A little Fringe diary

3rd August, 02:35 am

Black filth is coating my fingertips, my hair is über-greasy and full of earth, pain and exhaustion are weighing my arms and hands down onto the keyboard. My shirt is dirty and smelly, all of my skin is still covered in mud particles, diluted and washed away by sweat, my eyes are so tired they go into soft focus about two seconds after I focus them on anything and my body is crying out for water and sleep.

Have I just crossed the Sahara? No.
I’ve just reached the end of a long day at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. A morning of running errands and getting flyers, posters and other publicity sorted, an afternoon of rehearsals, a fateful dress rehearsal (i.e. a million things went wrong) in the evening and then, after a cast crisis meeting and a happy cast-dinner – a night of putting up posters all around town – driving up and down the streets of Edinburgh in our orange company-LandRover (with the ‘Eyeball Theatre’ logo along its sides) and jumping out the back with a bucket, a roller and a bunch of posters every time we passed a derelict shop/house or a poster-board. Now it’s past 2am – not exactly late for the Fringe, but the streets are already pretty empty and so are the taxis, which is a sign that it hasn’t quite begun yet – there’s yet a hundred thousand more people to come, a few hundred shows to go up and a few thousand liters of beer to be drunkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk – funny, it’s always the right-hand middle finger that falls asleep first. Why is that?
Well, either way, I’ll take it as a sign and go to sleep. Good night.


Our show is Shakespeare's "The Tempest" - this image depicts Prospero's hand, which by his magic can control the weather and bring a tempestuous storm on a fleet of ships.

6th August, 21:14 pm

Our show is running well. We had our fourth night last night and audience numbers have doubled every night so far. Tonight we had 93 people!! Considering how little advertisement there is of our show and how little flyering we've done, that's pretty amazing!
Well, since I'm in charge of our publicity, that makes me very happy anyway.

We (that is the Tempest cast) all live in one big flat with wonderfully large rooms with hight ceilings. I share my room with Ayman, a half-British half-Iraqi co-actor and great friend, who's just spent a month in the West Bank, researching and writing for the Palestinian News Network (PNN) - we all feared that he might never make it back in time for our show, since he has the most important role (Prospero) and is irreplaceable. The first two nights we shared the Queen-size bed but soon realised that it's just not big enough for two if you're not actually together. That said, I woke up in the middle of the first night and felt a strange weight on my chest. I lifted my head from the pillow and saw Ayman's head peacefully lying on my bare chest, sweating lightly as his arm was wrapped around my tummy.
Now I know many girl that would envy me deeply for having been in that position (- he's a very good looking young man!) and I've thought about making a little business out of renting my half of the bed out to potentially interested girls in exchange for their half of a bed they share with a good-looking female friend of theirs.... but until now it remained one of those great business ideas of mine that never came true, but as with all the others - I'm still hopeful and most of all - still convinced of their sure success if implemented.


7th August, 11:31 am

Sipping a peppermint tea in my favourite cafe 'juicemonkeys', I finally get back on the net. It's amazing how owned we are by the virtual world these days and how it's odd not to have been online for a few days.

Today the sun shines and it's the first day since we've been here (now exactly a week) that I have some time to myself. I might even go and see a show today. Or lie in the grass somewhere and read a book. My original plan for the Fringe Festival was to do our show every night and maybe see a show or two every other day, but spend the rest of my time either lying in the grass and reading books about the Middle East, Islam and Iran or cooking in our all-cast-flat. So far I've managed to make breakfast once and to cook some rice with vegetables one night. I haven't touched a book, but they're all neatly lined up on the mantelpiece of my room.

Last night JB (our director) and I went to the official "Fringe Opening Party" - a big shmoozing event for all the companies to meet and for the press to meet them, too. There were a few acts on an outside open-air stage, surrounded by lots of cafés and bars that were all part of the event. The dress code was 'all white', so JB and I put on our orange all-body 'zentai' suits (a lycra and polyester mix, sking-tight and all-covering, but also all-revealing), I made myself a mini-skirt from our flyers and we both had "the tempest" sprayed over out backs...

... that is what I call prostitution! Nobody could possibly not have noticed us. The suits have absolutely NOTHING to do with our show - they serve the simple and highly effective purpose of grabbing people's undivided attention. We were dancing up and down the exposed and free-hanging stairs of the main venue to Prince and Michael Jackson... it was quite delightful!