- 3 months ago
These days there is a long list of theatre prizes that can be won at the Edinburgh Fringe, with more being added each year. But not one of these is anywhere near as established, prestigious, or internationally renowned as the Scotsman’s Fringe Firsts, which have been running continuously at the festival since 1973.
The Fringe Firsts were set up at a time when there was very little new theatre work being premiered in Edinburgh in August. Allen Wright, the Scotsman’s arts editor at the time, wanted to encourage more companies to bring new work to the festival, and so he founded an award that would recognise and encourage outstanding new writing. Since then, the Fringe Firsts have helped to launch countless numbers of careers. Notable past winners range from Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, and Billy Connolly to Phoebe Waller-Bridge (with the original stage version of Fleabag) and Richard Gadd (for Baby Reindeer).
The Fringe Firsts were set up at a time when there was very little new theatre work being premiered in Edinburgh in August. Allen Wright, the Scotsman’s arts editor at the time, wanted to encourage more companies to bring new work to the festival, and so he founded an award that would recognise and encourage outstanding new writing. Since then, the Fringe Firsts have helped to launch countless numbers of careers. Notable past winners range from Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, and Billy Connolly to Phoebe Waller-Bridge (with the original stage version of Fleabag) and Richard Gadd (for Baby Reindeer).
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00well here we are again and let's give ourselves a big cheer for being here at this hour on a
00:11Friday morning my name's Joyce McMillan I'm the theatre critic of the Scotsman and it's my
00:22absolute joy and privilege to present our first week's Scotsman French firsts for 2025 we've had a
00:30very troubled week in Edinburgh of course what with wind and closures and all sorts of things
00:35not least here at the Pleasants where they survived a pretty brutal round of closures
00:40on Monday but we've survived that and we have five tremendous French first awards to award today
00:47so it's wonderful to see you all here and the very first thank you I want to make is to Anthony
00:52and the team here at the Pleasants who are our wonderful hosts for all our fringe first
00:56ceremonies including our big ceremony at the end of the fringe which involves lots of other awards
01:09apart from fringe firsts I'd also like to give a huge thank you today to our sponsors for this
01:15event Queen Margaret University where many many of course of the very best people in Scottish theatre
01:27trained in theatre so it's wonderful to have them as our sponsors and they're also doing all sorts of
01:33things related to the fringe including providing a lot of very reasonably priced accommodation for
01:38artists which is a really worthwhile thing to do and so thank you so much to Paul Grice and the whole
01:44team at Queen Margaret University for simply being wonderful sponsors and as you all know every
01:51week on the fringe firsts I have a wonderful guest star and to help me to present the awards and today
01:58we're exceptionally lucky in having someone who is literally one of the most famous people on the
02:03fringe thanks to his high television profile and in shows like Jonathan Creek and of course the quiz show
02:09QI you'll all have guessed already who that who my guest star is but he's here on the fringe this year
02:16with his new so new show think ahead which is at the gilded balloon in the Appleton Tower rather rather
02:22nicely called the orchard apples orchard see what they did there and Alan is going to come up and join me
02:28now to present the fringe firsts for the first week of 2025
02:31thank you Joyce hello everyone good morning lovely to see you really great to have you with us
02:41um Alan can you remember your first experience of appearing on the fringe I can remember it
02:46I'll tell you two quick stories the first time I came was I've never been up for a fringe first
02:58I've done the theatre uh the fringe three times and they're all old plays although the second time
03:04the producers and the producer god he's not with us anymore r.i.p tried to pretend it was the first
03:11ever production and tried to sneak it into the fringe first and got discovered got busted so it made me
03:20look like a terrible cheat but the first year was 1986 and I came and we did Aristophanes
03:25Lysistrata I've since been told it should be pronounced Lysistrata really but we put an exclamation
03:31mark on the end like Oklahoma and did it as a musical and uh and I had to have a fake prosthetic
03:38we made them we made them with uh coat hangers and stuffed stockings yeah it's a great story
03:44they were really good and then a couple of years later I did my first stand-up spot
03:50which was in the debate what's the um debating hall at TV yeah yeah which used to be the fringe
03:56club yeah so it's 1988 anyone could go on and I went on before me were the singing fireman
04:02you won't you won't remember the singing fireman they were really funny
04:05they wore fireman's outfits and then there was a folk singer and she did a song and she wasn't
