Our critics at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe need to pace themselves – or burn out
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2020's shutdown of the world's biggest arts festival saw Edinburgh stripped of the usual makeshift billboards, poster obscured facades and flier strewn streets. Information technology was an opportunity for locals to bask a summer in their urban center in a fashion no ane had been able to do for decades. It was also, I hoped, a much needed 'press of the pause push button' during which Edinburgh and the Fringe itself could re-admission the annual event and devise a way of restoring its harmony with the day to mean solar day life of the urban center, something that has been AWOL in recent years due to the greed of 'super' venues and over tourism of our celebrated home.
Looking at recent press releases coming from the Fringe - the latest revealed 670 shows brand upwards this year's event - it is clear one of the changes since the pandemic is the number of companies choosing to showcase work virtually through streaming or online presentations. Notwithstanding, while that may take worked in the brusk term, last year it was really the only choice available to keep the Edinburgh Fringe brand alive and allow participants already booked to appear a way of remaining artistic, this year, the digital platform seems to have lost its novelty and already feels a less attractive pick.
Equally audiences slowly return to theatre spaces, albeit mainly outdoor, online offerings go less and less relevant as the thrill of alive functioning once over again becomes the master focus. There'due south also something slightly disingenuous nearly productions that are 'proud to be part of the Edinburgh Fringe' from their *rehearsal room / local theatre / or back bedchamber in *Todcaster / Texas / or Timbuktu.
*Delete as applicable
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That said, in that location's a long way to get before any real degree of normality returns to the annual event. 670 productions might seem like a good start but 247 of those are online.
428 alive shows is nothing really when you consider that in 2019 the total number of productions and events was heading in the direction of four,000; a never-ending and at times exhausting conveyor belt of performances beyond whatsoever single 24 hour period.
If iii thousand plus shows is only too many to shoe-horn into a city the size of Edinburgh over such a short period of time, and so the current number of live shows is too few. Fifty-fifty in 1993, when I stepped on stage to make my Fringe debut, Clutter was one of around 930 shows that twelvemonth.
Somewhere around the 2,000 testify marking is where I'd pitch it. That has always seemed a comfortable number to me, especially bearing in heed the fact that the Fringe lacks quality control – don't be afraid to leave if you lot're unlucky plenty to option a dud. You lot don't go the time dorsum, e'er.
I've also noticed a number of 'work in progress' offerings this year. Having had the all-time function of ii years to get a show together, I find charging for a 'work in progress' an abomination.
Thankfully, there are always magical gems... you lot simply have to find them. Accept fun.
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Source: https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/2021-the-edinburgh-festival-fringe-but-not-as-we-know-it-3329328
Posted by: williamsalannow.blogspot.com
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