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shark_hatThere's no particular need in the world for another Fringe guide but I want to write this so what the heck.
1) What is the Fringe and why would I want to go?
Basically, over three weeks in August in Edinburgh there are a bunch of different festivals- film, books, international theatre and music, jazz- but the Fringe overshadows them all. It's the biggest arts festival in the world by quite some margin, featuring nearly 3,500 shows over three weeks (on any given day there are probably only 2,500 performances. People need a day off now and again.) There are a LOT of venues, mostly smallish rooms in cellars hastily transformed for the occasion. More than half of the shows are comedy, but that still leave a lot that aren't!
It's one of the main engines of the British performing arts scene, and shapes pretty much everything about how live comedy works here (performers work up an hour-long show for the Fringe and then tour it; winners of the Best Comedy and Best Newcomer awards get a lot of opportunities.) It's an immersion into a different world, with its own priorities, vocabulary and time zone. Also, Edinburgh is an amazing city.
2) OK, I'm sold, that sounds cool. Why are you doing a guide specifically for a middle-aged person?
Because teenagers may be able to see 8 shows a day, drink 20 pints a night, sleep on the floor for a week, and not break themselves, but I can't. I have handy hints and tips if you can't either.
3)Is there any need for the whole guide to be in Q and A format?
No.
My main points, I suppose, are to cover some of the issues that you wouldn't necessarily realise when you first think about going, and to strongly suggest you keep in mind what you already know about what keeps you happy.
Do you know Edinburgh? If so, skip to the next paragraph.
Edinburgh is a fairly small city, and very walkable, which is great when you're going from venue to venue; however, it's really, really hilly. Like, from one street to the next parallel street is often more than a hundred stairs up hilly. This has a couple of implications. 1)COMFORTABLE SHOES. 2)Check a real map as well as the Fringe app's map; are you sure that what looks like an intersection isn't actually one street making a bridge high above the other? 3)It takes more time to get places than you think, because you're climbing. 4)There some huge pinch points. If you're in the New Town and need to go to the Old Town, you have to cross the valley with the train station in it, and there are only two ways to do that, so there are people jams and it takes extra time. (Yes, those who know Edinburgh and read this section anyhow, you're right, you can also go around the ends of the valley. That takes just as long though.)
Know thyself
I get stressed easily in the face of too much choice. I like looking at the big fringe guide which comes out in June and doing a spreadsheet of shows I'd like to see, then booking the tickets, so when I get there I just have to go from one thing to the next without making decisions. However! I've been going to the Fringe for a while and already have a lot of performers that I already like, and venues that I know often have stuff to my taste. Also, I miss out on serendipity, and on making decisions once the reviews start to come out. If you're a spontaneous person and find making a spreadsheet a ghastly idea, don't do it. (I'd still look through the guide to get a picture of the sort of shows there are and see if there's anything you really really don't want to miss.)
I have slightly achy joints and am possessive about my space. I find it worth the money to get a hotel room rather than a bunk in a hostel, even though I'll only be in the room for a short time every day. I also don't like noise, so it's worth 10 minutes extra walking to get to a hotel away from the absolute centre. YMMV.
Planning
How do you choose what you want to see?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
tickets.edfringe.com is the "find shows" bit of the Fringe website. The Filter Results bit is very very useful- you can just look at the genres you're interested in for the days that you're there. It's quite handy to make an account on edfringe.com even if you don't plan to book tickets in advance, so you can favourite things and/or use the "planning calendar"- shows that you book are automatically added, but you can choose a date for any show and add them too. If you aren't already a fan of any acts, people do use their blurb in the programme/on the website to say they won awards or have very good reviews or sold out the previous year, which might be useful info... otherwise it really is just seeing what sounds good to you. (Besides UK national newspapers, generally-respected review sources include The Scotsman, Broadway Baby, Three Weeks, and Chortle. Many of those also do "top tips for the fringe" articles in the weeks leading up to it, too.)
