Ten years ago I moved to Edinburgh from Australia. It was completely
unintentional…
I had worked previously at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in South Australia,
and so was curious about this Scottish Festival that I'd heard so much about. I
arrived mid-June and found a flat, a cooking job and an office temp job within
a few days. My new temporary flatmate, Craig Hill (now the famous comedian) was
a press officer at the Gilded Balloon at the time and encouraged me to apply
for a Festival position.
I was pretty happy when I discovered that I'd landed myself a job in the
main theatre of Gilded Balloon... and then I found out about the pay! I had to
save my pennies from my other two jobs to afford to work the Festival. But I
didn't mind. It was more for the experience than the money that I took the job,
and before I knew it, I found myself volunteering to help repaint the interior
of Wilkie House...
Despite not being paid for this, all the Gilded Balloon
staff who were around were really enthusiastic, and we painted for two or three
full days, retiring to the Green Tree beer garden (now demolished) afterwards
for a much needed pint. We actually had a summer that July!
The staff were all geared up when the Festival started, and one of my jobs
was pouring wine at the press party. What a fab night! Wilkie House (which is
now Faith nightclub, and no longer a Fringe venue) was perfect. There were
lots of corridors that went all over the building, which over the month I got
to know pretty well.
Gilded Balloon used to take up a catacomb like building,
part owned by the University, which had it's basement on Cowgate and went right
up to South Bridge. Gilded Balloon made the most of the space, and the spaces I
remember were Wilkie House (main theatre), Backstage I and II (rooms owned by
the University behind Wilkie House, that got rather hot when full of punters), Le
Belle Angele nightclub and Up the Road in GB II (also now demolished).
It was a brilliant four weeks of work - I don't think I've ever worked
so hard. Front of House involved a lot of moving people around and making them
form orderly queues as well as helping with the onstage changes between
productions. Also, a lot of answering the same question over and over again! I
ended up memorising the whole GB programme and could reel it off to whoever was
enquiring.
We worked ten hour shifts, but stuck around the venue to chat and
drink with performers and other staff. One of the perks of the job was that I
saw about 25 free shows in that four weeks, and developed my liking for stand-up comedy. Late and Live was the chaotic late evening / early morning happening
where Brendon Burns went ape and dove into the audience, Bill Bailey did his
musical thing and Phil Kaye went off on random comedy tangents.
It was a sad day in winter 2002 when the Cowgate building burnt down. I was
at a party on North Bridge at the time and we all rushed out to see my
favourite Fringe venue in flames.
It's fantastic that despite losing
everything (and I mean everything) from their office, that the Gilded Balloon
has kept on going.
So it’s another Fringe, another month of madness to come. I’m well prepared
for it. Except this year I’ll be reviewing, which is much easier than directing
hoards of people after having had two hours sleep!