Edinburgh Fringe
That’s my fifth Edinburgh Fringe done and dusted. Despite being described as a veteran now, it’s not got any easier. I chose to do a different show from last year which added to the pressure, but I’m pleased to say it went to plan.
The audience were ninety-nine percent members of the public and complete strangers. It’s how I like it. I will be doing a variation on the show as part of my regular security awareness sessions this coming semester, though it won’t be live and in stand-up mode, but colleagues will have a chance to view the remote, on-line version and get an idea of what the show was like.
It was a long day. In order to ensure I got there for a twenty to two start, I caught a train at five to ten. There is a long running train dispute and a temporary timetable in place so getting into Edinburgh is challenging. If I had left it any later, and a train was cancelled, I would have missed the performance. I finished at twenty to three and the ten to four train was cancelled, which meant the next was at four thirty six. It was mobbed. It gave me a chance to walk around the festival though and wind down after my show and the weather held which was a bonus, as we really haven’t had a summer here, rain being the main feature, week in, week out.
It was a new venue this year. The shows were held in York Place, in one of the Georgian Houses there. Turns out I had attended a seminar in the basement of the building a couple of years ago, though I didn’t recognise the place when I first went in as it had been turned over for the Fringe and looked entirely different. It’s owned by a hotel and was very well laid out. You entered by the basement, then upstairs to where the venue was located. From there, you leave via a covered seating area and an open-air terrace and back into a lounge bar and then out the door at street level. A one-way system which was ideal given the twenty minute turnaround between shows.
I was nervous, but nerves are good. It provides an edge. It’s an odd thing, when my name is called and I take the stage, everything that has been going through my mind to do with the show goes blank, and as I take the mic and move the mic stand to the side, there is nothing going on in my mind at all. I then introduce myself, and at that point it’s like I’m watching the show along with everyone else in the room. It’s a kind of out of body experience, while still being within yourself. I don’t memorise a script, word for word. I have ideas under main headings and I know what I need to talk about and move the conversation on. I aim to make it sound natural, but not have pauses where I struggle to recall what comes next. As I’m talking on one point I am thinking about what comes next. As the show progresses, I relax into it as there are less main headings to recall the closer I come to the end, so the pressure eases, the adrenalin levels drop away and the buzz of having got through it comes to the fore. Talking with slides I find relatively easy. I’m well practised at that. Doing stand-up with no notes or slides, I find a challenge. Why I have the need to do give it a go, I don’t know. It is a great feeling afterwards. You feel you could easily go back on and do it all over again. I’ve spoken with colleagues and they all tell me they couldn’t do it. They wouldn’t do it. That possibly, is the attraction for me. Most folk wouldn’t volunteer to do it. I believed I could. As I noted at the top of this blog, it’s not getting any easier. I do have a better feel for going out and doing it though. I am more confident. I just wish I didn’t feel so crap in the run up to it.
I would do this show again, with some minor tweaks and updates, so if I have the opportunity to go again I would gladly do so. Artificial Intelligence and Deep Fakes is a reality of the modern world, so it needs to be discussed. That would be less pressure, as it’s a fair bit of work putting together a new routine. I’ve blogged previously that I was stepping away from doing industry talks and presentations, partly because of time constraints, partly because of the effort involved and partly because I now realise I much prefer talking to members of the public, rather than my peers. I find the public to be more engaged, ask far more questions and appear to really enjoy themselves judging by the comments after the show. As much as I love talking about cyber and AI, I would prefer to talk about writing and books so I’m always open for opportunities there. I’ve also got a large number of writing projects on the go that all need to be finished and progress has been slow due to the focus on preparing for the fringe. I’m hoping to make some inroads into the backlog of writing that is waiting for me and ideally put another book out before the end of the year. That’s the plan. We will see how it goes.
The Fiction Factory 