I highly recommend branching out a bit: if you mostly like political theatre, go to a bit of absurdist comedy; if you love cabaret, go to a talk on science; if you like satire, try a bit of modern dance. See some sketch or improv, because there's more standup on TV. Maybe try to consciously choose some shows that aren't white males? Also, no matter how well you choose, remember that you will definitely miss the Best Thing Ever (3,500 shows!) and also something that you only go to because it's on the way between two things you fancy will probably end up being your absolute favourite. That's the Fringe for you.
I think it's useful to know something about how the Fringe works in general and specifically the venue families. Fringe performers are always doing it at their own risk. They either rent a room and try to make their money back from the ticket sales, or they get a room free and ask the audience for money at the end. (The free places make their money on food and drink sales.) Over the years, quite a few venues that started off renting out one room, or several rooms in one building, have put out more and more tendrils until they can have dozens of rooms in tens of locations; acts may need to compete to get a room in one of the big hitters, so there can be less risk in going to see a show there because they're unlikely to risk their reputation by letting a really awful act have a room. The Pleasance does practically all comedy with a bit of theatre; the Stand does all comedy (they run a comedy club year-round); The Gilded Balloon does mostly comedy; The Underbelly does comedy, theatre and circus; The Assembly does comedy, theatre, circus and dance. Also, many of the pay-what-you-want and free venues band together; Just The Tonic, Heroes of Fringe and PBH's Free Fringe are the big names there (I've found JTT and Heroes more interesting over the last couple of years).
If you want to be completely spontaneous, it might be worth going in the second or third week, because some reviews are in- people will add them to their posters and flyers, and venues will have boards up with the best reviews. Walk down the Royal Mile and look at the showcased acts, or look at the venue map tickets.edfringe.com/venues/map and walk down any street with one or more venue on it, because you will be given flyers for shows. So, so many flyers for shows. If you download the Fringe app and turn location and data on, you can do "see shows near my location in the next hour", which is nice.
If you want to book all or most things in advance, I find a separate spreadsheet is more useful for actual planning than the website's tools; I do a column per day, a row per quarter-hour, then create a block per show, starting off with the possible shows all off to one side and then copy & pasting into the "live" columns until it makes a workable timetable, including the travel times between the venues. It's a tricky jigsaw job- starting at the end of the day and working backwards works as well as anything. I colour-code shows at each venue family (with colours for "other, ticketed" and "other, free"). Once I've made my choices I buy tickets, which adds those shows to the app's planning calendar, and manually add free show dates to the calendar as well.
For god's sake don't pick up your tickets from the Fringe shop, the queue is tens of metres long even in the early morning. Many of the large venues can print off tickets for everything you've booked as long as you have the credit card you used- check the website for which ones.
Some pointers to staying comfortable
Clothing layers and hydration.
Many of the rooms are small makeshift ones that don't have air-conditioning, and have people crammed in watching shows all day, so they get HOT. Then you come outside into the beautiful Scottish summer weather, ie, 6 degrees C with horizontal rain. Even after a warm day it gets cold quickly at night. Put at least an extra shirt in your bag.
All venues that serve food or alcohol have to provide free tap water. Take advantage of it, they don't want you keeling over with heatstroke. Remember the bit about how performers get a room, either by renting one or getting it free and asking the audience for money at the end? I want to keep the free fringe going because there's a lot of really interesting things going on, so at ticketed venues I grab a glass of water (they usually just have jugs and glasses at the end of the bar for you to pour yourself, to save their staff time) and at the free ones I buy a drink (usually juice, at least in the daytime).
Time.
See above re. what getting around Edinburgh is like. When you're working out how much time to allow to get to a show: if you normally take ten minutes to walk half a mile, add an extra five minutes because there's probably a hill, an extra five minutes because there are half a million more people in the city than usual, if you're going between the Old Town and the New add an extra ten minutes for crossing the bridge, add an extra ten minutes to find the room once you get to the venue, an extra ten minutes to go to the bathroom and get a glass of water... it's really nice not to be dashing to get there at the last second and end up with the worst seat. Allow time for a breather. In my giant spreadsheet, I give myself at least 45 minutes between the end time of one show and the start of the next (unless they're both at the same place. Even then you're often changing rooms within the venue so you need at least ten minutes, more if it's the Pleasance Courtyard.) And try to give yourself time to eat occasionally- though there are a lot of takeaway places and food vans.
