“My whole philosophy is that each of us is a creative person. Every person is creative and creative expression is our way of discovering who we are. Without creative expression, we will wither away.”
If you’re around the Royal Mile, you’re likely to spot an individual zipping around crowds of people, hunting, armed with a distinguishable beanie and a bow and arrow. There’s no reason to be worried – you’re not in danger.
Well, you ARE in danger of being swayed into attending one of the most innovative shows that the Edinburgh Festival Fringe has to offer this year.
Mark Vigeant follows his philosophy to a T. Attending the Fringe for the fourth time, Vigeant presents his most exciting show to date: ‘Out There’.
“I make solo shows that have a lot of heart, that are interactive, that are playful but also deeply emotional. I think I live in this weird kind intersection. At the fringe, you can see a pure clown show, you can see a pure piece of theatre or sketch comedy, and mine is somewhere in the Venn diagram of all three of those things.”
Inspired by the American survival reality TV show, ‘Alone’, ‘Out There’, is a character comedy which recruits its audience in pursuit of communicating artistic wisdom, and acute social observations. The show introduces us to Larry, a burnt-out engineer and an alternate version of Vigeant, as he makes his way through the Alaskan wilderness equipped with not much more than a camera to livestream his journey. What comes across as playful improv, ‘a sleepover with your best friends,’ ultimately reveals a profound exploration of modern loneliness, the sacrifices that we make, and human connection.
“My way of being extremely honest and truthful with the audience starts with play, because when we’re playing and we’re goofing around and we’re laughing, and anything can happen — that’s when you are most vulnerable, and that’s when I am the most honest.”
After the pandemic, Vigeant left New York, where he was cultivating his career in sketch comedy: “I kind of had a reckoning of how I had lost touch with the parts of myself that made this worth doing.” His pursuit to recover his love of theatre, and the core of his art, led him to L.A.
In 2024, Vigeant lost the job that was financing his shows just before he was supposed to embark on a tour with his piece, ‘The Best Man Show’: “I was really having that existential kind of challenge of: I work so hard to maintain flexibility so I can be an artist that sometimes, I have to worry so much about money, that I don’t even have the time and energy to work on art.”
His prayers were answered when he received a remote teaching position which facilitated him making the connection between his own life and ‘Alone’: “When they catch a fish, they celebrate like they’ve just won a marathon. You know, they’re crying, they fall to their knees, they’re like ‘thank you! I can be out here another two days!’. When I got that job, it felt like I was an ‘Alone’ contestant catching a fish. I was like, ‘I can be an artist for another couple of months!’” and thus the idea for ‘Out There’ was born.
One of the selling points of Vigeant’s show is the multimedia aspect of the performance. Vigeant performs with a camera attached to his chest, the feed of which projects onto a screen for the audience to see, in order to simulate the video content that Larry would be creating. This premise is teeming with comic potential – it allows him to zoom in on audience members and use the screen to illuminate himself when the room goes dark. This choice was prompted by his experience of attending technically-innovative shows at the 2024 Fringe.
“I was just like, you know what, Mark? What if we allow ourselves to just think big and just play? You know, a major core theme of this show is technology versus nature, right? And fame, like trying to make something out of your life on social media versus being present in the room. There’s even a line in the show where I kind of cheekily point out to the audience, the show would be better if I didn’t have a camera strapped to my chest. You would feel more connected to me as an audience if I was performing to you and not my phone.”
Turning to student writers and performers he tells me: “My advice to somebody who’s in university, who’s in school, who’s just starting out, is to start and to accept that failure is inevitable and that it’s okay. I wish I could show you how badly my run went in 2023. Here I am four years later, three years later, it’s my fourth run, and I’m having an incredible run — I sold out today.”
“I was waiting for permission and I was waiting for the perfect moment and I was waiting for the perfect idea. You are the only one who knows. There’s a voice inside you as an artist — what is going to make you thrive and find fulfilment is if you can listen to that voice, and it is a skill. Learning, ‘how do I listen to this voice’ that says, ‘I want to try this,’ and you listen to it.”
“What’s the worst that’s going to happen? The worst that is going to happen is that you bomb. I bombed, and if you bomb and you’re like, ‘I still want to do it,’ that’s information. If you bomb and you’re like, ‘I never want to do that again,’ that’s information too… Nobody else knows better than you do. Stop putting your power in everybody else’s hands.”
‘Out There’ runs until August 30ᵗʰ downstairs at 139 Assembly Roxy. His comedy special from his previous Fringe run, ‘The Best Man Show,’ is now available to stream on Dropout.
