Category: theatre

Edinburgh Fringe Festival (16 years later)

I was scrolling through photographs earlier today and I came across this:

If I went through the archives there’s possibly a copy of it back at the time it was taken. Although there’s every chance the image has long been gobbled up by the domain transfers and the pixabucket or whatever it was I was using to host photos (it wasn’t flickr because for some reason that was blocked in the UAE at the time, along with skype).

It is taken outside the venue where I performed my show when I went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2009. My first solo show, had never even done more than a ten-minute spot before, and I went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with it.

WHAT WAS I THINKING.

Well, 2009 was the year after the year when a decade of experiences happened to me in the space of eighteen months and then we moved to Abu Dhabi. It’s no exaggeration to say that I was barely clinging on. So I guess I wasn’t thinking, eh?

In many ways, this show did my head in and when we left I was pretty convinced I’d never be performing again.

I had one reviewer who came, fell asleep, then gave it two and half stars, or maybe it was two stars and I’m just talking myself up 🤣. But mostly, it did my head in, because I left utterly and completely consumed by a belief that I didn’t belong in that world. I knew stand-up wasn’t for me. By then I’d been on enough line-ups and backstage with enough people who said they were nervous, who said they had no self-confidence and yet … out they went and looked like they knew exactly what they were doing. I had no theatre training so it didn’t occur to me that there was any kind of performance that would work for me.

At this stage the only person I’d seen who was doing what I could see myself doing was TJ Dawe. But he was a trained actor, and I was really wary of stepping into that world.

I still couldn’t see anyone doing the kind of performance that I wanted to do, which wasn’t standup and wasn’t acting. Edinburgh also made me think that the fringe circuit isn’t just brutal…it’s a blood sport. I just couldn’t see how someone who was quiet and wrote quiet shows could possibly find their way through it all.

Looking at that show now from the distance of sixteen years, I can, however, see that I was working my way towards the work I would be able to do. This show in Edinburgh was was on the way to where I wanted to be. A draft. A draft that probably shouldn’t have been shared publicly, but that’s what you get at an open access festival I guess. So this show is full of my early stand-up work, but is also clearly the foundation script for what would become An Evening With the Vegetarian Librarian.

It has taken me a long, long time to find my way through to the writing I want to write and the performing I want to perform. I mean, so many of my friends are talking about their plans for retirement (not immediately but coming up), where I’m thinking, ‘But I’ve only just worked out what I’m supposed to be doing!’

But Edinburgh wasn’t only about the performing and the show and what it taught me about being an artist. It was hard and it did my head in, but as part of my parenting life, this moment here is one of the absolute favourite times of my life. It was magic.

And on the way home we got rained on

Did you know that there is a Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre? Neither did I. But there is.

These dudes, Clewis Productions seem to be associated with it, and we went to their Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes which was as much fun as you would hope it would be. The more I read and listen to his work (which is a lot around these parts these days), the more I am struck by the enormity of Roald Dahl’s storytelling talents.

Also, watching this performance with my newly-formed performer’s eyes, I was in awe of their ability to take volunteers from the audience and give them such substantial roles. Unpredictability, she be frizwiggling to me.

Theatre with child

The thing I liked about Nyet Nyet’s picnic was that it didn’t compromise. It didn’t lose the perspective (I know I’m supposed to say lens right there) it came from. Well, as far as I could tell it didn’t compromise. From the lens I was using. White, middle-class eyes. Oh look, and I found something to back me up here.

It was pretty scary. I wondered at times whether I really approved of myself letting (making?) my children sit there. Particularly at the one or two points where my eldest boy was petrified. And who wouldn’t be petrified? I mean look at them. Snuff puppets are enormous. Huuuuge. You’re seven years old, you’re in a big dark cavern of a space and the mother bunyip looms over you. That mother bunyip was, without exaggeration, as tall as a not small house. Taller than our house for sure.

And not to mention the towering man with his head caught on fire staggering about the auditorium and roaring a gutteral roar. A lot of the children (including, I think, my youngest) revelled in the frightening, in the way that people do on the Ghost Train or a rollercoaster. Screaming exaggerated screams as the bunyip loomed overheard.

If Dreamtime stories are supposed to act as a cautionary tales, well, in our house it’s worked. I’m pretty confident my kids won’t be getting too close to the campfire that’s for sure.

Through it all, my boys were on high alert. ‘They could come out from any of those corners, Mum’. ‘I didn’t see where that other bunyip went, did you?’ ‘Is there anything else in that lagoon?’

Bunyips? We believe.

But there were fart jokes too. And poo. What makes fart jokes so funny? I just can’t see it.

When it was finished, I let my boy peek behind the curtain to see the lifeless bunyip. Pretty sure it didn’t look lifeless to him. Pretty sure it looked like it had one eye open. Always.

But like I said to him that night when we were snuggled up together in bed (don’t leave until I’m asleep, okay?) if you can handle Ben10* then you’re up for a bit of Dreamtime.

*Watched it on holiday with his Granny – according to the mister, if I’d seen it, I would have been disapproving. Sometimes I wonder: is that my job? To disapprove.