It’s mid-July, and blue sky finally appears over Edinburgh as the city collectively braces itself for what’s to come. Temporary structures are under construction throughout the city, and a giant circus tent is erected in the Meadows. All available surfaces, (fences, walls, street signs, traffic lights) are plastered with colorful flyers.
August is the month of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the world’s largest performing arts festival. This year, there were over three thousand productions across 262 venues throughout the city. And Edinburgh…is not a very big city.
As if the Fringe Fest isn’t enough, there are other, smaller festivals that take place in August as well, including the Edinburgh International Festival and the International Book Festival. The former is another performing arts festival, but with a more ‘high brow’ vibe. The latter hosts contemporary Scottish and international authors, from Grant Morrison to Irvine Welsh.
At times, living in Edinburgh during the Fringe Fest was a nightmare. Trips to the grocery store were horror shows, buses never arrived on time, and Princes Street and the Royal Mile became absolute no-go zones. The streets of the city centre swarmed with humanity and their offspring. However, I enjoyed myself when I was actually out seeing shows, and was grateful for the opportunity to live in Edinburgh during this unique time.
As the city flooded with tourists and theatre-enthusiasts, I started working at a local coffee shop. This allowed me the opportunity to observe the habits of Fringe Fest attendees. Early in the morning, they would fuel up on caffeine to prepare for a long day of showgoing. Around lunchtime, I overheard them discussing the merits and pitfalls of the most recent productions.
From my observations, I identified three different types of Fringe attendees. The first are the locals, who are uninterested in the festival and are mainly focused on survival. They are most likely to see only a couple shows, or avoid the thing altogether.
The younger tourists hit the streets and the bars looking for a good time. They allow themselves to be accosted with flyers at all hours, and dragged in to see whatever weird spectacle awaits them. The other breed of Fringe-goers are the older, wealthier, theatre snobs. They are likely to skip the stand-up, improv, and burlesque shows in-lieu of avant-garde theatrical productions and live music performances.
I had some month-long regulars, who were only in town for the festival. My favorite of these was Matt Hale, an Australian with a comedic hypnotist show. He was very friendly, and liked to chat with us every day about the shows he’d seen. He had a popular 80’s themed show called “Top Fun,” which I went to see. It was indeed extremely ‘fun,’ and involved him hypnotizing audience volunteers into doing ridiculous things to a soundtrack of 80’s hits.
His show, like many Fringe shows, relied on the audience for its success. At many of the shows I attended, the performers did very little themselves. Their intention was to have a successful interaction with the audience, and sometimes provoke them into performing for each other.
The Fringiest of the Fringe experiences I had was at a horror-themed bar called The Banshee Labyrinth. My friend and I were searching for the toilets, when we encountered a cloaked vampire in a dimly lit hallway. The vampire offered to help us find the toilets, and asked us if we would first accept his invitations. He then handed each of us a little scroll tied with a red ribbon. The scroll invited us to bear witness to ‘a ritual.’ It was signed like this:
“with undying love, lust, and hunger…the Master.”
We were compelled to attend. The ‘show’ that we witnessed could hardly be considered a show, as it was mostly unscripted. It was rather an absurd interaction between a strange character and a drunk audience.The vampire character was similar to Taika Waititi’s character in What We Do in the Shadows, a pathetic vampire who failed at being fearsome.
In the end, I was selected from the audience to be his blood tribute, and I was interrogated about my blood type and diet. Finding my ‘all-inclusive’ diet satisfactory, he brought me onstage to drink my blood. In exchange, I was given a rose from his waistcoat.
In the second half of August, the Fringe reached its peak. The nightclubs, which normally close around 2am, were open until 5am, and the streets were filled with drunk tourists at every hour. Police herded pedestrians with batons and whistles at every intersection along the Royal Mile.
The final day of the Festival was about as warm and sunny as it ever gets in Edinburgh, and my coworkers and I bid farewell to Matt the hypnotist, and all the other Fringe-goers.
It was as if the end of Fringe marked the end of whatever semblance of summer we’d had. The day after the festival ended brought violent wind and rain. It drenched me on my way to work and battered tourists as they lugged their suitcases to the airport, as if to say ‘now get the fuck out!’ The show’s over, everybody goes home.
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