Newsletter #16: I went to Edinburgh
TLDR: it was nuts
⚠️TW: mention of self harm ⚠️
Oh boy, how to begin…
Thats me ^
The only way I know how to write about this experience is to do it in stream of consciousness and the only way I can do it is to be brutally honest. It’s not going to be a pretty story and its probably not going to be wrapped up in a pretty bow but I have to get it out of me.
Going to Edinburgh Fringe was one of the most incredible and most emotionally complicated experiences of my life.
Before we left, I had spent the last 6 months of my life terrified (translation: dreading) this trip. If you’re new to this Substack or want a refresher, this was my vibe:
And then we got there.
The city of Edinburgh is made up of all these enormous and rolling hills so your constantly sliding up and down the city as you walk along cobble stones, craning your neck up towards Edinburgh Castle which is never too far from view.
I expected all of the locals to hate the artists and performers who descend on the city in August for the Fringe Festival, tripling the size of the population. But as much as the locals I spoke to hate how expensive the city gets, there was still this air of admiration for the artists that come. Everyone was excited to ask me about the show and I quickly realized that I was the only one in conversation that was belittling what I was doing there.
Damn, why did that just make me tear up while writing this.
Our venue was a complete mess (even legally it was a disaster but I’ll leave it at that) but somehow drew some of the most incredible theatre makers to produce there.
And honestly it makes me kick myself for what I had thought this experience was going to be like. Because for this trip, I had assumed that I just wouldn’t make any new friends haha or that I would make fleeting acquaintances without any real time to create bonds. I thought I would be so busy and focused I wouldn’t have time for connection or fun, I thought that I would meet people with nothing in common to me, I thought I would make a clean break from this experience.
I shared the dressing room with a beautiful and distinguished mind reading duo from Berlin (@sonambul_mindreader), a physical theatre/clown/devising ensemble from Chicago (@brokenplanetshow), an ensemble of actor/dancer/singers performing a sultry surrealist new musical (@companydellaluna), and a theatre company performing a Kafka-esque horror (@threepennycollective). And these people were amazing.
Why had I thought I wouldn’t make friends? It seems delusional looking back.
Because all of them were going through the same thing I was going through. Every night, putting your entire heart out on stage, hoping for the accidental best, dealing with the unanticipated worst. Testing our bodies, testing our spirits, low audience turn out, high audience turn out. Amazing shows that revitalized us, and absolute duds that made us question what the fuck we are doing here.
I have a problem with thinking I’m friends with people who I haven’t actually gotten to know well enough to consider friends. But what connects you more than an experience like this?
It takes a really special and really willful type of person to do this thing. Because as a producer at the venue who’s been coming to Fringe for many many years astutely reminded us, “no one asked us to do this.”
I didn’t expect to be full bodied, sublimely inspired by the theatre that I was seeing and the people I was meeting.
I’ve been so disillusioned with the New York theatre scene what with working so hard to make it my job. I had forgotten what humans are capable of with just light, sound, bodies, and space.
How can you use only those tools alone to create mood, to tell story, to transport us? To make me believe in possibility, to inspire my imagination, to remind me that life isn’t all that bad?
During the performance ensemble from Chicago’s show “Broken Planet,” there’s a section in which Mothman (yes the real Mothman) has everyone in the audience close their eyes and envision their individual “darkness” or your core greatest fear. He instructs us to hold our metaphorical darknesses in our hands and then open our eyes to take in your fellow audience members, all holding their own darknesses, and to remember that that is what we are all doing as we maneuver life. We are all holding our own darknesses and so the most you can do in life, is be kind and I wept and wept.
Ugh I’m crying again.
I had really been expecting the absolute worst from this experience. And a lot of the time, I was really miserable.
The thing about the Fringe Festival is that if you’re involved, it’s really hard to escape it. As soon as you leave your room you’re bombarded by posters for shows, often enormous ones, one’s with much much much more money that you are able to spend on a show, and as the festival progresses those posters get plastered with more and more 4 star and 5 star reviews from well known publications. The city is swarmed with bodies, the inner circle of the venn diagram of possible patrons and fellow performers is large. I was on average eating 2 meals a day but mostly subsisting off coffee and beer.
You must be on top of marketing your show to anyone who will listen. You must do interviews, you must email press, you must meet people, you must network, you must be ON. And that’s every day all day before you even perform.
The comparison is killer and for me, being around so many people all the time, without a very good transition ritual from performing to not, my OCD was raging making me hyper vigilant about every social interaction I was having.
Without any ritual or routine, I couldn’t turn off this ridiculous traumatized “empathy” radar I have, so I was flooded with questions in my mind about how everyone around me was feeling, overwhelmed with all of their personal stories, how hard it is to put ourselves out there in the way we are all doing, how much I wanted each of them to succeed, and of course how much I wanted them to like me. At times I felt so socially incompetent and incapable like I was back in high school.
Were there things I was missing out on? Was I being weird? What did that look in their eye mean? What the fuck am I DOING here? And to what end? What is all of this work, all of this anxiety, all of this exhaustion FOR? Do I even deserve to be here among all of these incredible talents? The reviews seem to think so but what if they’re wrong? That’s what OCD says, what if they’re wrong?
What if I am wrong?
At times I felt so trapped and resentful that I was there, having panic attacks before shows, snapping myself into action right before I went on stage. The mind reading couple from Berlin held me as I cried in the dressing room and told me they also hated it here. I turned back to self harm.
