Edinburgh Fringe

The follow up to my previous post about Scotland is that we spent the second half of vacation in Edinburgh at the Fringe festival. I had never been and I loved it! It felt very much like just trying to absorb as much art as I can in a few days.

We stayed in student housing, which wasn’t great, honestly. It did the job but the bed was uncomfortable, plus there were two of us in there. But we got our own (tiny) bathroom and a shared kitchen. It definitely worked for our purposes, but maybe a hotel if we ever make more money.

The shows themselves were really the highlight. There was such a cool mix of different genres, we saw multiple circus shows and audience participation shows for sure. Most of them were comedies also, and based on other IP. So for example, one of my favorite shows was “Fly you Fools!” which was a group of four actors reenacting “The Fellowship of the Ring” that was equally faithful to the movie and funny. Unfortunately a lot of the Fringe fest is very DIY, actors flyer for themselves and run a lot of the tech themselves, there is some venue staff as well who also work very hard. But it seems logical that independent shows not based on something the public has familiarity with would have a harder time.

I loved this experience so much, I could have been there all month and not gotten tired of it. And spent too much money. But it was really delightful to just take it all in and focus on art for a week. I hope I can go back sometime!