Can you tell what it is yet?

JOHN BURNS reflects on HI~Arts Showcase and the Edinburgh Fringe
 

I KEEP ASKING myself the question, “Why am doing this?”. It is the evening of the last day of the Edinburgh Festival and I am standing in a dingy cellar bar waiting to perform my stand-up comedy act. The bar is infamous amongst comedians for audiences who are always drunk, frequently indifferent and occasionally aggressive.

A few hours ago I came off stage at the end of Raging Haggis, the showcase sponsored in this year’s Fringe by HI~Arts and the Highland Year of Culture 2007. That was a great gig and I knew I should finish on a high, but somehow the temptation to do just one more gig had been too much, so here I am awaiting execution.

The last few days of the Fringe always have something of a surreal quality to them. Over the month or so of the Festival a small community develops in Edinburgh. It is a strange but close community of diverse people – there are dancers, actors, comedians, men who juggle fire and women who can walk on glass; this community is united by one aim, getting the show on.

For those taking part in the Fringe the “real world” can become a distant memory, as days of the week cease to have meaning and life shifts into a nocturnal pattern. For me this, my second Festival, has been a great experience. I have learned so much in such a short time I am left a little dazed by the experience.

Not only does the intensity of performing three or four times a day drive you forward on a steepening learning curve, but the chance to see so many other fine acts provides invaluable insight into a thousand different ways of telling a tale or shaping a joke.

Standing in that room on the last night I was aware how tired I was but most of me still didn’t want the Fringe to end. I’m not sure why but despite my personal positive experience I was left with the feeling that there was something missing from the Fringe this year although quite what that was eluded me.

Despite its very diverse nature and virtually no rehearsal, Raging Haggis gained a creditable three stars and did quite well at the box office.

I hope that the fringe Showcase was as valuable experience for everyone else taking part as it was for me. It gave three theatre groups a chance to perform short runs at the Fringe. The aim was to allow them the experience of performing without the financial risk that a full Fringe run entails. Even successful shows can be down several thousand pounds at the end of a run, and the risk that you are unlucky and only pull in small audiences incurring financial disaster is ever present.

Cartoon Theatre’s The Perfect Spot opened the showcase with an innovative blend of live action and David Smith’s animation. Early performances suffered as a result of their position at the very start of the Fringe when many audiences were small but, gradually, as word got round, audiences picked up to some very healthy numbers towards the end of their run. From reviewers the show achieved a coveted four stars and also got an important visit from the Arts Council, hopefully giving the company an important boost for the future.

Second up with a five day run were Out of the Darkness Theatre Company with their adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I had a dual role in this festival as co-ordinator of the showcase and performer, and I must admit to a real struggle trying to fit the company’s title and the show name into the tiny space available in the Festival brochure.

It was worth it in the end, though, and it was a privilege to see this inclusive production as it gave great respect and dignity to people with learning disabilities. I think it deserves a special mention as the only production on the Fringe to use Makaton sign language as a part of the production.

Makaton is frequently used by people who have difficulty in finding their way through the impenetrable maze of spoken English and it was good to see that this production brought this method of communication out into the public eye where it belongs. For those taking part in this fine production I’m sure it will be an experience that will remain in their memories for a long time to come.

Latecomers Tartan Chameleon were the final theatre group to take part in the Showcase with their production of Hitler Killed My Canary. This production is a fine blend of musical theatre relating the story of a young soldier who accidentally shoots a young woman in the closing days of the Second World War.

The play is both funny and moving, and veers from moments of music hall comedy to dark pathos. Having missed the deadline for the Fringe brochure, Hitler struggled at first to pull in good audiences but word of mouth soon spread with the show’s audiences growing by successive performances. Tartan Chameleon, who also drew the attention of the Arts Council, are now considering a full run at next years Fringe.