Also, you may hear people talking about Fringe Time. It's real. A show that starts at 11.30 in the morning seems luxuriously late when you're sitting in your office, but not if you've been to shows that finish at 3 AM for the last three nights. You will feel jetlagged.
Breaks and doing something different.
I can see six shows a day for ten days quite happily, but if I buy tickets for eight shows in a day I just end up skipping one of them to read a book in a pub for an hour. If you need to sit down and decompress, just do that. Remember that the point is to enjoy yourself! Respect your limitations so you can have a good time tomorrow, too.
Festival-going is weird behaviour so you won't really know how much you like to do until you try, but it's probably a good idea to take breaks- have a nap, or Edinburgh has lovely botanical gardens and a good art gallery and an extinct volcano you can climb and lots of other non-performance-related things to do, or you can go down to the seashore at Leith or get a train a bit further North or lots of things. Seeing different kinds of show can also make a really good change- some of my favourite memories are of weird dance performances that I wouldn't get any other time.
Consideration for others and keeping safe.
Edinburgh natives put up with a lot in August. Don't get drunk and be rude to them.
There are a lot of people giving out flyers for shows; some of them are paid but some are the performers themselves. There's no harm in taking a flyer you don't want or at least smiling as you say no, it's a very discouraging job.
GET OUT OF THE BLOODY WAY, there are a lot of people trying to get places in narrow streets. If you need to look at your phone, step to one side (after checking that you aren't stepping directly into someone's way).
I find it very safe- there are lots of good-natured people about even in the dark alleyways. However, feeling invulnerable because you're in a happy holiday zone is also a problem; don't walk out into the road, don't leave your purse on the table when you go to the toilet, don't sleep with comedians unless you're fine with becoming an anecdote.
1) What is the Fringe and why would I want to go?
Basically, over three weeks in August in Edinburgh there are a bunch of different festivals- film, books, international theatre and music, jazz- but the Fringe overshadows them all. It's the biggest arts festival in the world by quite some margin, featuring nearly 3,500 shows over three weeks (on any given day there are probably only 2,500 performances. People need a day off now and again.) There are a LOT of venues, mostly smallish rooms in cellars hastily transformed for the occasion. More than half of the shows are comedy, but that still leave a lot that aren't!
It's one of the main engines of the British performing arts scene, and shapes pretty much everything about how live comedy works here (performers work up an hour-long show for the Fringe and then tour it; winners of the Best Comedy and Best Newcomer awards get a lot of opportunities.) It's an immersion into a different world, with its own priorities, vocabulary and time zone. Also, Edinburgh is an amazing city.
2) OK, I'm sold, that sounds cool. Why are you doing a guide specifically for a middle-aged person?
Because teenagers may be able to see 8 shows a day, drink 20 pints a night, sleep on the floor for a week, and not break themselves, but I can't. I have handy hints and tips if you can't either.
3)Is there any need for the whole guide to be in Q and A format?
No.
My main points, I suppose, are to cover some of the issues that you wouldn't necessarily realise when you first think about going, and to strongly suggest you keep in mind what you already know about what keeps you happy.
Do you know Edinburgh? If so, skip to the next paragraph.
Edinburgh is a fairly small city, and very walkable, which is great when you're going from venue to venue; however, it's really, really hilly. Like, from one street to the next parallel street is often more than a hundred stairs up hilly. This has a couple of implications. 1)COMFORTABLE SHOES. 2)Check a real map as well as the Fringe app's map; are you sure that what looks like an intersection isn't actually one street making a bridge high above the other? 3)It takes more time to get places than you think, because you're climbing. 4)There some huge pinch points. If you're in the New Town and need to go to the Old Town, you have to cross the valley with the train station in it, and there are only two ways to do that, so there are people jams and it takes extra time. (Yes, those who know Edinburgh and read this section anyhow, you're right, you can also go around the ends of the valley. That takes just as long though.)
