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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2010 Blog - 22The End is Nigh! - Monday 30 August 2010I hope you will forgive me when I say this, and I’m not saying this lightly, but I really do think that the festival is a week too long. There, I’ve said it. I’ve actually said it a hundred times this week and have yet to meet another actor at the festival who disagrees with me. The truth is, you could feel the festival beginning to flag a little a few days ago. Little things really, less people on the streets, shows beginning to close, less people attending shows. On our end, this has been the only week that we haven’t sold out. All throughout the festival we’ve played to sold out houses, packed in every afternoon. This week, we’ve been playing to half full houses. Also, we’re all pretty tired of the festival. I tried making a list of shows I wanted to see a few days ago, and gave up half way through. I simply couldn’t bear to watch any more shows. I went to see a couple of show that I knew would be excellent (leave the festival on a high) and left it at that. Most of the last week has been spent indoors watching movies or looking for future jobs! That’s the nature of the business I’m afraid. Fair Trade has reached the end of this particular road, and with the exception of a one or two of us, everyone is about to go back to job hunting. If you haven’t seen the show yet, never fear, there is a future for the show. I won’t reveal anything, but I’m sure you’ll hear about it soon enough. This last weekend has flown by for me. My wife came up to visit and we spent a few happy days doing things couples do: seeing a few shows, eating out together, lazing about. It was great. The show seems to have faded into the background a little. It’s difficult to explain. It hasn’t lost its importance in our daily routine. We haven’t begun to sleepwalk through it. It’s just that we’ve become so accustomed to doing it every afternoon, that it simply seems to fly past. The performances are no longer distinguishable from each other. Lotte, our director, returned for a few days earlier in the week. It felt very, very strange receiving notes from her. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s because our performances have evolved somewhat over the weeks and so the rehearsal period seems to be a little bit alien, like doing corrections for your 'O' levels when you’ve already moved on to your 'A' levels. Don’t get me wrong, her notes were perfectly valid and very useful. It’s good to be reminded about certain things and to be given good feedback about your performance by the director. It just felt strange is all. This afternoon we played our final performance. Walking along the streets to the Pleasance felt like walking through a ghost town. Edinburgh looks very different when not seen through hordes of flyerers. We played to around 60 people, and afterwards instead of placing everything in its designed place backstage ready for another performance, we lugged everything downstairs and into a waiting van. Our last show didn’t go without a few hitches. Some technical problems cause some forced improvisations, but we’re so used to it now that we just took it in our stride and I’m pretty sure the audience didn’t notice anything! Then it was time to say goodbye to the venue staff, before heading outside to help load the set into the van. The set needed to be wrapped in protective sheeting before being loaded. Tomorrow it will be driven to York and placed in storage. Wrapping up the set must have been one of those priceless Edinburgh Fringe sights. A bunch of actors ordering each other around trying to do something they blatantly know nothing about. However, we eventually got the set into the van (more or less). Then it was time to clean up the flat. I must say I love our flat. It’s comfortable, nicely furnished and it’s got a nice... I don’t know... feel to it. Does that make any sense? Anyway, we had all decided to clean up the flat after the show. It wasn’t such a tough job. We’ve been a rather tidy lot. As generally tends to happen, some people managed to get away with cleaning less than others, but in the end as long as the job gets done, what does it really matter if we’re all going home tomorrow? After the clean up, we headed over to No. 39, as it’s known: the HQ of our company. It’s simply one of the flats our company is staying in, but it’s the only flat with wireless Internet and a television so we tend to congregate there. Plus, the girls there always seem to have lots of food available. Some members of the company seem to spend more time there than in their own flat! This evening was no exception. There was tons of food (all left over from Sarah’s birthday party a few days ago - a lovely evening for which she cooked a massive meal for everyone, including special guests Rays Guns Look Real Enough). We watched some telly, chilled out, then after everyone left the girls cleaned up (I remained behind writing this you see). It was time for goodbyes. Tomorrow we all go our separate ways. Most go back to London, but not all. Some to York, others to Cardiff or other places. Of course we’ll meet again at some point - it’s a small business community - but maybe not in the near future. Sarah’s off to tour the United States for goodness knows how long. Who knows when we might see each other again? And just like that, our little company will break up for good. It will never exist again in this format. I suppose that’s the beauty and the tragedy of this business. What am I saying? It’s late and to be honest I’m a little tipsy (the girls have lots of beer they want to get rid of). Tomorrow it’s a five hour journey back to London. Space enough for a couple more blog entries I think, so don’t go anywhere. |
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