04:11that good and the crowd hated her and then she did another song and then they started going fuck off
04:17fuck off fuck off fuck off and then she did a third song
04:22she did five songs and the whole place was going fuck off fuck it was savage and then she went to the mic and told them where she was doing her show
04:37I mean I wish I could meet her again I never saw her again and then they said and now young comedian I looked about 12 years old
04:46and I went on I was 22 I looked god shaking like a leaf yeah
04:52did my act and no one listened they were all spent
04:54from yelling at the folk singer and I had some friends from my university at the front like this
05:03and I just talked to them and everyone just talked all the way through and then they left
05:08but I came back a few years later in the early 90s with stand up and that and I come every year
05:13it's the first time I've done a show for 10 years but I come every year because I love it
05:17you love it
05:18I love the fringe
05:18lovely to hear
05:19thank you so much and thank you for coming back this year and bringing your show
05:22back this year it's it's it's really great that that's happening and in fact it's sold out
05:27I mean people can try to get tickets by all kinds of means you know
05:30and returns and so on but basically it's sold out and it's on until Sunday isn't it
05:36Sunday I can only do half a fringe these days I feel exhausted already I feel exhausted from
05:41telling that story I don't know how people I see kids shows because my kids they're a bit bigger
05:47now but you know 10 in the morning and you'd get there and you'd line up for say Harry McClary
05:53and all these students from some university drama group would turn up and they'd obviously just
05:58not gone to bed and then they'd have to put on these dog costumes but they were great
06:05and they were bounding around as dogs and then my youngest said to me I think I think they're
06:10people dressed as dogs
06:12I don't think they're real dogs do you think
06:18and they're all in the right order so yep yep yep yep yep yep I really hope they are
06:38thank you festival editor Andrew Eaton Lewis who put them in the right order
06:42okay so we are going to start with a truly remarkable show which began life last year
06:55as a lecture it was a lecture given in memory of Alistair Cameron who was a wonderful theatre
07:02teacher at Glasgow University around about the 1990s and who taught many of the people who are
07:08now you know in charge of Scottish theatre basically and one of the people that he taught
07:14was John Tiffany now of course well known globally as a as a superstar director and in celebration of him
07:22every few years there's a lecture at Glasgow University and they thought what's brilliant
07:27and distinctive about and about Scottish theatre that we can have a lecture about this year
07:33and they decided that what needed celebrating was Scottish pantomime and there was absolutely no one
07:40better place to celebrate that than the magnificent panto star and writer Johnny McKnight
07:47who creates his characters for the pantos that he stars in he's a brilliant dame he's been writing
07:53pantos for the last 15 years or so he's been appearing in them and for longer than that and they asked him to produce
08:00this lecture which he did and it was a roaring success delivered by Johnny in full costume
08:06as Dorothy Blona Gale the superstar the superstar dame in his own version of The Wizard of Oz
08:13and this is such a brilliant idea that the National Theatre of Scotland and the Traverse Theatre
08:18became tremendously excited by it and the Traverse Theatre is presenting it in association with the NTS
08:24at this year's fringe at this year's fringe at the Traverse where it has developed into a full-blown solo show
08:31about the journey of pantomime in the last 20 years and that's a story which as as as everyone who knows
08:38Johnny McKnight will know who's ever seen his work that's a story which has big implications for the role of gay people
08:45in theatre for the whole way that gay culture is expressed in theatre for the way that gay culture
08:51and and and the whole culture of pantomime relates to women and you know to the to the old tradition of sort of sending up women
08:58by having her played by a big hulking man to a new tradition which hopefully is more supportive of women of gay people
09:05and of all kinds of diversity and in the world that panto and that panto exists really to celebrate and to subvert
09:13and so Johnny McKnight's show is called she's behind you it's a fantastic
09:18panto monologue about the history of panto about Johnny's history in panto and but of course like all solo shows
09:26it's very much a team a team production and I'd love now to welcome Johnny McKnight and his team to the stage
09:34this is the biggest production that's ever been on this
10:01this is a good night out for the festival six people in a tight space
10:05equal gender balance as well
10:13I'd just like to say in behalf of our brilliant cast our team our creatives that have all worked so hard
10:22we did not see this show coming at all it started as a lecture