And then I got sick. Luckily we had planned for this possibility and Mackenzie and Nell has been preparing their renditions of Chip just in case (they were absolutely incredible) but man did it hurt my pride.
I felt like I lost days of this experience because I had to spend all my time trying to get better instead of performing, instead of keeping up with the bonds I had been making. OCD said, they’ll forget about me. OCD said, I’m only as good as my last performance, only as important as my last interaction.
FUCK MAGGIE STOP CRYING.
I very luckily got better in time for our final two performances. And as I was riding in a car on the way to perform again for the first time in days, I was overcome with excitement.
I had missed it. Performing every single night is a slog but it was also addicting.
I feel addicted to Edinburgh Fringe. And the thing I had been dreading for months, I’m now fantasizing and planning for when I go back, what show I will bring next time.
It’s like all the ups and downs you feel when you’re doing a run of a play except condensed and on steroids. All of the feelings we get addicted to as actors, the pleading for love and approval and validation, the fleeting nights that you get the attention and admiration you’ve been praying for, and then doing it all over again. It was a roller coaster for the nervous system that also makes you feel like you’re part of an elite club because not everyone can do this. (I can hear the ideal well adjusted individual saying “why would anyone WANT to do this???”)
God did it feel good. And also so bad.
And I sit here 48 hours out and I miss it so much.
There was a show in which the projector (that we were paying for) just stopped working in the middle of the show. If you’ve ever seen Man Up, the projector is pretty pivotal to the show for visual gags and videos.
I act on instinct as Chip, knowing that these first moments of technical malfunction are pivotal in a theatre experience and if you don’t make the audience feel safe and like you as the performer can take care of them, it’s almost impossible to win them back later. And so me and Hunter, who was running tech that night, start riffing in character as if she’s my lady intern (making 2/3 of what I as Chip Johnson would pay a man doing the same job of course).
It made me feel like we were back doing improv at The PIT when we first became friends.
We were lucky to have such a forgiving and supportive audience that night who were entirely on board and at the end of the show when Chip is saying his final thank you’s, I add in “And for just pennies a day, you can help C Venues get a working projector.” We had two different publications in the audience that night who despite the tech fuckery gave us 4 stars and quoted my ad lib.
And I realized that as much as I thought and feared that when I got up on stage in another country, I would be alone, it just wasn’t true. At any point, Hunter and the writers were completely backing me up. They were innovative, they were strong, they were creative, they were powerful.
There were other nights like that one that made me feel so fucking bad ass.
My hopes for the festival were to get just one line, just one, from an accredited publication saying that what we were doing was at least a little funny. And if I was so lucky that I as a performer was funny. We would then plaster that quote on every single Man Up poster to get leverage in NYC. Most shows that go to Fringe aren’t even that lucky but NYC theatre eats up “as seen at Edinburgh Fringe” like nobody’s business. I was ready to perform for 2 people on most nights. I was ready to just get through it.
We ended up getting 6 different media outlets to see the show.
We got one 5 star review, one 4.5 star review, three 4 star reviews, and one 3 star review.
Our reviews were so thoughtful, even their criticism was entirely valid. I couldn’t believe the detail these writers remembered from the shows even if they were taking notes.
Our first interview was on our second day there with a university radio station, and the folks that interviewed us said some of the kindest things I had ever heard about what we were trying to do that I could have gone home happy then and there.
I’d watch from behind the curtain as audiences would come in, making the ratio of strangers to people I knew so much larger than what I have been used to in New York for the last, like, decade.
Because, oh right, that’s why I do this.
I do this for the hope of making big audiences laugh, not just selling tickets and getting validation from people who already know me!!! And I had forgotten that that was possible. I had started believing that you needed to know me already, to enjoy what I do but that’s not true! I’m a performer! And for people who actually want to see a performance, they are willing and ready to be there for the ride that is Man Up!!
And despite the fears, and the insecurity, and the doubt, and the exhaustion, I did it. I am consistently forgetting how goddam capable I am.
Not only am I capable of doing a good job, I am capable of being okay and asking for help when I am not doing a good job. People are capable of helping me.
I performed 14 times out of our 17 performances.
I saw 15 different shows (2 of them twice).
We got 1 absolutely heinous audience review from women that HATED the show (but we think they were TERF’s).
I performed at the same festival as my comedic heroes who got me through high school, “BriTANick,” and that is very cool.
Unlike Chip Johnson, I think black pudding is delicious.
Because I got sick I didn’t get to have any of the drinks with the new friends I had made like we had planned. I didn’t get to see nearly as many other shows as I would have wanted. I didn’t get a chance to go to the Chihuhua Cafe (actually tragic), and I didn’t get to have any fleeting romances.
But I am filled with so so much love.
Hunter would make fun of me because during our end curtain speech where we ask people to tell their friends about the show, I always awkwardly didn’t know how to end it besides saying to the audience “and, uh, I love you!” but god if it wasn’t true.
The support I’ve gotten from folks in the past few months and then in the last few weeks, I really don’t know how to process it or how to repay it. You have my gratitude for being here. You have my gratitude for reading this.
I can’t believe the caliber of talent I was privy to just among the people I shared a dressing room with. And I’m so grateful that you share your talents. The world is better off because you are creating and performing.
I am honored to have been considered among you all.
And I’m so grateful to you for this reawakening I feel of belief in live theatre.
Thank you ❤️
I feel so incredibly out of the loop in NYC, I’m gonna wait a couple weeks to send another Substack with shows and stuff to check out like I normally do.
A beautiful read =)