Pleasance at 30: The Spirit of the Fringe

I seem to remember, as we were loading chairs onto a friendly builder’s open truck to return them whence they came, that I would be called to the telephone to talk to someone from upper Bedfordshire or Lower Wisconsin. “We are a song and dance troupe. We need your largest space for a cast of 150, aged between five and seventy and we will come for two days in early August, coming back at the end of the Festival for the final weekend. We must weld our two-storey set on-site and it will have to remain in position until we return. We need 400 burning candles and a wind machine to symbolise progress. You can have 10% share of profits and, oh, would you have stabling for two rams? The show is called The Journey Towards a New Beginning By Way of The Supermarket and we think it would give your venue a real boost.”

The Fringe is open to all and that is its chief glory. From November there are enquiries and things warm up in January when official enquires open. A certain practicality settles over the nice people from Middle Bedfordshire or Western Wisconsin. The cast of The Super Highway of Intention, (as it is now known), has shrunk to those who are available for at least two weeks and the set is to be made of wood (we have an old garden shed…) and a smallish fan now blows a row of slash curtains in yellow and red. 'Charity' will be played by a single sheep.

In 1985, we had 18 shows in two venues, each giving ten performances a day. It seemed a lot but now there 23 stages with ten shows a day and The Pleasance is only a part of something huge and, to my mind, a still glorious, festival.

Nowadays there is a mini army of people, all year round, seeing shows, listening to ideas, often spreading a little reality upon a choppy sea of creative expectation. There always was a team but, what is remarkable, the current team is by no means a vast multiplication; it just works very hard and carries an ever increasing wealth of experience. By April, we used to have the beginnings of a programme; now, deadlines creep ever earlier in the year.

The really nice people from Wisconsin or Bedfordshire are now programmed for the first week of the festival in a 120 seater with their musical, Hope!

Ideas, amateur and professional, which seemed such fun over chats in the pub, now have to be turned to good. The programme is proofed and printed and you can see what you are up against. And, how does anybody choose what to see? Some people make a competition of it. They see just how many shows they can see in three weeks. If that is your thing, good luck but in order to avoid indigestion and exhaustion in an Escher-like Edinburgh (Why do all steps lead UP to something?) plan carefully. Buy some good shoes. Choose a day one side of the city and, the following day, try a group of neighbouring venues on the other side. Make a few brave choices in the programme and you may be delightfully surprised by what you discover. When you visit the good people from Wisconsin or Bedfordshire, take joy in their joy in Hope!; its elegant little frame of a set, its polystyrene poodle and its jolly tunes. They will certainly be sitting next to you in the next show you see, absorbing the great jumble of hope, expectation, good people and sheer fun that is The Edinburgh Festival Fringe.