It’s been almost a month since I returned home from the Edinburgh
Festival Fringe, and yet it somehow feels like yesterday!
Perhaps it’s because, for me, its legacy lives on in what I took out of
it. As I wrote last time, at the beginning of August, a bunch of students from
the University of Southampton journeyed up to Scotland to perform at the
biggest arts festival in the world under the moniker of “Gone Rogue
Productions”, acting out the original student comedy Hanging Bruce-Howard
every day for two and a half weeks; probably (although who knows, possibly
not!) the closest thing I’ll ever experience to a professional routine, minus
the exorbitant amount of time spent at the wardrobe department!
But, as we thought might be the case beforehand, we had to ask
ourselves: how were we actually going to get people to come and see it? After
all, already fairly tired out by the early wake-ups I described in my last post,
and competing for attention amidst the swathes of street performers that lined
the Edinburgh Royal Mile (the popular flyering ground) on a daily basis, what
tricks could we pull out of our sleeves to draw people in? After all, one
member of our cast being asked to promote an actor’s show on Portuguese TV
wasn’t quite what we had in mind (although we did our best to show off some of
our flyers in the background)!
And then, by chance, it hit us. A few days in, during a flyering
session which was proving to be another tough sell, we all decided to strike
“power poses” amongst the crowd in a bid to stand out to passers-by – and, with
many reaching for their cameras, it surprisingly proved a success! We then
decided to change pose every time a flyer was taken (cued by someone in our
huge team of flyerers shouting “CHANGE!”) and, when young children began taking
three or four just to cause us to jump around shifting positions every two or
three seconds (and then sometimes put them back!), we found we had a hit on our
hands, and our flyering technique for the rest of the trip was born!
Our “change!” game in full swing – and, in my case at least, costume!
We also used plenty of other methods which honed in on our target
audiences of families and kept it fresh for us, trying to bring a smile to people’s
days in the spirit of comedy. For example, as the play at one point concerned competing
thespians, we held impromptu “Shakespeare vs. the Movies” quote-offs on pillars
across the crowds, we undertook particularly loud vocal warm-ups in the middle
of the street (while shouting a much-needed disclaimer that we weren’t a
musical!) and we played some of our favourite dramatic games in the street,
like “Ninjas” – I’ll let you guess what that involves!
It wasn’t always easy to sell the show, but we enjoyed chatting to the
public nonetheless!
Sometimes, we got creative!
And although at first it wasn’t always easy to summon up the necessary
levels of energy and enthusiasm first thing in the morning (coffee became my
new best friend!), with our show starting at mid-day, it meant we were always
out, about and drinking in the sights of a festival-laden Edinburgh.
It soon became something of an exhausting but enjoyable routine: wake
up, wolf down breakfast, head out to the mile, promote like crazy, perform a
show, come back and prepare yourself for the rest of the day (often including a
vital power nap!), flyer a bit more and then experience the festival in all its
glory, before a hectic night out or a more chilled one in!
In the afternoons, we were set free to see the other shows on offer at
the Fringe and, making full use of the C venues company pass that being in Gone
Rogue produced for us, we were able to get into many a show for free, to fill
up otherwise-empty seats. This was a fantastic initiative and one which allowed
me, personally, to see a whopping total of 54 shows during my time there, at an
average of 3 a day – on my most packed, I saw 6! A few of these were part of
the “free Fringe” (performers whose shows’ admission were normally free, and
who raised money through donations), and some I had to pay for, but at the end
of the trip I was certainly satisfied I’d got plenty out of it!
Indeed, we witnessed a massive variety of things on stage, from folk
musicals about mystical kingdoms to Korean slapstick musical wedding ceremonies
(as good as it sounds!), improvised films and musicals (hilarious!), from
Kafka-esque metamorphoses to historical biographical comedies, cabaret to fully
immersive plays set in trenches and courtrooms and séances, from stand-up
comedy to magic shows, one-man political explorations to play noirs to musicals
and physical theatre representations – plenty of strange things amongst all of
them, yet richly diverse, refreshing and hugely entertaining!