10:25and it was about maybe April I think that we realized it was going to be turned into a show
10:30so it was about like a hundred miles per hour and it's been an amazing team and NTS and Traverse
10:36for supporting it it's taken us all completely by surprise how it's been received
10:40I'm thinking it's a cultural exchange for our international visitors
10:43they're thinking when is the subtitled show but it's fine
10:47yeah it's a real honor to be um to be to be given this I've no one anything since a Glen Michael cavalcade
10:55came to town in 1987 so I'm delighted it's no a wide awake annual
10:59um but I would also just like to kind of dedicate it to every show at the festival
11:04who is slogging the pavements and it feels more new than ever
11:07that every time you make a show is an act of bravery and resilience and putting yourself out there
11:12and it's um being seen by anybody just feels like a massive deal these days
11:16so I'd just like to say on behalf of everybody and every show that's on at the festival
11:19this is for everybody to see that you've all been seen
11:21thank you
11:22thank you so much
11:24thank you
11:28great
11:38and do
11:39he does panto does he
11:40oh he does
11:41he does he does so many pantos it makes you dizzy you're going oh he's written that one
11:48he's in that one he's directing that oh yeah yeah
11:50he's he's a panto genius aren't you johnny fantastic
11:53anyway let us move on um um the theme that is touched on in she's behind you
12:00um it's kind of reflecting on the history of gay people you know in theater and in
12:05and in the wider world over the last 20 years is quite a
12:08um a powerful one in this year's fringe in a kind of reflective ruminative sort of way and in that it's
12:15as if the sort of more reactionary climate that's coming from some quarters now in relation to things like gay rights is is is is compelling people to look back and to look at the cycles of tolerance and intolerance of justice and injustice that have existed um in the past and one of the most powerful certainly from a Scottish point of view one of the most powerful um reflections on that on the fringe is the winner of this year's Charlie Hartill award here at the Pleasance
12:45The Canpour 1857 um by Niall Murjani um with Jonathan Oldfield who stars um with him in it and who um who um with with Niall in it and who also co-directs it and this is a show about what uh British imperial history calls the Indian mutiny um and in the show uh someone who's associated with the rebels a sort of gentle storyteller who doesn't really identify
13:15in love with a hijra who's one of the sort of third sex beautiful kind of artists at the court of a traditional um Indian ruler uh this person is strapped to the mouth of a cannon waiting to be blown to pieces for his role in the rebellion but the British officer who's interrogating him very well played by Jonathan Oldfield is thinks of himself as a tolerant
13:45to be allowed to be allowed to survive and also of course to cough up information about his fellow rebels and so that's the scenario in Canpour 1857 and it is an incredibly powerful play of course Scottish regiments played a huge part in what went on um in that mutiny in that rebellion um and one of its striking characteristics which has huge contemporary residences is that during that rebellion there was a horrific attack on some British uh
14:15um civilians women and civilians who were in a city in india um and the rebels murdered them very viciously and over the head of the few dozen deaths in that murder over 100,000 uh Indians were killed in a kind of massive punishment campaign so the resonances of that today are absolutely huge and I would um I would love now um to welcome Niall and all of his team to the stage to celebrate
14:45Thank you so much thank you thank you so much thank you get out of the way uh just wanted to very yeah I think of course but I'm gonna hold this out uh uh just wanted to very quickly uh Joyce you summed it up beautifully so I don't need to contextualize the show at all it's lovely um
15:14thank you so so much um for this this means the absolute world um the biggest thing I wanted to say was um last year during the race riots as a person of colour and a trans person at the fringe I didn't know if I'd come back we were doing uh R&D for the show and work in progress for this show and I just didn't feel like I belonged here I know that was the case for so many other people of colour and to be stood here a year on holding a fringe first which is something that so many theatre makers at this festival dream of means the absolute world I'm so grateful to the amazing people stood next to me for coming with me on this journey and making this incredible
15:44incredible show that we're so proud of I'm so grateful to Pleasance and to the Scottish International Storytelling Festival for all the support they've given to Chloe Nelkin for the amazing PR support they've given as well
15:53and just there's so many people who've been involved in this show I can't possibly name them but to everyone who has
15:58sort of it was a big ambitious thing and it was something that we knew we were taking on really serious topics and we really hope that the show does make people think of Gaza and realize that colonialism is not
