Return of the Edinburgh Fringe

It's been 3 years since having reflected upon our first Fringe experience, but what with our next Scottish adventure being just around the corner, I can't help but delve back into the summer of 2022! ☀️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🎭

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival - it truly is an incredible experience - gruelling, nerve-wracking, exciting, embarrassing and heartbreaking.

When the moments are good, they're fucking good - like top shelf Tequila good, 100% agave good!

Hearing someone laugh at a joke you've written is like hearing someone hum a song you've come up with - feels just wonderful! But when the moments are bad, they're quite simply bloody awful, and you wish the earth to swallow you right up. Anyone else had someone walk out of their play halfway through it? Anyone had that happen two days on the trot?! An embarrassment I've never experienced before, and never ever wish to again! The Fringe is like being in the army for a month - it requires you to have a stiff upper lip; a hardworking ethos, and an incredibly thick skin. We arrived in Edinburgh as cotton and left for Southend as full-grain leather!

A bonus to our month-long Fringe adventure was meeting friends that we've stayed close with ever since. Each time we return to Edinburgh, we hook up with our Leithian pals, and it's like no time has passed!

They say you make friends for life at university - I'd say the same about the Fringe!

So now, 3 years later, we return. And with us we bring our brand-new play Th'Air BnB - performed for the first time, just 3 weeks ago, in our hometown with the most heart-warming reception. It really left us both feeling warm inside. After weeks of being terrified that the play would fall flat on its arse, the reaction has given us a new level of confidence and hope. Phil Jupitus quoted us as playwrights the other day on one of his Instagram posts - that left us beaming for days!

"Good morning Mr Playwright" I jokingly say to Dave sometimes. "Good morning Mrs Playwright" he replies. We're so not that - but it's wonderful to think, perhaps, one day, if we keep grinding away at it, we may have something...dare I say it.... published?!

Who knows - and in the meantime, it's fun to dream!

I wish we could take everyone from home with us up to Edinburgh - the best audience we've ever had, but alas, we're going to be out there by ourselves performing to complete strangers, people who don't owe us anything and will make no bones about it if they feel our play is a piece of shit!

That's the real test of a piece of work though; presenting it to complete strangers, and if they can enjoy it, when they really don't have to, then you know you've written something good. If we can make at least one stranger laugh, we'll go home 2 very happy Bunters.

Got the Scotsman possibly coming back to review it as well - as if the trip wasn't scary enough! 😬🗞️

Keep ya posted on how it goes x