Three Days To Go…
The Mission:
To spend two weeks working undecover at the largest arts festival in the world, bringing back the news, reviews, and behind-the-scenes gossip from all things fringe. Simultaneously, to mount and produce a show of his own for the first time in the harsh Edinburgh environment. All of this whilst being hounded by government agents from a corrupt South American regime, for crimes too sensitive to be specified.
The Man:
Stuart Denison, 21 - Student, journalist, general layabout.
By day, he’s just another up-and-coming young dramaturg, but at night (and during the rest of the day once the performance is over…) he morphs into a guerrilla reporter, roving amongst the shadowy streets and the equally shadowy back rows of theatres - wherever it takes to hunt down the story. At other times he can usually be found philosophizing over cups of black coffee (am) or chai (pm).
The Blog:
This is what you are reading. Here, Stuart’s experiences, stories, rants and maybe even reviews will be recorded, to give you a taste of a true Fringeburghian odyssey. An Edinburgh veteran of two years now, he encourages anyone and everyone to get involved, and to journey up to Scotland this August. Any comments, tips, letters, haikus or simply meaningless combinations of keystrokes typed at random should be addressed to stuart@whatsonstage.com, where they will be dealt with accordingly.
The Story So Far:
Stuart, or Stu to his friends, is aware that talking about himself in the third person is rapidly becoming both tyrannical and pretentious, so I’ll stop. The first performance of our production of Dr. Faustus is now only three days away, and in the intervening time we have to get all of our set, props and costume, not to mention six actors, a director and myself, from one capital to another - London to Edinburgh. All the accommodation and travel was sorted out a while ago, however, so that just leaves practical questions such as:
Where can you find an authentic quill? and -
How many thesps does it take to change a seat cover?
I’ve spent most of the last two days rummaging through charity shop bric-a-brac boxes or painting furniture in my back garden, in an effort to make our show look slightly presentable. The actors, meanwhile, have been rehearsing up in central London, and apparently it’s all going well on that end. We run for 14 days straight, so everything about the play needs to be fairly robust, from the set to the cast. Working in such a frantic environment as the fringe is going to be hugely different from doing a piece within the friendly confines of the university, but hopefully, more rewarding with it.
Anyway, there’s lots still to be done, and I need to get some sleep before tomorrow morning, when, all being well, I’ll wake up to find on my doorstop… one freshly-customized devil’s robe!