16:07a new story it's not a story that's finished it is one that's been going on for centuries and is continuing now
16:12um so to be here stood here with this award feels really really special but the story we've always said
16:16is so much bigger than us and it's so amazing that storytelling could be centered on this stage
16:21um in this way so thank you so much thank you
16:23and that by the way was Niall uh Jonathan and Sodhi Scotland's talking tabla brilliant musician
16:42um who accompanies the whole um the whole action live yeah yeah yeah thank you very much
16:50right now on a strangely similar theme although in an incredibly different style
16:56Henry Naylor's new play Monstering the Rocket Man now some of you may be old enough to remember the
17:03Sun newspaper of the 1980s uh run by a famously fierce and very right-wing editor called Kelvin
17:10McKenzie who basically hated boo absolute pantomime villain absolute pantomime villain um who decided
17:24in his um wisdom or unwisdom to launch a vicious campaign of vilification against Elton John um on
17:31the grounds that Elton was gay um he got some false information from some people in you know various sort
17:36of dodgy sources that said that Elton was having horrible exploitative relationships with all kinds
17:42of very young um sort of male prostitutes and so on and he started publishing stories you know shrieking
17:48headlines based on all this um and trying to destroy Elton John's reputation well this all ran on for some
17:55time and and and Elton first tried to ignore it then took out one of the biggest libel cases in history
18:00and it sort of shook Kelvin McKenzie's career because it came to the point where even the readers of
18:06the Sun kind of lost interest in this in this sort of um relentless vilification of someone who's a bit
18:12of a national treasure so all in all it's a it's a fantastic story of those times of that wave of
18:19intolerance you know the sort of section 28 era and all the rest of it which was going on at the time
18:23and of how public opinion gradually turned against it and this is brilliantly told by Henry Naylor
18:30in his new show Monstering the Rocket Man it's a solo show Henry does it all by himself he's produced
18:36it himself he performs it himself and of course he has done all the brilliant research that accompanies
18:42it himself with you know the shrieking headlines not only from the Sun but from its competitor
18:47newspaper the Daily Mirror and others also um appearing you know sort of brilliantly projected
18:52um behind the stage it is such a rattling good yarn about the sort of you know the attempt to kind of
18:58fire up bigotry in the British um British public and how it sometimes fails so thank you very much
19:05Henry Naylor for monitoring the Rocket Man and please come up and accept your French first
19:09applause
19:14and then he killed Henry Naylor
19:30quick take your prize how many fingers um i i i i'm thank you so much honestly i i'm
19:41we're so grateful for for this i know myself i mean obviously the show is about how certain
19:47sections of the media showed poor judgment um but uh i can i just say that uh clearly
19:53on behalf of all the acts who've done well today uh the scotsman is not one of those
19:58not anymore uh nobody i mean sort of uh darren and i are very passionate about how it's important
20:09so important to have a free press particularly at this this uh moment that we can trust uh and uh
20:15i i think one of the problems that we've we've seen with the media in recent years is that proprietors
20:21have been putting profit before truth and i think the core product of news is the thing that uh that
20:27we the public really need at this time uh when democracy seems to be under threat from many
20:33sources so uh you know i think uh for us it was a very important piece to do um a lot of people to
20:42say thank you to paul uh our press agent thank you so much you've been excellent uh the pleasant's
20:48wonderful and uh i've got to say massive thanks to darren uh i mean i i was i've been diagnosed with
20:54um quite chronic adhd and and uh sort of uh when when uh you just had a bang on the head
21:01that's cured me i'm fine now i just can't write plays anymore um uh but but uh you know without
21:09darren helping me pull the story out of the material it would have been a very different
21:15thing we it was a two-hour show only a fortnight ago uh and uh uh and uh uh uh and uh uh and uh
21:26darren is a a director not only is he a great mate he's done he's helped me enormously with it so
21:33thank you very much darren and bless you all and and thank you the scotsman for this fantastic award
21:38i i think i was just working this out on the way up here i'm so humbled and honored by this
21:44because i reckon joyce you must have had the world record for seeing the amount of uh fringe shows i
21:50i mean so like they're and uh so so it's really humbling to to be given this so thank you so much
22:00and thank you to the to the scotsman and god bless you all on the fringe come on we're going to say
22:04fantastic and you know anyone old enough to remember that that show just evokes it's got
