During the festival the population of Edinburgh trebles as the city swells with hordes of performers, punters and staff from various creative industries arriving to perform, watch and judge. Last year a friend of mine told me that one day, as he stood surveying the carnage of the Royal Mile, with all its actors, dancers, singers, acrobats, fire breathers and human statues, a Spanish tourist walked up to him, pointed to it all and said, “what is this?” He had no idea how to explain the world’s largest arts festival to someone with no prior knowledge and limited English in the middle of a street, but I’ve been given 800 words on a website, so I will try my best to describe it to you.
This year will be my sixth full run performing at the Fringe, which still makes me relatively wet behind the ears. That said, I have already made peace with the fact that for the foreseeable future I will spend 11 months of the year living in one place and the remaining twelfth in Edinburgh. The “career” I have “chosen” (the standing in the back of pubs with a microphone that I one day hope to get paid for) demands it. Traditionally the best way to make progress as a comedian is by going to Edinburgh. It is the one month in the year that you can guarantee most of the comedy industry will be crammed into one small space with nothing to do but make jokes. Barring any major mishaps, each Fringe should be the time in your year when your career jumps up a step. All of the comedians you know and love will have started out performing there, and some of them still do for old time’s sake. That’s not to say there aren’t other ways to go about making a career in comedy now. There are more and more festivals, plus tools like the internet can be alternative ways to get yourself noticed. But I’m a traditionalist and a luddite, so I’ve reconciled with the fact that I’ll be going for some time.
Every single free bit of space in the city becomes a performance space for something. Pubs, cafes, restaurants, the student union, conference rooms, parks, hotels and the street all play host to some sort of performance. Last year I performed a show in the basement of an Italian restaurant. It had lots of signs on the wall covered by pieces of paper, which after a few days we realised had quotes by Benito Mussolini on them, so there really is something for everyone. The Royal Mile is clogged with those living statue guys, who seem to expect you to give them money just because they’ve taken the time to paint their face silver. I’ve always wondered if they have a “scene” like comedy or music, and fans follow their favourites around the world and those in the know have hot tips for who’s about to make it big. They seem to take their art very seriously though, and rightly so. Creativity, even in its strangest forms, is something to be proud of, and Edinburgh is the best place to find whatever niche you might be into.
It might be a Japanese mime act performing at lunchtime in an old church, or a group of Italian actors pouring wine all over themselves whilst riding on an exercise bike. You’re only going to find this kind of unharnessed creativity in Edinburgh (yes, those were both shows I watched). No matter what your day job, or how unlikely it is that you’ll ever make any money from your creative hobby, Edinburgh is one of the few places you can spend all your money pretending for a month that you do what you love for a living. It’s like Space Camp for the performing arts.
As well as the wealth of creativity on show, one of the most irresistible things about the festival is how long it is. Don’t be fooled into thinking that just because it’s a whole month long, people take it easy. They don’t, and it invariably leads to spectacular breakdowns. When all the bars are open until 6am, all the performers are stressed, tired, bearing their souls and surrounded by like-minded people, fireworks can occur. I heard a story about a performer who stood outside his venue threatening to set himself on fire until the local gangster who owned it turned up and threatened to do it for him.
During my first fringe I had to go on stage straight after an act who had lost it and spent ten minutes screaming expletives at a member of the audience who hadn’t liked him. The city can make you, but it will also break you, and that’s part of the fun. Last summer I had a punter walk out of a show proclaiming loudly “this is shite!” It turned out afterwards that he was covering the fact that he’d stolen someone’s bag and was sneaking out.
So, dear readers and our friend the Spanish tourist, that is a very short introduction to the Fringe. You probably feel like you know less about what it is than you did before we started, but that’s how I feel every year. I’m going to have to go and lie down now because writing this has got me excited.
Catch Jack Barry in Jack Barry: This Title Came To Me In A Dream, every day at 7pm from 7th – 30th of August in the Pleasance Courtyard and his twin act, Twins: Pret A Comedy, at midnight in the Pleasance Courtyard, everyday except the 17th, 18th and 24th.
Credits
Text Jack Barry
Photography via zoetnet