10. Somewhere at the edges of my ability
Or, What doing a show at the Fringe can tell you about existence
1
Twelve shows over thirteen days. That’s what the Fringe asks of us. Once for an audience of a single person, which is pretty wild. If you’ve never travelled to another city to perform an hour-long musical for just one person, lemme tell you. It’s one of the weirdest things you can do.
2
“Aaaaaaaahhhh, that's my impression of you!” says the man standing on the chair, teetering really, with a fake beard and bucket hat and sunglasses. “Thank you,” he says to the other man gripping his hand, “thank you for this bit of human connection.” Then, “Ahhhhhhh, that’s my impression of you. Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh! That’s my impression of you!”
3
I’m at the Fringe because two of my friends wrote a musical. If you’ve done any improv or, like me, read Bossypants by Tina Fey, you’ll know the importance of saying, “Yes, and”. This means if someone says, “This hospital sure has a lot of clowns”, the correct response is to mime cocking a shotgun and saying, “Well we’d better get shootin’ then.”
And that’s why I’m in a musical.
4
The man walks out wearing a small pair of shorts. He is, as much as such a thing is possible, objectively beautiful. He stops at the front of the stage and claps his hands. Then, from a standing position, he does a front flip. Turns 90 degrees. Clap. Front flip. 90 degrees. Clap. Front flip. Over the next hour with Circa it’s somehow the least impressive thing I’ll see.
5
One of things you need to do at the Fringe that isn’t putting on your show is convincing people who’ve never heard of you to come see your show. If they’ve heard of you this is way, way easier. When you’re already famous, half the job is done. The other half is just letting people know you have a show. When no one knows who you are it’s like twice the job hasn't even started yet. You’re standing in a hole dressed like a geisha wondering how you’ll get out, while someone up top pours water on your head. Also you’re building a submarine.
6
“Hedgehog, hedgehog!” The woman dressed like a sailor slaps toilet plungers onto her partner’s naked back. Her partner, who is also dressed like a sailor, dances around the audience and invites them to do the same. Then God shows up and she’s a vagina with eyes.
7
The line is “my most treasured memories”, but for some reason “cherished” keeps getting stuck in there. It gets stuck there so bad one day I straight up say “cheshured”, then pause while my brain tries to confuse itself to death.
8
During one of our more difficult performances, where several things go not exactly according to plan, and the audience is not exactly engaged, I briefly forget I’m on stage and think about sitting down. It’s during a scene where all I have to do is walk out pretending to be in a car, sing the chorus of a song, and walk/drive back off again. I think about sitting down because the moment I forget I’m on stage my brain suddenly has the room to realise how very, very tired I am, more tired than I’ve ever felt in my life.
Tired isn’t even the right word, because I’ve been sleeping far longer than I usually do including occasional two-hour naps in the late afternoon. What I feel is drained. Every part of my body is heavy, like I’m made of sacks of wet leaves.
Performing is a crazy thing to do. It takes all the things that are hard and concentrates them into a single point in time. I don’t say this for sympathy because obviously, people choose to perform. We choose to be in Edinburgh, and I choose to be on stage at the moment when it seems like a really, really good idea to sit down. I say this because it’s amazing anyone chooses to do it at all.
It was totally awesome.
9
Scottish smoked salmon is incredible.