22:18some lovely writing in it as well as kevin mckenzie shouting and all that but um it's also got some
22:25lovely writing just about the atmosphere and smell of london in the 1980s very very nostalgic for some
22:31of us can i just say one thing yeah do i shared a flat in 1994 with armstrong and miller who a few
22:39years later had their own television series but at the time were a young double act struggling to
22:44get on and the double act that was killing it at the fringe was parsons and nailer which was
22:50andy parsons and henry nailer and every day ben and zander would come in and go fucking parsons and
22:55nailer again they're selling out the reviews are amazing
23:00which is why i love henry so much and i'm so sorry about that
23:05well i hope henry's um undamaged that's a hell of a good story extremely well told okay now we move uh
23:16from shows reflecting on the history of of of gay men and and um gay culture um in the uk to a very
23:24contemporary show that reflects on the position of women in this post me too period in an exceptionally
23:31um powerful way this show is red like fruit at the traverse theater it's from the 2b company of
23:40canada um and it's written by hannah moscovich and it's a it's a monologue but it's a monologue
23:49performed by two people in i think possibly the most interesting way i've ever seen a monologue
23:54teased out um the the character who has written the monologue monologue lauren is a journalist and
24:01she sits on a little platform sort of center stage responding and reacting while a man that she has
24:10asked a man called luke that she has asked to read her monologue um reads it performs it stopping
24:17from time to time to check that she's okay because sometimes she responds quite strongly to it so
24:24it's a really interesting story about the you know she obviously feels there's some authority in the
24:29male voice that she wants to hear when she's commissioned him to do this but um but at the
24:35same time she is the author she's in control of the situation and she's sort of employing him rather
24:42than vice versa fascinating and the story is a complicated story about lauren's sexual life
24:49she probes into the anger that she feels even though she's now a journalist happily married two
24:55children living in toronto you know happy um or should be happy but she feels this inner anger and
25:02rage and she's probing what it's about the rage is triggered by a story that she has to write about a
25:08man that has had a violent incident with his partner but has been reinstated to his powerful
25:13job with the governing liberal party in canada and and this story just acts as a trigger for her to
25:19explore and explore and explore the sexual incidents of her past asking the question was that abuse
25:27or was it just the normal messy chaos of growing up and of sexual desire and where do we draw the line
25:35um in that debate in this kind of post me too period it's a brilliantly subtle piece of work
25:41utterly absorbing just completely beautifully performed and by michelle monteith and david patrick
25:48fleming i always smile when i get the canadian names because so many of them sound so scottish
25:52so michelle monteith and david patrick fleming so please and uh with christian barry the director
25:59would the team from red like fruit come up and receive their first question
26:03oh there they are um thank you so much um it's such a pleasure my name is christian barry i'm the
26:30artistic director of tubi theater company from halifax nova scotia canada yes we are all scottish
26:35you're not wrong um okay i i've got to say a few things i may have to check my notes but i'm going
26:41to do my best not to to start off because all these brilliant actors who came up before me didn't
26:44check their notes thanks guys if i go on too long let's see if we can't get one of those fuck off
26:48chance going um first never forget it yeah it's it sounds exhilarating actually i'm sort of
26:57uh first of all i want to say thanks to the team they're they're a brilliant team and of course
27:02we've decided to in life imitating art to have the man speak on behalf of the team
27:06um david uh patrick fleming michelle monteith you couldn't ask for more brilliant uh humble
27:13hard-working people to spend your time with you're so brilliant thank you so much olivia rankin our
27:19company managers here with us allison crosby the stage manager and associate lighting designer
27:23they're a brilliant brilliant team uh thank you so much to the scotsman and to to the jury for
27:28seeing this show it really really means a lot thank you for seeing us really seeing what we're doing
27:32uh and caring about what we do this is uh tv theater company did win a fringe first back in
27:372017 for a show called old stock a refugee love story that show is still touring it's going to
27:43shanghai i have to go meet the show in shanghai at the end of august it's been performed over 400
27:47times so awards like this really do matter it really really helps so thank you so much for the work you're
27:53doing thank you to uh our pr team to storytelling pr to miriam to emma to kirsty to graham for for
28:05for getting you guys out to see the show uh and helping us get the audiences in uh special thank
