Originally published in print in October 2023.
A lot of people don’t realise that Fringe festivals are meant as innovative precursors to more established theatre festivals. Think of the Fringe as the maverick cousin of Edinburgh International Festival and Dublin Theatre Festival. We’ve compiled our writers’ experiences of these festivals in a disorganised and chaotic way (á la Fringe) to attempt a glimpse at the wonderful madness that these festivals have to offer.
To see the Fringe:
Some Fringe shows are bad, but they are never boring.
As an audience member of a free Fringe show I gently placed a bruised apple in the mouth of a man posing as a pig on a spit. He wore pig ears, a snout and a very cheap, alarmingly stained, Elvis costume. Going to a Fringe show is always a risk. Walking into yet another makeshift theatre for a multi-hyphenated, possibly talentless, artist performing some bizarre spectacle can be daunting. In the opening minutes of Junk Ensembles’ Dances Like a Bomb I braced myself for a long hour as Mikel Murfi and Finola Cronin began to interpretively dance in their underwear. Instead, by the end I had spontaneously burst into tears and honestly couldn’t tell you why. At their best, Fringe shows hold brief moments of clarity that move you in unexpected ways. This transient aspect of the Fringe, sometimes due to short runs and poor reviews, is part of its charm. Within the diversity of shows a tiny thread of continuity pieces them together: that being alive can be messy. Fringe functions by throwing out tradition and form to scrape to the very centre of uncertainty. It can be wildly liberating, and equally painful. I’d recommend any Fringe show as a risk worth taking – you’ll end up with a decent story either way.
WORDS: Éle Ní Chonbhuí
To write/perform in the Fringe:
Picture this, you’re in your twenties, you’re sad and confused and desperately searching for answers to questions you can’t quite put your finger on (you may not have to do too much imagining). In this muddle of an identity crisis, if a mysterious figure claimed to have all the answers and was willing to share them with you, even though it might mean leaving behind everything you do know, would you follow them?
Fionntán Larney, writer and performer of Endings. sat down with Laura O’Callaghan to discuss his one-man show centred around ‘Henry,’ a dissatisfied man in his mid-twenties post-panic attack at his birthday party. Endings. ran as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival from the 9th to the 16th of September at the Project Arts Centre. This musical, although both Laura and Larney agreed that ‘concept album’ has a much cooler ring to it, features an original score composed by Ethan Roe and Morgan Beausang. With performances from brilliant voice actors including Morgan Jones, Megan Mcdonnell and Michèle Forbes, Endings.’ intriguing blend of spoken word, electronic music, voice recordings and musical performances brought a modern, Dublin-based, take on the Faustian pact.
Larney: “It’s just me on stage interacting with all these recorded voices… We pitch the voices up and down in software and I’m interacting with all these characters. […] What we realised [when we made Beat] is we can’t afford to make five films with guns and car chases and whatever, but we can do it with audio. We did that and from there we jumped off. So, when I was making [Endings.] I knew the capabilities of what we could do with the audio”
Laura: “Some of the themes that are in the show’s description are love, loss, destiny and legacy. The [themes of] destiny and legacy made me wonder, is there any influence from an epic structure?”
Larney: “The piece is definitely influenced a lot by classical works, if I tell you what classical works, it’ll spoil the play. […] I think specifically the play is about masculinity and about men in the modern age and I think legacy and destiny are such huge things men seem to be grappling with right now. There’s so many men that are lost because they’re in their mid-twenties, they don’t know where they’re going with their life, but they also feel owed something by the universe. They feel they should have been given something that they haven’t, and it leads to people getting led astray by your Andrew Tates. […] As an artist or as a writer, I feel like the more specific you try to write, the more universal it feels. You see that all the time in the media, people trying to reach every demographic and please every demographic…”
Laura: “And it doesn’t reach anyone”
Larney: “Exactly, […] but when you give those voices to people of those demographics, and they make the stories, then it means something. I definitely don’t think that I can claim that I’ve written the story for everybody, but what I have tried to do is write something from a specific perspective that will shed light on an issue. […] It’s definitely set [in Dublin] in the modern day, it’s definitely engaging with Irish modern issues. But that setting is less important than the fact that it’s set in Henry’s head. It’s set inside his mind […] I’m not really interested in telling a happy-clappy story that doesn’t say anything about the world, or my perspective of the world. […] So, I think I want for some members of the audience to leave challenged. For some members comforted and for people to feel entertained.”
WORDS: Laura O’Callaghan
To volunteer at the Fringe:
Volunteering at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is not for the faint of heart. It is fast paced, high energy, and exhausting; but it is also intoxicating. For two Summers I have volunteered at Fringe to spend my August at the biggest arts festival in the world. As a volunteer I am offered free shows, accommodation and a small subsistence allowance. In return I spend six days a week scanning tickets, giving directions, and greeting the public. However, volunteering is a financial risk and it demands lots of resilience, but for me the joy of working on a team united by a shared love for the festival is unmatched.
While this mightn’t sound like a riveting Summer vacay, I can promise it is an experience like no other. This August I saw fifty-two shows – from drunk Shakespeare and sexy clowns, heartbreaking shows on human trafficking or masculinity, to comedies about bananas and time travel. I never had a free moment. Before an evening shift I would run from play to play, and squeeze in a late night cabaret afterwards too. The Fringe challenges you to work hard and play harder. Shows, nights out and attractions are in abundance. Scheduling sleep, rest and downtime is a must or you will contract the dreaded “Fringe Flu,” (also known as burn out). You have to have the drive to invest in a demanding experience like Fringe but also have the self restraint to take care of yourself. This year at Fringe there were a reported 3,535 shows. In one city. In one month. The thought alone is dizzying. As an aspiring artist, the feeling of so much theatre at my fingertips is addictive.
If you have even a vague interest in the arts I cannot recommend Fringe enough. It changed the entire way I view the industry. The amount of work at Fringe is both terrifying and encouraging. It’s scary to think of being lost amidst so much work, but it is invigorating to see artists thrive, thinking one day that may be me. Fringe is no relaxing get-away, but like many other returners, I’m itching for these eleven months to pass and make my yearly trip to the Edinburgh Fringe.
WORDS: Kate Feelihy
