocate to Scotland for the duration of the festival, with about a quarter of the C venues staff being Irish. There was something quite nice about this, and in an attempt to talk about the Brits in their presence, I don’t think any of us have ever spoken so much Irish.
Overall, I returned to Dublin in a very unhealthy state having spent six weeks eating nothing but Lidl olives. In addition to this, I ended up spending a few hundred pounds on living expenses and tartan scarves, meaning I am now entering the college year with very little money. However, I left Edinburgh with the definite intention of returning.
Acting at the Fringe
Daniel Cummins
Performing at the Fringe Festival was the most tiring thing I have ever done. The exhaustion from pre-Fringe preparations of stencilling the morbid title My Best Friend Drowned in a Swimming Pool onto umbrellas, making banners, printing flyers, buying t-shirts and last minute costumes really was felt in our Tesco value Red Bull infused tech rehearsal which was from 1am to 5am on the morning of our first performance. Luckily our performance was at 9:45pm every so we got to sleep in after this and every night out that followed.
If we weren’t performing, going to shows or drinking we were flyering and shamelessly promoting our “dark witty drama” on the Royal Mile. Some people are good at this. Some people have no qualms about approaching people who look like they’d rather steal your umbrella and/or run away from you screaming than take another damp flyer from another damp Fringe performer. I am not one of these people. Thankfully, our promotion tactics were different than most others. They involved one of our cast, usually Eva O’Connor who also wrote the play, lying sprawled in Poundlands’ best paddling pool (it was tiny) in the middle of the Mile surrounded by the rest of the team holding our homemade banner and flyers in our outstretched hands looking suitably depressed at our best friends recent demise. Looking depressed is surprisingly easy to do while flyering in the rain. If all else failed we’d gift one of our painted umbrellas to the wettest looking person who in turn would be so grateful that they’d bring all of their friends to our show. Worked every time.
After flyering we’d traipse back to our lime green kitchen, eat and prepare for the show as yet another reviewer was going to be in the audience. This routine was repeated for 26 days without a break.
First Time Attendee
Darren Sinnott
The little I knew of the Fringe Festival before touching down in Edinburgh was this: plays. Avant- garde plays, whose audience and crew dressed in black, smoked cigarettes through thin black holders and sleept in water tanks. That was how the stereotype played in my mind; which goes to show I knew absolutely nothing prior to my visit.
The Fringe is madcap, a fever which grabs the city for over a month and doesn’t let go. At first it’s almost abrasive but you quickly find yourself swept along. From the moment of arrival, my three day trip was a race across the city – from the tiniest of venues beneath a bridge to makeshift auditoriums in UNESCO preserved buildings – devouring as much as possible. You quickly learn that everything manages to wangle five stars; be it from the Scotsman in large lettering, or the neighbouring cat printed in tiny point-eight font. Events begin early each day and run until well past midnight, meaning you can always find something and if the rush becomes too much there are hundreds of small cafes and bars where you can catch a brief respite (and if lucky catch free music, stand-up or theatre) or wander the Hogwarts-esque streets and nooks of the city.
Of course the Fringe was not entirely endless excitement and wonder: tickets for the best performances are snapped up quickly and failure to pre-book tickets before arriving often leads to disappointment. Box office queues for the larger venues proved a minor annoyance made worse when picketed by people with flyers for their show. For whatever reason you’re there, be it for the live performances, the atmospheric nightlife or sheer chance, you cannot help but catch this Fringe fever. And my preconceived stereotype I had brought from home? It was safely quashed by the largely student populace that call Edinburgh home for the duration of the festival.