28:10you to the traverse who are so wonderful to work with and especially to linda crooks um linda saw a
28:172b theater company show here at the fringe 15 years ago and somebody asked me not long ago in canada
28:22they said how did you get a slot at the traverse that's the dream slot and i said start now and
28:27maybe in 15 years you know 15 years of hard work so thank you linda for sticking with us and making
28:32this happen it's it's really really special um lastly and uh most importantly here let me make sure i
28:37didn't forget anyway i need to read something on here anyway because the playwright my wife hannah
28:42moskovich for writing a crushingly beautiful show i want to thank her and thank you she couldn't be
28:49here on her behalf she wanted to thank you she's making a tv show in canada so um it's a good
28:54excuse um but i'm going to share a short excerpt of a speech that she gave this show was nominated
29:01it was a finalist for the susan smith blackburn prize and she gave a speech last year at the royal court in
29:05london and here's a little bit of it hannah said i'm the type of writer who likes to explore the world
29:11lovingly but with a knife with red like fruit what i'm exploring with the knife is myself red
29:19like fruit is the type of play where you think i don't know about this play because it's weirder
29:25and less funny and less charming than the plays i like to write and also i've taken out a lot of
29:30the conventions conventions that i like the ones that make us want to watch plays and also it's more
29:37truthful and more personal than is comfortable for me i think about my life as a document that i
29:43have redacted because there are parts that are uncomfortable so i take them out but then if pages
29:51and pages of my life are censored then my life just becomes fucking incomprehensible doesn't it to you
30:00to me red like fruit is an effort to restore the redacted pieces of my life thank you so much i hope
30:08you come see the play
30:21thank you michelle and david for just performing that so beautifully it's a really really memorable
30:27performance okay the last one and we move on to the great unmentionable of british politics moving on
30:35from gender and sexuality to class um this final play is a fantastic solo tour de force um by jade franks
30:46playing also here at the pleasance um courtyard and it's called eat the rich but maybe not me mates x
30:53and it's about a scouse girl who goes to cambridge um through her own you know intelligence her
31:02determination her feeling that there must be more to life and she soars to this sort of pinnacle of
31:08of um of british um society which is oxbridge she gets into cambridge and she finds herself facing a
31:15class culture and a set of class assumptions which of course are almost completely excluding towards
31:21anyone um from a working class background she's funny she's brilliant she exposes the complexities
31:28of that and i'm sure that she's still facing them every day in her work and she says in one of the the
31:35the biogs i read that that that work for and from working class people is absolutely central to her
31:42practice and it's getting that out there getting it seen and heard and that is really um the core of
31:49her art but she is a brilliant performer she's funny she's eloquent she's lyrical when she needs to be
31:56um and i've never really seen a show um and here at the pleasance or anywhere else on the fringe that
32:01has won a more immediate absolute sympathetic um holy go girl kind of response from from an audience in
32:09the middle of the day um right there in one of the bunkers here at the pleasance courtyard so please jade
32:14come up and accept your award for eat the rich
32:22um
32:36this is insane literally been the most insane week of my life um i'd firstly like to thank my amazing
32:43producer jasmine um jasmine fisherriner she is incredible she is already double olivier nominated
32:52if you don't know her name then you need to get to know and to tender shimiso you may notice that we
32:59are wearing two parts of the same suit and i think that's indicative of the kind of creating process that
33:05we've had without him i literally wouldn't be here and the show wouldn't be what it is so thank you so
33:13much both of you you're amazing and the height difference of all of us is also just really
33:19hilarious to see us walking around i don't know what you're talking about i'm about to hit this
33:25um a lot of what the show is about i guess is about difference and about feeling like you might be on
33:31the fringes and so to be at the fringe at a festival that celebrates people's differences like us three
33:36for example we've got american swiss we've got hackney we've got well everyone's calling me a
33:45scalp but i'll let you into a secret i'm actually from the wirral um my mom and dad and my family
33:52my cousin and my auntie are here so thank you for being here um but yeah obviously have a massive
33:59affinity with liverpool um what was i saying yeah we're all very from very different parts of the
34:05world and have very different life experiences and i think we've continually celebrated that
34:09throughout the creating process of that show and that's why i think the show resonates with people