Our final offering for the Fringe was Raging Haggis; billed as a Comedy Cabaret, the show was an attempt to give individual performers from the Highlands and Islands an opportunity to perform at the Fringe. Eight performers took part with the show being anchored by veteran stand-up Vladimir MacTavish. The show was extremely varied with performances from companies including Theatre Hebrides, with their Sked Crew Girls and the innovative Zenwing Puppets with sketches and mime.

Kerry Ross performed a monologue from her novel that she is converting into a screenplay and Jack Burns, the Grey Panther of stand-up Comedy (okay, that it is me very thinly disguised), also performed a set. Despite its very diverse nature and virtually no rehearsal the show gained a creditable three stars and did quite well at the box office.

Stand-up can be a brutal business and everyone gets knocked down once in a while.

The Fringe is a crucible for the dreams of many, for some it is the launch pad to success and it has seen the birth of many great careers. For others it can be a collision with a brutal reality, and it is not unusual to see a hapless comedian leaving the stage disconsolate after being savaged at the hands of a cynical audience.

At the last year’s Fringe I almost quit comedy. I died at successive gigs, nothing seemed to go right and I began to question if comedy was the right place for me. A series of bad gigs damages your confidence and each time you go on stage that confidence diminishes making success even less likely.

For some that cycle remains unbroken until one day they put the microphone down for the last time. Stand-up can be a brutal business and everyone gets knocked down once in a while. I realise now that the important part is not getting knocked down, it is getting back up again afterwards, once you have learned that the inevitable highs and lows of stand-up don’t seem so bad.

My personal highlight of the festival had to be seeing Dwight Slade perform stand-up. Dwight is famous in his own right but is the more well known for his early partnership with the legendary Bill Hicks. Hicks, who was so tragically taken from us at the age of 32, still stands tall over the world of stand-up comedy and all of us feel, to a greater or lesser extent, in his shadow.

Even though I went to see Slade partly from the perspective of seeing “the hand that touched the hand” I was left in awe of his own consummate skill as a stand-up. He was quite simply the best I have ever seen and his mastery of acting out a thousand scenes with a variety of well honed techniques was something that left me dazzled and gave me something to aim at.

Slade himself said, “There was Hicks and then there was everyone else,” I walked away wondering that if Slade had been that good just how good must Hicks have been?

Back in the cellar the nun impersonator has almost come to the end of his set and in a few minutes in will be my turn to try and raise a smile amongst the dead. In the bar a TV set has been left switched on and I begin to notice familiar scenes of Edinburgh flickering across the screen.

The sound is off but I gradually become fascinated by images of a silver people carrier, its windows blacked out, gliding through the streets accompanied by the blue flashing light of its police escort. I begin to wonder who this person is, what colossus of the artistic world could possibly warrant such attention? Surely only some great icon of the twentieth century would be worthy of such an accolade.

Possessed by curiosity I stumble out of the bar and up onto Princes Street. The city is eerily silent, police stop traffic at every junction, it is as if the whole place is frozen in awe of the mysterious people carrier. Suddenly it appears, gliding unhindered through silent streets. Finally, unable to contain my curiosity any longer, I approach a policeman who is holding up the traffic and ask him who this important person is. He turns to me and whispers in muffled, deferential tones, “That, mate, is Rolf Harris!”

Now perhaps I’m missing something but, … Rolf Harris? I mean I know he is famous, if for nothing else but simpering over sick hamsters in that animal hospital programme. I just have to ask myself is a man who rose to fame singing songs about restraining marsupials and blowing down a drain pipe really the man for whom Scotland’s capital should fall silent in respect?

I could just about live with Eddie Izzard, but Rolf Harris? I know he paints but artistic giant he is not. I doubt if Da Vinci turned from working on the Mona Lisa to quip to the assembled crowd, “Can you tell what it is yet?”

In the end my gig in the cellar went well and I managed to raise a smile from the assembled sleep walkers, but Mr Harris’ appearance perhaps did give me the clue to what I had felt had been missing in the Festival as a whole. Surely we can do better than that.

© John Burns, 2005