Edinburgh's grim endurance test of character

How a comedian survived the Fringe and kept going back.

James Cary

James Cary is a writer of situation comedy for BBC TV (Miranda, Bluestone 42) and Radio (Think the Unthinkable, Hut 33).

Three actors stand on a stage, in costume, surrounding a metal conical structure.

Expensive prop? Check. Just Out of Reach performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2008.

EFFC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

This article was first published 22 August 2023.

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is probably the greatest arts festival on earth. And it’s getting bigger every year. In 2001, 666 groups presented 1462 shows in 176 venues, selling 873,887 tickets between them. By 2017, everything had doubled. 3398 shows at 300 venues sold 2.9 million tickets. Even Covid19 couldn’t burst the balloon. This year, the Fringe is as big as ever. How does it keep on growing?

I have a controversial theory based on my experience as a Fringe performer. And it’s not about the insatiable demand for tickets, but the strange supply. Let me explain.

Every year, tourists arrive in Scotland’s capital to sample an exciting buffet of comic and dramatic treats, alongside a smorgasbord of bizarre spectacles. It’s a hit-and-miss affair, for sure. But most punters know that most shows are, well, a punt. The fringe programme contains comedians, theatre troupes and performers you’ve never heard of performing something that’s rather hard to get one’s head around, until one’s seen it. And sometimes not even then.

The average Fringe goer might well take in half a dozen shows over a long weekend. One might be a favourite Mock the Week comedian of the telly in a venue that seats 800. But the rest are small, intimate, dank spaces that may be uncomfortably packed, or embarrassingly empty. Again, that’s all part of the experience. Add some beers, some unfamiliar street food and just enough sleep to function, and that’s the Edinburgh Fringe experience.

Spare a thought for the thousands of performers you leave behind. There are the ones trapped in that outré fringe show which runs until the end of the month.

Except it’s only one side of it, oh Fringe goer. As you jump on a train from Waverley station and return to the office with a sore head and some good stories about some weird outré theatre that really didn’t work, spare a thought for the thousands of performers you leave behind. There are the ones trapped in that outré fringe show which runs until the end of the month, doomed to perform the same deeply flawed show twenty-seven times, like Sisyphus rolling his rock up the hillside.

If you’re a fringe performer, and I speak from the experience of having performed or produced various shows at the Edinburgh Fringe between 1996 and 2017, things are rather different.

The Edinburgh Fringe is not a talent show where the obscure but gifted performer finds an audience, acclaim and fame through sheer hard work and pluck. That is the experience of a few, but for most, the Fringe is more like running a marathon in the rain wearing an amusing but extremely absorbent fancy-dress costume. It is a test of grim endurance.

It’s not just an endurance of physical stamina, although the odd hours, the alcohol and the ill-advised street food all take their toll. Ultimately, the Edinburgh Fringe is a month-long examination of character. You will experience emotions and feel frustrations that only happen in this annual cauldron of dysfunctional ambition.

It’s not about the show. The 60 minutes spent on stage in front of the barely adequate lights is the straightforward part of your day. The show, even if it’s improvised, is broadly the same each time. How you spend the other 23 hours is real test.

You might think that the task is simple. Every day, you leap out of bed, eat a hearty Scottish breakfast, grab your stack of flyers, and go out and spread the word about your show. No?

Here’s the problem: within a week or so, you’ve worked out that your show is not what you thought it was. What seemed to be an hilarious off-the-wall idea back in February, now seems like a joke worn thin, that technically didn’t quite work in the first place. You are not in contention for an award. Your show doesn’t have any ‘buzz’. Your temporary friends console you that you’re being penalised by doing something different. Or you’re in the wrong slot. Or in the wrong venue. Or getting the wrong audience… when you get an audience.

The expensive prop from your show that is carried around the streets to sell tickets now feels like an albatross around your neck. Your costume hasn’t been washed for over a week and probably never will be. And every punter you speak to has already booked to see the hot new show that has captured the zeitgeist. Oh, and the Cambridge Footlights. And that comedian who was on Mock the Week. Or as it Live at the Apollo? And then they’re going out to dinner with some friends.

At that moment, you remember how much this is costing you, the largest amount of your budget going to your temporary landlady who is currently sunning herself in Malaga having rented you her broom cupboard.

And then it starts to rain.

There’s something about the Edinburgh Fringe that keeps performers coming back year after year. Next year, it’ll be different. And it isn’t.

It appears that I have not made my case for the continual expansion of the Edinburgh Fringe. I have demonstrated a thousand reasons to abandon Auld Reekie and never to return. But let me tell you about what happens next to our hapless performer.

In the short term, the embittered, disenchanted performer may give in to the seven deadly sins, justifying all kinds of self-destructive and narcissistic behaviour. Terrible food, too much booze and ill-advised liaisons. But this is Edinburgh where everything is multiplied many times over. It’s not the seven deadly sins, but seventy-seven deadly sins.

In fact, wait. ‘The Seventy Seven Deadly Sins’? Is that an idea for a show for next year? You start to design the flyer in your head. In the midst of your frustration and exhaustion, you’re already planning your return next year.

Here’s where the wisdom of the ages kicks in which explains my theory. In the Bible, there is a wonderful proverb from King Solomon which runs thus: “As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.” There’s something about the Edinburgh Fringe that keeps performers coming back year after year. Next year, it’ll be different. And it isn’t. But maybe the year after it will be. And so every year, alongside the newcomers, the old timers return with a new show. And the fringe grows a little bit more every year.

