So I'm at my friend Tom's birthday party, hoping to steer the conversation toward what I'm going to be doing for the next few weeks. I'll be performing Macaroni on a Hotdog, the one woman show I've written, at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Maureen takes the bait and asks me what I'm doing the rest of the summer, and I explain.
Me: And also... I'll be blogging about the whole adventure on the Huffington Post.
Maureen: Is that like a Caring Bridge thing, but for artists?
Luckily there was a festive birthday napkin available to wipe off the Pinot Grigio I snorted through my nose from laughing. I thought about Maureen's analogy. Although there are similarities, this endeavor is less about a death, and more about a birth. The birth of a new play.
Part of the job of being an actor, is being asked (frequently asked) "What are you doing now?"
If you're not working, people might think that you're either lazy, or unemployable. For seven months now, I've joyously had an answer to the question "What are you doing now?"
This is not my first time to the Edinburgh Fringe. My husband and I brought the brilliantly constructed Billy VanZandt play The Property Known as Garland to the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe. This time around I'll be performing a play I've written myself. If things go well, I'll be taking a lot of the credit, if things go. . . you know what? Let's change the subject.
This time around, we've arrived a few days before the Fringe kicks in to high gear. The venue we're performing has just begun to be transformed. It's usually a lecture hall for the Surgeon's College, but during the Fringe, it becomes Theatre 3 of theSpace@SurgeonsHall.
It's nice to see the calm before the storm.
For anyone considering bringing a show to the Fringe, you should try and be realistic. There are 3,000 shows here this month. In addition to the Fringe, there's also a book festival, a jazz festival, International Festival and don't even get me started on the tattoo at the Castle. Besides the plethora of festivals, Edinburgh has museums, parks and fantastic pubs. Competition for an audience is fierce. Some of the venues will require you to fill a certain amount of seats for each performance. If you don't fill those seats, you have to pay for them yourself. This is a bad deal and do not even think of signing that contract.
I kind of feel like, if you bring a show to the Fringe, it's like the Universe's way of hazing you, and whatever the outcome, just by surviving the month, you are in the club.
Last night we sat in the Auld Hoose Pub, had a pint of Hobgoblin and I wrote my first post. Which disappeared because I clicked the wrong button. Tragedy? Hardly. Frustrating? Definitely. The Auld Hoose hadn't changed much since 2012. Comfortable seats, excellent taps. I did notice their cigarette machine has left, and some posters advertising current exhibitions are on display. I would love to see the M.C. Escher and the Roy Lichtenstein at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and also there's a Lee Miller and Picasso at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. I'm pretty much a kid in a candy store. Edinburgh is going to explode with culture, fun and mayhem and I have a front row seat.