A Postcard from the Fringe

There’s a divine madness about the fringe. It’s so big that it brings out the despair in us all. How can one possibly compete with all of the other shows that are on at the same time? At the last reckoning, possibly six hundred going on at any one moment. Or was it six thousand? It couldn’t have been six million, though at times it seems it.

The venues are tucked anywhere throughout the city. If you stand still for long enough, you become a venue yourself. Underbelly have already contacted me about using space inside my backpack. It’s a new stage which they want to add to their roster, and advertise as The Cow Bag, and then rent it out to theatre companies. But then I moved, and they lost all interest.

There’s a piece of wasteland outside my student accommodation. It’s overgrown with vegetation and bushes and I stopped and looked at it and I thought, yes, there it is. The last place in Edinburgh which hasn’t been turned into a venue or a bar or a festival village. And just as I was standing there looking at it, someone tried to flyer me.

Because that’s what Edinburgh is all about. The flyering. You can have the best show ever written, and you can perform the best anyone has ever performed, but it’s the flyering which ensures people get in to see it, and it’s the flyering that ensures that the show is a success. Which is great if you have a passion for flyering, or if you have a theatre troupe filled with sixteen incredibly enthusiastic and young performers from middle class universities, with floppy hair and high cheekbones and winning smiles, but when you’re a lone operator doing it all yourself, from a seaside town in Devon, then the odds are already stacked against you.

Which is to say that I hate flyering. People scare me. The general public are frightening. I want to be polite at all times, but the moment I steel myself to smile and say hello, some young buck with an improvised opera jumps in and flyers the person that I’m just about to flyer. It’s a dog eat dog world. And also, my brain doesn’t move as quickly as some. I see someone coming and the words kind of tumble out in a nonsensical jumble. You wouldn’t think that I’m a performance poet! ‘Hello there. Yes, what it is, you see, I’ve written this show, and . . .’, by which time they’ve already walked away.

Consequently, I didn’t have much of an audience for the first couple of shows. One person turned up for each, and I knew each person. They were friends. I think my show is good, but they probably would have come even if it was just an hour of me on the stage doing armpit squelch farts. But there’s a guy from Cambridge University who’s already doing that, and he’s winning rave reviews.

I decided I needed a flyerer. I had no idea that you could just hire a flyerer. I thought only the good shows had a flyerer, because why would a flyerer want to flyer for something that nobody had heard of? But I went online and I made contact with a couple of flyerers. The first two didn’t turn up, on consecutive days. But the third did. And she’s wonderful.

I’ve had an audience ever since. She really knows how to bring in the people. I don’t know how she does it and I don’t really want to ask. Naturally, I was worried that she would take my leaflets and walk off and dump them in a recycling skip, but I actually saw her at work several times, and it really did fill me with glee.

We got chatting one day, my flyerer and I. She’s actually getting married in a couple of days. She’s getting married right on the Royal Mile. I even thought about popping along, or at least exit flyering the service. That’s how grateful I am at all of the flyering that she’s been doing.

The show is going well. In fact, the show is going really well. The last three shows have been absolutely wonderful. Great audiences, and I’m so comfortable with my performances. I know it inside out and I’m very happy with it. I think it’s the most accessible show I’ve done at Edinburgh, (which is code for the fact that this is my first show which doesn’t have an LGBTQ theme or gratuitous references to sex). It has: three costume changes, some choreography, a song, a high note which I try to sustain for twenty seconds, and I get to do a lot of acting, too. So yes, I’m very happy with it. From an artistic point of view.

I have a little post-show routine, now. If it’s a good show, I go to my favourite place at the fringe, which is the bar of the Circus Hub on the Plains, and I sit and have a cola and just relax. It’s a great place, because it doesn’t get as busy as the rest of Edinburgh and I can just take in the sunshine and listen to whatever’s going on inside the Big Top. There’s also a stall nearby which sells, quite frankly, the best sausage rolls I’ve ever seen.

So that’s how things are going, as I enter week number two. What will this week bring? Will audience numbers go down a bit, now that the weekend is out the way?  Who will I get to do the flyering when my flyerer gets married? How does my show stack up against the six hundred that are also on at the same time? (Someone the other day called it ‘light and lovely’, which I kind of like). And at the end of the day, does any of this mean anything?

They always say that you should ask yourself why you’re coming to the fringe. Is it to get noticed? Is it to refine a piece of work? Is it to meet new fans? To be honest, I’m not sure why I’m here. I think it’s just the challenge of putting on a show, and writing it, and memorising it, and all of those other things. Or perhaps I’m just here to join in this merry dance, to at least say I gave it a bash.

My show details can be found here: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/robert-garnham-bouncer