Three Days at the Edinburgh Fringe: August 2011

PART 1

a view of Edinburgh (photo: Amlan Chaudhuri)

Edinburgh is – so I have been told – normally a quiet, peaceful, picturesque small city. Every August all that changes with the Edinburgh festivals. It’s crowded, it’s noisy, it’s throbbing with energy, it changes from local to international overnight, it is THE place to be in the UK. Indeed, it seems that everyone who has any connection with performance in the UK moves up there for some part of the month – to perform, to watch, to be inspired, to revel, to celebrate, to learn, to exchange…

'Underbelly' - one of the Fringe venues (photo: Amlan Chaudhuri)

It is actually a festival of festivals. The Edinburgh International Festival is the mega one around which all the others gather – the Book Festival, the Film Festival, the Jazz Festival… - but by far the most well known across the board (and perhaps the most potentially exciting) is the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The very nature of the fringe and its approach lies in the name itself: it places itself off-centre. It happens largely in unusual venues, in unusual ways, through unusual channels, with often unusual outcomes. It does not depend nor define itself by existing mega festival structures – financial, infrastructural, logistical, curatorial. It is strongly artist led, artist managed and artist funded. It’s a coming together of diverse people, a coming together of possibilities, a space where anything – good and bad – can happen. The only counterpart I can think of in my limited experience is the Durga Puja in Calcutta, though this is of course a socio-religious community created-led-managed activity. But if one sees artists and art enthusiasts – performers, directors, venue directors and programmers, art students and volunteers, and audience – as one large community, then this is the one parallel that comes to mind. There is of course a managing group which oversees all the festivals and the mind-boggling coordination and infrastructure that is necessary to make a success of this month crammed full with everything you can imagine (and many things you can’t), but they are – for all practical purposes – invisible. This complete absence of any apparent machinery only underlines for me how well oiled, efficient and alert the systems of functioning must be.

Two examples. The Fringe brochure looks (and unfortunately feels) like the Yellow Pages. Stuffed full of listings with brief descriptions, photographs and box ads, it is categorised into several sections – Comedy, Cabaret, Dance, Theatre, Music… Not to mention indexes by name of event or name of venue – the latter could be anything from an art gallery to a temporarily converted church, the laboratories of the university to a traditional theatre space. Just putting this directory together must have been a task that called for exceptional management and public relation skills. Move over corporate consultants: you want to know how to pull off the most complicated coordination and management, a theatre festival is where you go. The Edinburgh Fringe just takes it to an unbelievable extreme. Just wish the design was slightly more inspired though.

Secondly, the Fringe is run on the ground by an army of young volunteers from all over the world. Often drama students, they work as ushers, box office personnel, technical help … and possibly watch the shows for free. Where do they come from, who do they report to, how to they get assigned their very clearly defined jobs (they behave as if this is all they’ve ever done), where do they stay in a city which suddenly is full to the brim with visitors, how do monies and subsistence work...? I have no answers to these questions, but there is obviously a well thought through system that allows and encourages all this to happen.