Yesterday we popped along to the Press Launch of the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This year’s Fringe will have 2,088 shows featuring 31,320 performances in 247 venues from 46 countries!
Jon Morgan, Director of the Fringe took to the floor to summarise the panoply of talent about to be unleashed for our delight. The spread of shows reflects the usual feast of Theatre, Music, Musicals & Opera, Comedy, Exhibitions, Children’s shows and Dance and Physical Theatre. Topical and world issues are high on the theatrical and comedy agenda along with our growing preoccupation with the digital age.
However there are undercurrents to such a large festival. An interesting article in The Herald newspaper and The Times newspaper revealed the inevitable behaviour of large groupings. Such behaviour is not unexpected; whenever things get too large you don’t have enough things in common and you lose that close-knit sense of community that once bound you so tightly together. A splinter group forms and we see it coming from the largest venues first: Assembly, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance and the Underbelly. While it is something the Fringe may wish to prevent, when it happens it is usually beneficial. From an eclectic mix of theatrical genres, specialties will always challenge given sufficient numbers. Condensing specialities invigorates quality! This is normal, this is life!
