Edinburgh: Day 5 (in which I think about WHAT IT ALL MEANS)
I am home. The washer is going and I’m in my pyjamas. I have a glass of wine. Unless this creaky student house is actually some kind of sound installation, I’m pretty certain that there is no theatre going on within a several mile radius. (This is the East Midlands, so there is probably no theatre going on within a 100 mile radius.)
I like it.
Today was a bit of a write-off, show-wise. Firstly administrative errors and then technical difficulties put paid to my early morning appointment with The Simple Things In Life by Fuel, up at the Royal Botanical Gardens. The one shed I did experience was enjoyable, but I don’t think we’re allowed to say such things about preview shows in case THE THOUGHT POLICE drop us out of a helicopter in the middle of the night. I was disappointed, of course, but not as disappointed as I would have been on any other occasion. Frankly, I’m quite happy to be away from Edinburgh now, and have spent my train journey thinking about why this is.
There’s the obvious stuff: the weather, the smokers, the traffic-ridden city centre, the drama school luvvies who bring me out in a bad case of socialism. The fact that every evening a bunch of warmongers LET OFF BOMBS and call it entertainment. The fact that I was born in Inverness to a salmon-farming father and, I’m sorry, but you’re not in REAL SCOTLAND until you pass through Glencoe. The fact that it’s all just so fucking grey.
There are bigger, more pertinent questions though. I haven’t been able to afford a trip to the Fringe before, and have only managed it this time because my Christmas present from my folks last year was this week’s hotel room. If I started to think about it now, or gave my parents the nod in December, I could probably do another week next August, but who knows where my life will be then. Uni will be over in May and I might be lucky enough to get a job from which I can take a holiday. I might even be lucky enough to get a job which involves a stay in Edinburgh. But I could just as easily be unemployed. I’m at one of those life-stages where planning is a bit superfluous.
This got me thinking about the Laura Mugridge show I saw at Latitude. Running On Air is performed for five people at a time in the back of a campervan called Joni. In it, Laura talks about the summer she got married, and how she made the decision not to do a show in Edinburgh that year. She said that, although getting married was brilliant and she still went to Edinburgh as a punter, she felt a bit left out of the full experience. In recent years my financial situation and controversial life decisions (“You’re doing WHAT? Moving to Leicester to go back to uni? You’ve not been to Leicester before, have you Meg?”) have meant I’ve felt a bit left out during the Fringe, and I’m no performer. I wondered to myself, on the train today, did I get enough out of these five (four and a bit) days? Have I done Edinburgh properly? I arrived too late for Mission Drift and went home too early for Wound Man and Shirley (that rhymes - get me). Even while I was there I didn’t have enough money for You Once Said Yes.
But just what, exactly, am I trying to prove? That I’m a bigger theatre fan than you are? That I understand the cutting edge of the arts world better than you do? I normally spend the autumn watching all the best bits from Edinburgh on their inevitable tours, and I don’t have to sit through shite like Penny Dreadful’s Etherdome. Does Edinburgh even matter?
Around about Chesterfield I started thinking about all the other people who “do Edinburgh”. This is because I am selfless and empathetic and understand that not everyone is an Arts Management student with a nonsense blog. What about the performers, the venue staff, the critics who do proper reviews with adjectives other than ‘awesome’? Are they in Edinburgh because it’s a good career move? Because there’s work there? Because their editors would doubt their commitment if they didn’t? Anyone who’s ever been to the Fringe has been to a show (or ten) where the audience is populated entirely by people with passes. Are we all just justifying each other? If ‘industry-types’ were banned, would there be anyone left to watch?
It’d be lovely if I have the chance to go to Edinburgh again next summer (provided the council pedestrianises the place first, of course) but I’m not going to let the envy creep in if I don’t. Life is too short for that shit.
