I am going to the Fringe festival in Edenborough Scotland in August. I am very excited about it. I have wanted to attend this event for many years and a variety of things have conspired to make it possible this year… friends who went last year and are going again, my new knee is installed and rehabbed enough that I should be able to do the walking required, and I have the financial means and vacation time to do it.
Since I conceived of this blog site I have started examining everything in my life in terms of Intimacy and Ritual. Theater and performance are powerfully ritualistic in that they exist in a container, have definite beginnings and endings and they seek to celebrate, evoke emotion, teach or change people; often both the performers and the audience. The short performances at Fringe mostly in pretty small venues will be a buffet of intimate experiences. New works, difficult and personal topics, displays of hard won skills all with performers making themselves vulnerable by offering something creative to be shared with strangers. I hear they often hang around to talk to audience members afterwards too, to have an opportunity to hear about their creative process and feelings and hopes feels really intimate to me.
Sometime intimacy is easier with strangers. I’m going to write more about that another time.
My list of performances and events to try and go see is below. They add new stuff every day! Some of these were selected by my companions and appealed to me. It is fascinating the different things we are focused on and most interested in. One of us is all about cirque and burlesque, others about emotional artistic experiences, another is all about improv.
Most of this list I chose from the enormous catalog of options. I’m finding I really want the immersive experiences and the LGBTQ stuff. I’m trying to build an itinerary with a balance of light and dark, drama and comedy, some music and some Scottish culture. So far I’m the only one choosing film events or musical performances – I know I want to treat my ears and just feel stuff without thinking about it too much.
Each of these have a link if you want to see more about them.
The company of friends who are going – we number six in total – add another rich layer of intimacy opportunity. We are most all polyamorous and make a chain of relationships with three of us having two other partners who will be there. We all really like each other and this is going to be a lovely opportunity to get to know each other better and share some artistic experiences. I hope that we are compatible house mates, I imagine we can manage together for 10 days.
One of my partners is a pretty brilliant tenured professor who teaches Theater and knows companies and people who are performing at Fringe. It is going to be a real treat to be there with them, get the inside track and have academic discussion and insight. My other partner is an adventuresome enthusiastic consumer of all-new-things who will be energetically engaged in seeing, feeling, and talking about everything. The entire company will be delightful and there will be a lovely interweaving dance where we will do some things together in a variety of group configurations, some things in just pairs, and some alone. We get to share all the stories and experiences over meals and back at the AirBnB we will call home for that week.
I am looking forward to this 10 day trip in August more than I can say.