34:14because if you've ever felt like you don't belong or like people don't understand you you just need
34:19to listen to each other and not judge and i think that's yeah the most important kind of message
34:23that i hope people take away from the play um lastly um the we very nearly didn't make it up to
34:30the fringe because our funding was pulled in june late june and it meant that we had to do a go fund me
34:35i was doing loads of like stand-up gigs which i never do to raise money and and yeah we really well
34:42jasmine really really worked hard to try and get the money to be here we still haven't broken even even
34:47though we've sold out every single show which again is insane um so i just think that it's
34:54testament to the fact that the arts are in such a precarious place and we especially for working
34:59class artists like it's really really difficult and there's a lot of people here who are you know
35:04supported by their families or by whatever else but if if you don't have like 30k just in your back
35:09pocket it's really difficult to do um but saying that now that we have got like a supply and demand
35:16situation if anyone wants a dicker to eat the rich for a hundred pounds just meet me outside the
35:21bunker and we'll figure it out thank you so much
35:30what a show fantastic um thank you so much jade um for that and just on behalf of everyone who feels
35:46excluded from events like this it's so important to have shows like that coming along alan how was that
35:52for you that's very i loved it and i really particularly love this the speech about um
36:00the canadian guys and they were already forgotten from nova scotia his wife said her life felt like
36:05it had been redacted yes and my show i'm not trying to fill tickets for my show there aren't any
36:12go and see all these other shows please but it's the first time i talked about experiences in my own
36:18childhood on stage yeah and i felt like i had a 38 year redacted career yeah and their fringe allows
36:26people to do these things and it is expensive and it's too expensive and everyone's crippled by the
36:32costs but without the fringe these shows wouldn't happen at all and there is something about you know
36:39sometimes you get in a taxi driver and he's had a long day and you feel like the fringe isn't welcome
36:44but the fringe is welcome yeah and everyone is welcome and edinburgh does that scotland does it
36:49and edinburgh does that so it's a real reminder of that and i and i know also one other thing
36:55i bet you've struggled so hard to choose these five oh yeah and there are so many others you know
37:02but your support of these people is fantastic so well done you
37:05it really really really like any good theater thing it is a huge team effort our team of critics
37:28and reviewers is just absolutely fantastic out there spotting working their socks off um and
37:33and our and our editors and reaton lewis and our arts editor roger cox absolutely fantastic team
37:38but thank you so much for your very kind words alan thank you for being with us and um all the best for
37:44the rest of the rest of the thank you thank you
37:50and unbelievably that is it for the for the first week oh i've got a big list of people
38:08to thank though um once again round of applause for our wonderful hosts here at the pleasants thank you so
38:14much thank you anthony once again um round of applause for our terrific sponsors queen margaret
38:23university without which this couldn't be happening and in relation to that i just want to say a special
38:30thank you to the four interns from qm who have been working with the scotsman on some of its um festival
38:36related website material um for this festival so that's simran aaron and vanida and quinn thank you
38:43very much for all your efforts thank you
38:50a huge colossal thank you to alan davies what a fantastic guest star thank you alan
38:55um and above all of course a huge thank you to all the artists that we've been celebrating today
39:06and to all the other artists out there who as johnny said at the beginning um are struggling to make it
39:11work um and are making this fringe the amazing sometimes difficult sometimes infuriating but always
39:17astonishing um thing that it is and if those who have won awards today um were willing to hang about for a
39:24bit outside at the end that would be fantastic we need photographs and maybe a couple of little vox
39:29pops and to help out the scotsman website if you've got time to do that but really what we're here to do
39:35is to say thank you to you and to all the other artists on the fringe because we know how tough it is
39:40we know how tough the financial situation is we know how tough it is to raise the money to get to be
39:46here at all and then to do world-class work which really moves on the important debates of our time
39:53it's an absolute thrill to be a critic working on that as all of our team know and we would all like
39:59to thank all of the artists here on the fringe join us again same time next week for our scotsman
40:05fringe first week two and thank you all very much
40:14thank you for being here
Recommended
38:53
0:39
1:10:40
52:07
51:53
44:17
1:50
5:34
Be the first to comment