Comedian Sofie Hagen is at this year's Fringe with new show 'Bubblewrap'. Here, she outlines the quintessential Fringe experience.
‘I am so stressed out that I just ate bread for the first time in months,’ I told my friend on the phone whilst I walked down Nicolson Street, doing the I’m-on-the-phone-signal to everyone I bumped into that I knew. And as she was about to tell me about her day, I arrived at my show and had to hang up. Hashtag Edinburgh, eh?
Finding things to keep your spirits up can be as simple as walking into a Free Fringe venue on a rainy Tuesday at 2.45pm – say, The Blind Poet on West Nicolson Street – and seeing Deborah Frances-White’s show ‘Friend of a Friend of Dorothy’ It’s an explosion of brilliant comedy, storytelling and something that will make you feel like you’ve witnessed something extraordinary.
Or it can be looking through a shop-window by Grassmarket and realising that you may have found the only salad bar in all of Edinburgh (and Scotland), and later find out that not only is it good, but it might be better than any salad bar in London (sorry, Shoreditch). That’s Graze at 67 Grassmarket.
The easiest way to capture the actual spirit of the fringe is to get on Twitter and Facebook and start following the hashtag #LetsSellThisGigOut. Every day comedian Michael Legge picks a show - often a show that deserves bigger crowds than its getting - and a bunch of comedians encourage their followers to go and see it. Often the comedians themselves will go as well. It will remind you that the Fringe is not about competitions, reviews and awards, but that we’re all just a bunch of creative and artistic souls and, most importantly, colleagues and friends.
But after you have done all of that, go to The Dagda Bar on 93-95 Buccleuch Street and tell the bearded bartender that I am in love with him, and that he should disregard that I came in with an ass-donut to sit on. Tell him that my tailbone will heal, but my heart will not, if he rejects me.
Sofie Hagen: Bubblewrap, Liquid Room, until Aug 31, 7.10pm, free.