My Fringe Experience
My Fringe Experience was akin to someone
living all their lives in a bubble- and finding it suddenly burst, exposing
a much larger world outside their bubble than they could ever have possibly
imagined. The flat, flickering images of the outside world dancing across
the walls of that bubble since my time began gave way to three-dimensional,
immersing, in your face reality.
And what a reality.My Fringe Experience was a vibrant, colorful, swirling
circus of delights from around the world. It was as if I had gone half-way
around the world, and the world had come the other half to meet me. There
was the breathtaking realization that here, Italian food was made BY Italians,
French food was made BY the French, and Indian food made BY the Indians! I
discovered that in Britain, lemonade refers to a Sprite-like drink, and flapjacks
are like granola bars! The end of a train runway is “way out” and
people drive on the left side of the street. Magazines are chock full of goodies
like free CDs, toys, and even free dog treats in the pet journals! Simply
EVERYONE fashionable has a Passport!
And then there was the Fringe Festival itself. The good, the bad, and the
bizarre, but full of thousands of different voices all vying for my attention.
There was the play by Guy Masterson and TTI that instantly received my attention
due to its mouthful of a title: “The Complete Lost Works Of Samuel Beckett
As Found In An Envelope (Partially Burned) In A Dustbin In Paris Labeled 'Never
To Be Performed. Never. Ever. EVER! Or I'll Sue! I'll Sue From The Grave!!!'“
That turned out to be as entertaining as it’s title, and thanks to it
there is now a certain song I can never listen to the same way again, thanks
to its repetition over and over and over again....
Also in the comedy category was Augustine’s “The Adventures of Stoke
Mandeville, Astronaut and Gentleman”- a bloody good British show set
in an alternate universe where the British Empire never fell. I laughed a
lot, though there were times when certain punch lines went strait over my
American head. I also enjoyed the croissant wars in C’s “Shakespeare
for Breakfast”- a British pantomime that had me grinning ear to ear.
Then there are always our old friends, the classics- which means you’re
either going to see something that’s been beat to death, or a fresh and
loving take on an old story. Fortunately, the High Player’s “Fiddler
on the Roof” was the latter- an amazing production where the audience
became a part of the townspeople...we were standing there shoulder to shoulder
with the actors at times, which made the whole thing that much more personal.
The lead actor had the voice to fit the part, and I was swept away in the
music and dance.
There were also little gems strewn about the festival, which could be easy
to miss if you blinked twice. Such was the puppet show “Volpino”-
a charming, yet sometimes somewhat-odd-to-American-sensibilities production
about a little fox and a little rabbit staged in a little trailer. I’m
not sure what language the puppeteer spoke, but I sure wasn’t familiar
with it. However, this didn’t detract from my enjoyment, for the entire
play was spoken in a gibberish that relied on emotion to communicate with
the audience, not words.
These were some of the highlights of the multi-cultural, international feast
of delights that is the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, ranging from gourmet to
uneatable! My little bubble has been forever burst, and I am suddenly awake
and aware of a much larger, more complicated, more colorful and wonderful
world out there than I had ever dreamed. And like the gibberish that spoke
volumes in “Volpino’, I find that I may not always understand the
language, but the human heart responds the same world-wide.
