York thesps swap University Drama Barn for fame at Edinburgh Fringe
This year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival was graced by ten productions from York University. An actor, a director and a groupie relive their festival stories
Tom King
Edinburgh, as anyone who has ever visted will tell you, is an endurance trial. If you were to watch every show at the Fringe back-to-back it would take you almost two and a half months of non-stop theatregoing and, as most of us only attend for a few days, the pace required to see all that you want to see is pretty back-breaking.
How much more demanding then is trying to maintain this pace if one is involved with a show? My Edinburgh this year actually included two, backstaging for one and acting with the other. This meant that the average day began at 8 o’clock with a performance from ten until eleven then straight into full costume and greasepaint for flyering a performance until five when I could start my theatre-watching day. Gruelling.
But I loved every minute of it. Edinburgh during festival time is like nowhere else, a place where you are as likely to end up chatting with Bill Bailey as drinking with a Ukrainian juggler. The atmosphere of inclusion is fantastic and it transforms a potentially threatening city into a place where you can quite happily stagger home at the crack of dawn without the slightest fear of being mugged and where everyone is a potential friend.
Nice as it is to make new friends, the best way to experience the festival is with people you know, a definite “Fringe” benefit of taking a show. This year’s Edinburgh showing by York was fantastic with over ten productions affiliated with the University making an appearance, including a couple of sell-out shows. To to be in this fantastic city with almost everyone I know was the best possible way to spend my last York Uni summer…
Nan Flory
The Edinburgh Fringe is a bit like communism. There are some very worthy ideas behind it, but in practise it can be really quite unpleasant. Actually scrap that; the Fringe is not like communism at all and false equivalents are the bane of modern society and should be avoided at all costs. From the top: the Edinburgh Fringe is very exciting for all involved in the actual performances; for audiences, unless you catch the rogue brilliant show which proves the rule, it can be a bit like being stuck in a gulag for a zillion years. Dammit, there I go again. The Fringe’s saving grace, however, is that it is just that – a fringe – to another festival with better quality control. Nowadays it’s not just the one festival either; there are about eight to chose from – the international festival, the book festival, the film festival, the comedy festival… the list goes on. And what the Fringe does do with finesse is ensure that there are lots and lots of people in a lovely city having fun and the general philosophy of the whole thing means they’ve got to let you join in. So, to conclude, go go go to the Fringe! Just maybe not actually to the Fringe.
Chris Bush
It’s amazing just how much a few hundred words can change your spirits. From damning ambivalence in The Scotsman to ‘this is bloody brilliant’ and 4-star euphoria courtesy of Three Weeks, our emotions sky-rocketed with each new edition of hastily photocopied rags or dubiously punctuated review sites. Not only were our opinions of ourselves reassessed daily, (of course, naturally, we did believe our own hype) but also how we judged the publications we were appearing in shifted with the tides. Funny how within 24 hours a paper with a hundred year history can change from being the most god-awful gutter-clogging filth in the history of Western civilisation to the pinnacle of man’s literary and intellectual achievement, (and, in all likelihood, back again before tea-time).
This is what Edinburgh was all about: it’s an all or nothing type of place, and most, if not all of the time, you are nothing. The sheer scale of the festival is mind-boggling: over a thousand shows all vying for their place in the limelight. The Royal Mile becomes a battle ground of gladiatorial proportions, where silent Hungarian clowns and Japanese banjo players slog it out with fresh-faced innocents and hung-over comedians, all desperately struggling to be heard above the mob. Few succeed.
So, children, what did we learn? That free tickets are plentiful, though a pint may set you back £4. That the Scots are a proud and outspoken people, who do not all take kindly to middle-class students invading their city, especially those dressed as divine beings. That you should never let your lead actor also direct a version of Hamlet on a bouncy castle. Oh yes, and that the opinions of the good people at Three Weeks should be held above all others, for they only speak the truth. (for this year, at least.)
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Just trawling through drama degree courses for my daughter for next year and noticed that there are lots of you from York uni performing successfully at the Edinburgh Fringe. I did it myself in my youth!
I wonder if you can tell me if there is an actual straight degree course in drama at York or mainly theatre studies. If not, where else is good for studying drama that she could try that you know of. It is impossible to tell from the internet!
Thankyou ,
Heather Torrens
Heather, you may find this course interesting: http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/tft/ugrad/BAwad.htm