‘Music Show: Wedding’ was the happiest thing any of us had ever seen –
and we made sure to come back on our final night!
So many of the shows captured some great directorial vision, brilliant
conceptual realisations and high-quality writing, that the overall level of
imagination on show was truly awe-inspiring. My favourite of them all was The Trench, a play by the company “Les
Enfants Terribles”, which showcased shadow puppetry, diverse sets, poignant
music but overall some simply world-class inventive staging which left me and my
companions speechless. We had to take a moment after leaving the theatre to
just bask in how good what we’d just seen was – we had no words!
And as for our own, Hanging Bruce-Howard was a great success!
Although we didn’t set the world on fire critically (the common criticism from
reviewers being that it, although well-performed, didn’t break enough new
ground), it nearly broke the society record for profits from any show, a
remarkable feat given all the costs of taking it up in the first place! Plus,
the healthy audience numbers we had all seemed to enjoy it judging from their
laughter and praise afterwards, with the general reaction we received very
positive indeed. On one day we were even stopped by a family in the middle of
the street to tell us how much they had all enjoyed it, and how they’d
recommended it to their friends, which was a touching experience, if somewhat
surreal!
Towards the end, suffering from a degree of fatigue with all things
theatre (a phrase I never thought I’d utter!), we took an afternoon out to
climb Arthur’s Seat, the peak of a group of hills overlooking the city. It did,
of course, decide to rain when we were halfway up, and we discovered near the
end that we weren’t as fit as we perhaps thought we were, but it provided some
dazzling vistas of the city (not to mention photo opportunities!).
At the bottom of Arthur’s Seat...
... and at the top, overlooking our new favourite city!
And in true Gone Rogue style, we marked the occasion with a couple of
rounds of ninjas at the top! It was a brilliant afternoon out, and it drew a
nice parallelism with the adventure we’d undergone in travelling to the Fringe:
after months of fundraising, rehearsal and self-budgeting, all the hard work
was entirely worth it just for the comparatively short time we were up there.
Billed as ‘the game of ninjas to rule them all’, things got intense!
But what Edinburgh really showcased for me was the level of achievement
that a set of students can attain if they put their mind to something, keep a
consistent vision and go for it. As I’ve written many a time before on this
blog, I’ve found that being a student at the University isn’t just going to
lectures, waking up exceedingly late on Sundays (although I don’t deny this
happens!) and piecing together projects and assignments, but becoming part of
an educational community, a brilliantly supportive platform for your
development which grants you the opportunity to do what you want (well, within
reason!) if it’s even potentially beneficiary to yourself and those around you.
This is realised in loads of different ways here. For example, the
funding system we use in Performing Arts means that, when we decide to put on a
show, it’s basically a no-lose process for all involved – although we do try to
make money obviously! Any overruns on budgets are underwritten by the Students’ Union and any necessary expenses covered through the use of a set budget form
(which boosts your financial management experience), so you’re encouraged to
take, and learn from the results of, risks, with little fear of future personal
loss.
Plus, you’ll often find that if you need funding, help or support to
undergo an experiment, purchase a piece of equipment or even add a piece of
software to a lab machine, it’s only the asking of a question, a friendly chat
or a well-formed application away!
And it’s certainly an achievement and a half for the production team of
Gone Rogue, and also its cast, to take Hanging Bruce-Howard up there in
the first place.
So as I return to Southampton and begin the process of co-directing
Theatre Group’s next production, the revolutionary and challenging text Equus
by Peter Shaffer (for some people it might hold connotations of a certain
wizard-based actor!), I know that there’s no other place I could do it. We as a
production team are in a great position to take risks, make it as large in
scale as we wish, and use as many of the wonderful frameworks in place to produce
the best show we can, leaving boundaries asunder.
As a result, if there’s anything I’ve taken from my tales of Edinburgh,
it’s this: Why not?
See you next year, Edinburgh!
Robin
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