Nothing prepares you for performing at the Edinburgh festival fringe. It’s the largest arts festival in the world and considered a rite of passage by all who flock to it in August and dream of becoming the next Steve Coogan, Frank Skinner or James Acaster. Yes, mainly men have done well at the fringe, but let’s save that for another column.
In episode four of Baby Reindeer, written by and starring Edinburgh fringe veteran Richard Gadd, his struggling standup character Donny Dunn goes to the festival and his experience is precisely how I remember it. I went with that same wide-eyed wonder. Donny joins the performers “gambling their luck on a shot at fame” for the chance to be one of the few acts, among thousands, who break through. That dream sustains you for about the first week. Reality quickly sets in.
For Donny, it starts with his venue; he has to perform in the middle of the day in a pub whose few patrons are there for the football not the meta-comedy. I still recall arriving at a similar venue. It was a hollowed-out cave covered in dust and mould spores. In hindsight, I wouldn’t have let my dog pee in it but, like Donny, I filed it under “all part of the fringe experience”.
I have performed at three fringes and attended another three as a punter. Before my first, in 2015, I was told it would be expensive, exhausting, competitive and lonely, and would have little impact on my career progression. Did I listen? Of course I didn’t. None of us ever do. The fringe batters us financially, physically and mentally. We come back skint, knackered and awash with existential angst. Then, August rolls around again and the same performers sign up for another round. Rinse and repeat.
The whole series of Baby Reindeer, which started out as an Edinburgh fringe show, explores shame – and that extends to the experience of the festival. Donny becomes so disillusioned with begging people to see his show that he stops trying to attract audiences all together. I was told to print 3,000 flyers for my stint, but returned to London with at least 2,800. Between the desperation of forcing flyers into the hands of uninterested passersby to getting a one-star review from a 19-year-old undergrad, the shame can be strong. There are thousands of fringe acts competing for audience attention, so you inevitably get lost in a sea of clowns. The odds are stacked against you.
When Donny gets a pass to a fringe venue’s private bar he considers it excellent fortune, as these insider passes used to be hard to obtain. It doesn’t mean the bars are nice, by the way. They are student unions with black curtains covering the walls and dim lighting so you can pretend you’re in Soho House. Inexperienced performers go there to “network”, as did I, but remain outside the inner circle. Gadd perfectly captures the smell of desperation.
Annie Griffin’s 2005 film Festival, starring the then little-known Stephen Mangan and Chris O’Dowd, offers another brutally honest depiction of the fringe. It captures the festival’s sideshows of sex, drinking and mayhem, which I can’t say I enjoyed but I heard others did. It also homed in on more critical issues that still dominate the fringe. One character in the film says it is becoming star-driven rather than ideas-driven and that everyone is just looking for the next interesting Channel 4 series. That hasn’t changed. Except now it’s Netflix.
My fringes were not a total waste of time and money. I made new friends, signed an agent and even met Emma Thompson on the Royal Mile. She was delightful! You feel you’re part of something special and on your way to creative greatness. I, like Gadd, performed daily for a month, which inevitably makes you better at your craft. I became a more robust person, which is essential for survival in the arts. The festival portrait I’d like to see is one that really explores why, despite how painfully hard it is, performers keep returning. It’s not just for the once-in-a-lifetime feeling of a stranger stopping you in the Old Town and saying: “Hey, I loved your show.” They thought I was someone else … but it still felt brilliant.