Actually, the first half of that proverb sounds like a great title for a Fringe play. And after my years of experience, maybe it’s time I went back…

Explainer

Culture

Film & TV

Identity

3 May 2024

5 min read

Adapting Doctor Who: it's time for change

The fan debate on associating disability with evil lacks nuance.

Harry Gibbins

Harry Gibbins is a doctoral researcher at the University of Aberdeen. His PhD concerns the intersection between autism and Christian ministry.

Davros, an alien leader sits in the lower half of a Dalek.

Davros: leader of the Daleks.

In an interview with behind-the-scenes show Doctor Who Unleashed, returning showrunner Russel T Davies had this to say about how iconic Doctor Who baddie Davros was to be portrayed in a mini-episode produced for charity event Children in Need last year.

“We had long conversations about bringing Davros back, because he's a fantastic character, time and society and culture and taste has moved on. And there's a problem with the Davros of old in that he's a wheelchair user, who is evil. And I had problems with that. And a lot of us on the production team had problems with that, of associating disability with evil. And trust me, there's a very long tradition of this.”

He continues to explain that this led the production team to depict Davros differently. Gone is the facial scaring, the wheelchair, the robotic eye, and the mechanical hand. Now, as Davies explains, Davros is seen through a lens in which disability stops being a way of identifying evil.

“This is our lens, this is our eye. Things used to be black and white, they’re not black and white anymore, and Davros used to look like that and he looks like this now.”

Davies’ comments caused somewhat of a split online with some fans. On the one hand, Davies is continuing a tradition that can be traced back to his previous work on Doctor Who between 2005 and 2010. For example, he purposefully wrote Billie Piper’s character Rose Tyler as working class to cut against the gain of the prim-and-proper received pronunciation of previous companion characters. Perhaps Davies was tired of the limited scope of once again portraying the villain as disabled. Just as he didn’t want another female companion who lacked agency and depth, depiction of Davros as disabled simply wouldn’t fit with this modern incarnation of the show. On the other hand, in his comments, Davies seems to suggest that if this character ever appears again, he will not be disabled, even if it contradicts previous storylines, retroactively removing this part of the character as if it was never there to begin with.

Davros isn’t evil because he’s disabled, so why is Davies so hellbent on changing something that wasn’t an issue to begin with?

But is Davies’ efforts necessary? Reddit user u/Bowtie327 suggests that Davros’ disability isn’t important, “I can’t say I ever even drew a connection around Davros, being evil, and being disabled”, whilst another user u/PenguinHighGround claims that as a disabled person themselves they found him “weirdly inspiring, his (sic) goals are abhorrent, but he didn’t let his physical issues limit him”. X user @Dadros3 highlights how, as a wheelchair user, Davros has become a sort of science-fiction icon. He euphemistically states that “evil comes in all forms, all races, all genders, all abilities, and all disabilities. We cannot stand by and allow the cancellation of something for fear of offence that doesn’t exist”.

We are starting to see where the conversation heads; there are worries of by simply removing disability from the equation no effort is made to necessarily further the cause of disabled representation in media. Similarly, Davros isn’t evil because he’s disabled, so why is Davies so hellbent on changing something that wasn’t an issue to begin with? Whether it's that Davros’ disability wasn’t noticed by a majority able-bodied audience, or that his evil ideology has nothing to do with being disabled, Davros should stay put!

What becomes clear is that the changes made to depicting Davros is a product of the philosophy of change that is woven into the show’s DNA.

There’s a nuance that I believe has been missed by these arguments, a nuance that speaks to the philosophy that underpins what has led Doctor Who to last so long. I do not believe that Davies is suggesting that we pretend that harmful depictions of disabled people didn’t happen. Rather, this is a progression of a core part of Doctor Who.

Doctor Who encompasses change. Whether it’s the titular character’s face changing every few years, new story motifs coming and going, or even entirely new production teams, change is what keeps the Doctor Who machine whirring. It is clear that in this new era of the show that Davies is looking for a sort of fresh start. That is what keeps Doctor Who alive, and I think it’s what can make it such a great show. The ability to, despite its long history, still tell a new story. Times where I think the show has suffered has been when it has tried too hard to emulate what has come before.

This is a good opportunity to look back at how disability has been characterised in the media. It is good to sit with this tension even if we didn’t notice it and even if we don’t necessarily take offence. Interestingly, in the brief discussions Davies has had in the behind the scene footage he never mentions offence, nor does he want to attribute blame onto anyone for depicting a wheelchair user in such a way. Instead, he looks forward, just as we do as an audience. Forwards to opportunities to encapsulate the real lived experiences of disabled people, not only and narrowly looking at it as a way of identifying the baddie. Speaking to Doctor Who Magazine in 2022, casting director Andy Pryor stated that he is actually intentionally trying to cast more disabled actors claiming that “If you can’t cast diversely on Doctor Who, what show can you do it on?”. This is even reflected in the set design, with the TARDIS now being completely wheelchair accessible. What becomes clear is that the changes made to depicting Davros is a product of the philosophy of change that is woven into the show’s DNA.

The original 1975 story ‘Genesis of the Daleks’, in which Davros first appears, is still available to watch on BBC iPlayer; no attempt has been made to alter the original to remove the problematic depiction of disability. These stories are still there for us to watch and learn from, not to pave over and pretend they didn’t happen. Perhaps this means Davies and the rest of the production team at Bad Wolf will be cautious about featuring Davros again. What we can say is that Doctor Who is a unique icon in the television space in the way it demonstrates how we respond to change.