Know thyself
I get stressed easily in the face of too much choice. I like looking at the big fringe guide which comes out in June and doing a spreadsheet of shows I'd like to see, then booking the tickets, so when I get there I just have to go from one thing to the next without making decisions. However! I've been going to the Fringe for a while and already have a lot of performers that I already like, and venues that I know often have stuff to my taste. Also, I miss out on serendipity, and on making decisions once the reviews start to come out. If you're a spontaneous person and find making a spreadsheet a ghastly idea, don't do it. (I'd still look through the guide to get a picture of the sort of shows there are and see if there's anything you really really don't want to miss.)
I have slightly achy joints and am possessive about my space. I find it worth the money to get a hotel room rather than a bunk in a hostel, even though I'll only be in the room for a short time every day. I also don't like noise, so it's worth 10 minutes extra walking to get to a hotel away from the absolute centre. YMMV.
Planning
How do you choose what you want to see?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
tickets.edfringe.com is the "find shows" bit of the Fringe website. The Filter Results bit is very very useful- you can just look at the genres you're interested in for the days that you're there. It's quite handy to make an account on edfringe.com even if you don't plan to book tickets in advance, so you can favourite things and/or use the "planning calendar"- shows that you book are automatically added, but you can choose a date for any show and add them too. If you aren't already a fan of any acts, people do use their blurb in the programme/on the website to say they won awards or have very good reviews or sold out the previous year, which might be useful info... otherwise it really is just seeing what sounds good to you. (Besides UK national newspapers, generally-respected review sources include The Scotsman, Broadway Baby, Three Weeks, and Chortle. Many of those also do "top tips for the fringe" articles in the weeks leading up to it, too.)
I highly recommend branching out a bit: if you mostly like political theatre, go to a bit of absurdist comedy; if you love cabaret, go to a talk on science; if you like satire, try a bit of modern dance. See some sketch or improv, because there's more standup on TV. Maybe try to consciously choose some shows that aren't white males? Also, no matter how well you choose, remember that you will definitely miss the Best Thing Ever (3,500 shows!) and also something that you only go to because it's on the way between two things you fancy will probably end up being your absolute favourite. That's the Fringe for you.
I think it's useful to know something about how the Fringe works in general and specifically the venue families. Fringe performers are always doing it at their own risk. They either rent a room and try to make their money back from the ticket sales, or they get a room free and ask the audience for money at the end. (The free places make their money on food and drink sales.) Over the years, quite a few venues that started off renting out one room, or several rooms in one building, have put out more and more tendrils until they can have dozens of rooms in tens of locations; acts may need to compete to get a room in one of the big hitters, so there can be less risk in going to see a show there because they're unlikely to risk their reputation by letting a really awful act have a room. The Pleasance does practically all comedy with a bit of theatre; the Stand does all comedy (they run a comedy club year-round); The Gilded Balloon does mostly comedy; The Underbelly does comedy, theatre and circus; The Assembly does comedy, theatre, circus and dance. Also, many of the pay-what-you-want and free venues band together; Just The Tonic, Heroes of Fringe and PBH's Free Fringe are the big names there (I've found JTT and Heroes more interesting over the last couple of years).
If you want to be completely spontaneous, it might be worth going in the second or third week, because some reviews are in- people will add them to their posters and flyers, and venues will have boards up with the best reviews. Walk down the Royal Mile and look at the showcased acts, or look at the venue map tickets.edfringe.com/venues/map and walk down any street with one or more venue on it, because you will be given flyers for shows. So, so many flyers for shows. If you download the Fringe app and turn location and data on, you can do "see shows near my location in the next hour", which is nice.
