Susanna Hislop: Hope and ghosts keep us coming back to the Fringe

In theory, Edinburgh is one of the few places where genuinely new work and artists can be discovered

Funny man: Simon Munnery

4 August 2014

I first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe a faintly alarming 14 years ago. I was playing a flabbily characterised psychiatric patient in a blood-stained nurse’s outfit (it was a student version of Marat Sade). I flashed practised grimaces at the audience as they filtered past the dank, dripping cage in which I was symbolically incarcerated, deep in the basement tunnels of a new, literally underground venue.

When I wasn’t affecting madness, I was having my mind blown by shows like Simon Munnery’s League Against Tedium; conducting ill-advised romances in phone-boxes while sheltering from the perpetual rain; and sloshing about with the rest of the company in a pool of beer and emotion. Somehow The Scotsman gave us four stars. I was hooked.

Since growing up (sort of) and moving into professional theatre, I have come back again and again. I’ve played an Egyptologist in a sketch-show in a Portaloo and my own gin-, crossword- and speed-addicted grandmother in an ensemble physical theatre piece. I’m currently doing a one-woman show about Marilyn Monroe, Margaret Thatcher and Virginia Woolf. This is my seventh Fringe.

Last night I was back in the underground tunnels I started in. Now they’re part of a snazzily lit, corporately sponsored bar at the heart of one of Edinburgh’s main venues, the Underbelly. The health and safety Armageddon of a theatre I helped hammer into being has expanded into an entertainment monolith embodied by an inflatable purple cow.

In many ways, this is the narrative of the Fringe. (Particularly the one that jaded performers will tell.) It has become an over-inflated monstrosity that has lost its charm: where once there was an arts festival full of romance and phone-boxes, now there is a vicious marketplace full of cynicism and Twitter addiction. Although it is at least still raining.

So why do we keep coming back: like women who, despite giving birth several times, have somehow entirely blanked out any memory of pain? Perhaps it’s the constant surprises. Yesterday I saw the Grim Reaper sporting an Equity tote bag.

In theory — though too rarely in practice — Edinburgh is one of the few places where genuinely new work and artists can be discovered. Despite the dominance of commercial comedy, there have recently been encouraging signs to suggest that the tide just might be turning. The success of the Free Fringe is starting to change the comedy landscape. The persistence of Forest Fringe, an experimental, not-for-profit collective, and the emergence of imaginative new venue Summerhall have created much needed space for risk-taking theatre.

It’s still far easier to survive and sell tickets as a comedy than a theatre show. It’s still very hard to beat the fact that industry and press alike have pretty much decided what they’re going to see months before they’ve stepped onto the platform at Waverley station. Nevertheless — whether it’s the whiff of malt in the air, or the ghosts of Fringes past haunting the cobbled corners — Edinburgh in August keeps on exerting its irresistible force.

Susanna Hislop is artistic director of Slip of Steel and an editor of The Junket. How Does a Snake Shed its Skin? is at Summerhall

Susanna Hislop: Hope and ghosts keep us coming back to the Fringe

Read More