Notes

Festival’s Soul in The City’s Body

Off Avignon, Edinburgh Fringe 2012
Note Published In Iran-Theatre

     Mapping the festival in the city  context

Avignon

Arriving in the medieval city’s ramparts everywhere is theatre posters. Walking in the central street, on both sides are selling desks, and people buying things and passing … City’s squares are packed by Sunshades, seats and people, and in each, small groups are performing a theatrical piece or music…Long queues of spectators everywhere in the streets by theatrical venues; theatres, universities, schools, cafes, and temporary circus tent…  Later in the evening, the central streets get overwhelmed by performer groups every here and there, music, dance, busking… Some individuals walking through the crowd hand everyone their theatre’s advert card and pass. Becoming night… performers leave the streets and the restaurants get packed… Out of the city’s ramparts, passing Avignon bridge, recalling its famous sung, camping area is full with tents, … those coming to see some pieces or younger performers coming for their work to be seen.

     Mapping the festival in the city  context

Edinburgh

Venues being all around the city, but a few central streets in the old town host the festival’s heart. Passing the Edinburgh Castle, at the beginning of the High Street, there’s a light structure gate. Tourist shops on both sides of the street, big posters of theatre or music venues on old buildings, churches, universities, art centers and bars… All the street performances everywhere…music, dance, busking and short plays preview pieces… getting darker, The Millitary Tattoo starts in the castle’s area. Each day in the main festival street with new groups and performances is something specific and new.

Site-Specific Theatre

On Fringe website, there are 18 performances, officially categorised as Site-Specific.

The core concept of the majority is performing in a space with the same function in real life;  Ordinary Things happens in a same Budapest apartment, Gob Shop; the story of a dancer, in a real strip club, Remor; the story of a couple in a small cell space, Back to School; the nostalgia of school days, in a similar space, with taking participants as students, Allotment; the story of two sisters in a real allotment, Would be nice though; the story of a job interview in a real office space.

The concept in the next group of works, is to employ the geographic site as their performing space; in Endure A Run Woman Show; in Parkland, the spectator runs with a woman, taking Marathon as life symbol with all the up and downs, A Mid Summer Night’s Dream, Twisted Shakespeare is performing in Royal Botanic Gardens, spectators participating, Macbeth in Inchcolm Island; spectators should get there by boat, and getting night (in accordance to the real time as well) the show begins.

Some particular works in this group construct a specific challenge for the audience with the geographical site; One Minute Bird Watching; in West Princes Street Gardens is collective performance, spectators spotting birds and saying the names, the resulting bird-watching survey recorded and  posted online. Holly Rumble, the director says it’s a vocal survey of birds in a specific space and time.

The other work, The Speed Of Light, by NVA,  mass choreographed act of walking and endurance running on Edinburgh’s Arthur’s Seat Mountain, recalls the memory of ancient human life here in this site.

Core concept in the next group is drawing on the historical layers of the city, something in between theatre and tourism; The World’s Greatest Walking Tour Of Edinburgh; a hilarious spoof walking tour in historical city, Gilmerton Cove; ghost hunting in a series of hand carved passageways and chambers below ground, Ghost And Torture Tour;   touring the old punishments for criminals and witches of Scotland in  the site of the Old Tolbooth Jail, A Tapestry Of Many Threads,  happening in the old Dovecot tapestry studios (1912), celebrates a century of Dovecot tapestries in Scotland, in particular adding to involving history, a performative revival of the place through the performance.

Theatre Festival’s Soul in the streets and in the urban space

In central area of Fringe festival, in High street, Virgin Money has set up two entering gates, few arts and craft markets, and 16 performance stages. Each day  250  shows perform  short  plays and free previews there.  But this  “stage theatres”  in the light  structure stages, don’t reach any out of proscenium frame

 
  

Searching for a theatre which merges the festival soul in the central stream in the city, providing a multi-layered challenge for  spectators with  the city’s body  and the present time,  there are  a few altered preview performances. They walk in the real streets, merge with the  existing  reality and pierce the real life going on. They superimpose a new layer to the urban space,  and create a Foucault heterotopian space, something in between theatre and reality

Macbeth’s three witches of the play “Macbeth: Who is that Bloodied Man?” by Polish group, Biuro Podrozy, walk the central street on their high stilts among people. One of them waves the big flag showing the play’s name, and the other two hand passengers their play’s advert card. The play is performing in the open space in Old College Quad, 200 years old college of Edinburgh in the dark of the night. Actors on their high stilts are walking the distance as between theatre and real life, merging and crossing.

"Echo and Narcissus" actors from the group Rag and Bone productions have created a static installation, a frozen moment of their play, capturing passengers' sight, in the middle of the street. Laying their theatrical poses on the real surface of the street, they have superimposed another time scale to the real flowing time in the urban body.

Festival's soul is as standing in the spectators' queues in the city streets in the  morning, going to hundreds of theatrical venues, watching plays, sitting in the cafes, eating, drinking and chatting, and becoming night, it comes to the city streets, gathering there, dance, music and busking,... Nothing holds the totality of this fragmented soul, you can find it scattered in diverse parts the city's body, and daily hours.