If you want to book all or most things in advance, I find a separate spreadsheet is more useful for actual planning than the website's tools; I do a column per day, a row per quarter-hour, then create a block per show, starting off with the possible shows all off to one side and then copy & pasting into the "live" columns until it makes a workable timetable, including the travel times between the venues. It's a tricky jigsaw job- starting at the end of the day and working backwards works as well as anything. I colour-code shows at each venue family (with colours for "other, ticketed" and "other, free"). Once I've made my choices I buy tickets, which adds those shows to the app's planning calendar, and manually add free show dates to the calendar as well.
For god's sake don't pick up your tickets from the Fringe shop, the queue is tens of metres long even in the early morning. Many of the large venues can print off tickets for everything you've booked as long as you have the credit card you used- check the website for which ones.
Some pointers to staying comfortable
Clothing layers and hydration.
Many of the rooms are small makeshift ones that don't have air-conditioning, and have people crammed in watching shows all day, so they get HOT. Then you come outside into the beautiful Scottish summer weather, ie, 6 degrees C with horizontal rain. Even after a warm day it gets cold quickly at night. Put at least an extra shirt in your bag.
All venues that serve food or alcohol have to provide free tap water. Take advantage of it, they don't want you keeling over with heatstroke. Remember the bit about how performers get a room, either by renting one or getting it free and asking the audience for money at the end? I want to keep the free fringe going because there's a lot of really interesting things going on, so at ticketed venues I grab a glass of water (they usually just have jugs and glasses at the end of the bar for you to pour yourself, to save their staff time) and at the free ones I buy a drink (usually juice, at least in the daytime).
Time.
See above re. what getting around Edinburgh is like. When you're working out how much time to allow to get to a show: if you normally take ten minutes to walk half a mile, add an extra five minutes because there's probably a hill, an extra five minutes because there are half a million more people in the city than usual, if you're going between the Old Town and the New add an extra ten minutes for crossing the bridge, add an extra ten minutes to find the room once you get to the venue, an extra ten minutes to go to the bathroom and get a glass of water... it's really nice not to be dashing to get there at the last second and end up with the worst seat. Allow time for a breather. In my giant spreadsheet, I give myself at least 45 minutes between the end time of one show and the start of the next (unless they're both at the same place. Even then you're often changing rooms within the venue so you need at least ten minutes, more if it's the Pleasance Courtyard.) And try to give yourself time to eat occasionally- though there are a lot of takeaway places and food vans.
Also, you may hear people talking about Fringe Time. It's real. A show that starts at 11.30 in the morning seems luxuriously late when you're sitting in your office, but not if you've been to shows that finish at 3 AM for the last three nights. You will feel jetlagged.
Breaks and doing something different.
I can see six shows a day for ten days quite happily, but if I buy tickets for eight shows in a day I just end up skipping one of them to read a book in a pub for an hour. If you need to sit down and decompress, just do that. Remember that the point is to enjoy yourself! Respect your limitations so you can have a good time tomorrow, too.
Festival-going is weird behaviour so you won't really know how much you like to do until you try, but it's probably a good idea to take breaks- have a nap, or Edinburgh has lovely botanical gardens and a good art gallery and an extinct volcano you can climb and lots of other non-performance-related things to do, or you can go down to the seashore at Leith or get a train a bit further North or lots of things. Seeing different kinds of show can also make a really good change- some of my favourite memories are of weird dance performances that I wouldn't get any other time.
Consideration for others and keeping safe.
Edinburgh natives put up with a lot in August. Don't get drunk and be rude to them.
There are a lot of people giving out flyers for shows; some of them are paid but some are the performers themselves. There's no harm in taking a flyer you don't want or at least smiling as you say no, it's a very discouraging job.
GET OUT OF THE BLOODY WAY, there are a lot of people trying to get places in narrow streets. If you need to look at your phone, step to one side (after checking that you aren't stepping directly into someone's way).
I find it very safe- there are lots of good-natured people about even in the dark alleyways. However, feeling invulnerable because you're in a happy holiday zone is also a problem; don't walk out into the road, don't leave your purse on the table when you go to the toilet, don't sleep with comedians unless you're fine with becoming an anecdote.
