You Know You are at the Fringe When:
You carry about the strangest items with you – who needs chalk? Or, how about a rubber egg? No?
All your pockets and bags are full of flyers, you find begin to find flyers in the most unsettling places – the fridge, the bathroom cabinet, your bed…
You get horribly over-excited when your Royal Mile crush says hello to you
An early night means getting to bed before 2am
You construct a Venn diagram of the coffee shops with free Wifi and cheap tea.
Kate Stephenson
There’s Nothing Sadder Than a Headless Goose
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase incorporates two lovely goose puppets, Goosey and Gandey, which we use both to flier and perform. Most of the time. The geese are fragile, and require the kind of tender care usually associated with a baby; they can’t be left out in the rain, they must be carefully arranged when someone isn’t holding them, and they are never handed over to strangers.
These rules, plus an occasional new coat of paint, gave us faith that the geese would survive the whole run, and fly (or waddle) happily into September. This may still be the case, but there will be further attention required. As I walked down the street to a bookstore reading a few days ago, Gandey companionably by my side, I felt a pop, and looked down. Gandey’s head bobbed on one string, his body supported by the others, while the pieces of his neck rolled all over Edinburgh’s Princes Street. The main pieces collapsed in a sad heap, while the small connecting beads rolled over the sidewalk and into the gutter.
After the initial panic and collection, where I was deeply glad that my dress had schoolgirl pockets, ideal to hold pieces of goose neck, I continued to walk towards the bookshop. Gone was the wholesome image of girl and goose, and instead I appeared as a much creepier image, goose-torturer, girl with ghost-goose. While the strings that held the head and body were still connected, the different body parts were not, and the head simply floated in midair, presaging bird doom.
The more I walked, the more I felt that I was carrying a real, dead bird, lifelessly drooped at my waist. This was heightened by the time I arrived at the bookshop, where, to avoid frightening the children we were to read to, I gathered up goose head and body in my arms, holding them as if they comprised an injured warrior.
At least we can bring the geese back to life. Gandey was revived, and both geese are back in the spotlight.
Sarah Gulick
A Nice Feeling
So This Happened….
http://ed.thestage.co.uk/reviews/1417
…which was exciting.
Free Readings
Hard at Work
Jez and Rob stencilling the packing cases that form the majority of the ‘Wolves’ set
In which the Princess of France and I take on driving
Well, that pretty much sums it up really, yesterday we drove from Scarborough to Edinburgh with a horribly overloaded car full of set, costumes and bedding, stopping for tea as the whim took us. This resulted in a very pleasant hour spent in an incredibly posh country house hotel somewhere outside Durham and lunch at Kielder Water. We also sang, a lot. Only some of it was in tune.
Kate Stephenson
