All of us in this together

(oh, and it's that festival again....)

Photo by Alexandru Postovanu on Unsplash

So here I am. On a bus.

The woman who ran my dream bus used to say that if you dreamt of being on a bus you were dreaming of the collective experience. Of something that was maybe happening to the whole of humanity.

Because ‘bus’ comes from ‘omnibus’. And in Latin that means everyone…

So this is me. On a bus. On the 35 bus, to be precise, from Leith to the centre of Edinburgh.

And it may be real, or it may be a dream, because it happened yesterday, and what happens in the past feels like a dream.

Or maybe a nightmare.

It’s a rainbow bus, and that’s important.

And the driver is amazing: so patiently so skilfully manoeuvring his enormous bus past all the roadworks and delivery vehicles and badly parked cars and then dealing with all the somewhat bewildered strangers at every bus stop.

And the journey which normally takes 20 minutes is taking an hour. And the bus which is normally pretty quiet is cram full of people.

It is the Edinburgh Festival: and I’m getting more and more anxious abut whether I’ll ever get to my show on time.

And I’m thinking back to my younger self, in a Festival way back in the past.

Way back in 1980, and it’s the first time I’ve had anything on in the Festival, the first time I’ve ever had anything performed at all.

And I’m so proud, proud of the show, so proud of my new born daughter whom I’m carrying in a sling, and so anxiously scanning the road to the venue to see if anyone is coming to the show.

And nobody comes, because it’s an utterly unknown show in an utterly out of the way venue, and we don’t know anything about publicity at all, and the audience is tiny, and no-one is being paid, but my daughter is so amazingly beautiful, and it’s the first time I’ve seen my words being performed in front of an audience.

And even though they’re only handful, I hear and feel them laughing, and I know.

I’m not the novelist I assumed I was and have spent the last fifteen years trying to become. I’m a playwright.

And that’s how it begins. 42 years ago.

42 years of working in this festival as a playwright and reviewer and parent and journalist and academic and broadcaster and performer.

42 years in the Fringe Festival and the main Festival too.

42 years of being excited and proud and paranoid and terrified.

42 years of being bought and sold and being poked at by critics and promoters.

Critics and promoters and people with sticks poking at my naked vulnerable artistic self to see if I have the right kind of flesh on me.

42 years of being furious when the reviewers didn’t come and furious when they did.

42 years of the uneasy feeling that the real action is happening somewhere else.

42 years of the anxious and somewhat frantic feeling that there are people I badly need to meet and connections I badly need to make and I don’t know where to find them

And then am too shy to speak to them when I do.

42 years of being furiously jealous of other people’s success and then too exhausted and traumatised to enjoy my own.

I think: this event brings out the worst in me. This event brings to the surface everything that makes it hard for me to function well as an artist and a human being.

But this is the event which taught me who I am as an artist. This is the event that gave me my first big success and my first artistic home.

This is where I wrote the words of a play that turned into an opera that opened in the Festival Theatre and was denounced as pornography by the Observer.

This is where I had a big play open in the Kings at the same time as I heard the love of my life was going to die of a brain tumour.

This is where I spent my own money putting on a play in a mostly empty church which went on to transform theatre in Brazil and is still slowly travelling all round the world.

This is where I’m opening on Thursday in a play I co-wrote and perform with a dear friend and we formed our own company to put it on and I’m playing an older woman who’s a storyteller and a seagull and an adolescent boy and an ugly duckling who is perhaps not really so ugly after all.

And it was all fine when we finished rehearsing it 3 weeks ago and next week we’re opening after only an hour in the venue and who knows what it will be like.

Or whether I can actually do it at all.

And I’m 72 years old and I really should know better but how wonderful that I don’t.

And of course this Festival unleashes creativity and also damages and exploits and is in a state of crisis because it’s the product of capitalism and operates in a capitalist way and capitalism is like that.

And capitalism is in a state of deep crisis and is putting all of us in deep danger and risk… and how can we remember?

How can we remember the beautiful ideals of reconciliation and artistry and peace that lay at the heart of the founding of this festival?

And the spirit of rebellion and defiant creativity that inspired the Fringe?

Because that’s what matters.

And my bus eventually arrives and I eventually do find my way into the venue and they are kind and lovely and I’m the last person they let in.

The show is called “The Strange Undoing Of Prudencia Hart” and it’s on in the Playfair Library in the Old College and it’s joyous and beautiful.

The Fringe has allowed the show to be performed in a beautiful venue where theatre generally doesn’t happen, and has given an opportunity to revive a gorgeous piece of theatre that has already been around the world and I’m so glad it has, because it deserves to.

But it’s not the product of the Fringe.

It’s a product of arts subsidy.

And that’s worth remembering.

And remembering at heart why it’s happening, and why this whole festival is happening:

Because we need to come together to remember who we human beings truly are.

And remember what we are here on this earth to do.

And to do that, we need to strengthen our capacity for empathy and imagination.

And to do that we need to come together to find solidarity and love.

And we do that because we need to come together to create a better world.

“The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart” by David Greig and Wils Wilson https://lyceum.org.uk/whats-on/production/the-strange-undoing-of-prudencia-hart-fringe

“The Not So Ugly Duckling - A Play For Grown-Ups” https://scottishstorytellingcentre.online.red61.co.uk/event/913:4336/