The perils of turning trauma into art at Edinburgh Fringe

As ever there is cause for reflection on everything from the Fringe Society’s bullish (or is that foolish?) defence of its Baillie Gifford sponsorship to the cost of (and legislation around) accommodation in the capital. On that second subject, there is a rabbit hole marked ‘exemptions to short-term lets licenses’ but I don’t recommend you dive down it. I did, and I’ve only just found my way back from a very chewy subreddit.

No, better by far to just open the Fringe programme and dive into that instead. One of the pleasures of doing so has always been identifying the zeitgeisty themes the dramatists, skit-makers and comics have picked up on since they last headed north to do battle with the Edinburgh weather. Barbie, Big Brother, Brexit – that sort of thing.

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These days the Fringe website does some of the work for you, to which end the data ninjas at Fringe HQ have this year highlighted an array of hot topics. Among them are AI (which will soon dispense with the need for data ninjas), capitalism (always a sexy subject), the female experience (I think that’s code for something, right JK?) and, last but not least, mental health, which will necessarily see some performers open up about trauma and walk that fine line between the genuinely therapeutic and the potentially damaging. But all in the pursuit of art, of course. And maybe a TV series.

Talking of which, anyone who watched controversial Netflix hit Baby Reindeer will know about the perils of turning personal trauma into art, and should also be aware by now that the show’s genesis lay in a 2019 Fringe performance by its creator, Scottish comedian Richard Gadd.

(Image: Netflix)
Fleabag, which also made comedy out of trauma and angst, is another show that debuted on the Fringe. Nor has its creator, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, forgotten the fact. Another Fringe factoid from this year’s launch: Keep It Fringe, the fund she launched, has made awards of £2500 to 180 acts this year, an applause-worthy act of largesse.

But that issue of trauma and how you deal with it – and, if you’re a performer, how and why you parlay it into something people will pay money to see – is a particularly live one this year. Poet and Herald columnist Lennie Pennie knows a thing or two about this, and you can read her thoughts here. 

Sheffield steal

Monday saw the closing night of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival – or DocFest as it has been known since the mania for lexicological shortening and compression reached that corner of the film festival circuit in which it dwells. Regardless, it’s now in its 30th year having been first mounted in 1994 and remains one of Europe’s most prestigious festivals in its field.

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Scottish subjects and film-makers fared rather well this year. First up is Edinburgh-based director Inma de Reyes, whose film The Boy And The Suit Of Lights was awarded the Grand Judy Award in the International First Feature Competition.

Six years in the planning and five in the making, the film was shot in de Reyes’s home town of Castellon, just south of Valencia, and follows young Borja as he tries to make it as a bullfighter – a path somewhat dictated for him by family pressure. Why would you put your child in front of a charging bull? It’s the question de Reyes kept asking herself and it’s what provides her award-winning film with its thematic through-line.

(Image: Inma de Reyes)
Also screening at DocFest and winning plaudits is a new film about a band whose levels of sonic attack bear comparison with a charging bull – the musical phenomenon that is Glasgow post-rock legends Mogwai.

If The Stars Had A Sound is a 90 minute film about the band directed by long-time Mogwai collaborator, Antony Crook. It had its world premiere at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin in March and, following its airing in South Yorkshire, will finally make its Scottish bow in the band’s home town when it’s screened at the Glasgow Film Theatre on June 28. The following day Mogwai headline the Big City 24 festival at Queen’s Park in Glasgow. You can read more about that here.

As for the film itself, it opens in 2021 with a voice-over reflection, presumably from band mainstay Stuart Braithwaite, about the last time the group recorded a John Peel session. This was in 2003, shortly before the legendary DJ died. “I always thought you would be one of these bands that just a couple of weirdos would like,” Braithwaite remembers Peel telling him. Then: “That’s kind of what I always thought. So it wasn’t just John that was surprised.”

This sentiment goes to the heart of the band’s appeal and it’s contradictions like these which Crook digs away at so winningly: how the sound Mogwai make is not the one you would expect if you ever met them. How what they do shouldn’t work, but does. How it shouldn’t be popular either but – back to the John Peel quote – somehow it is. Not Taylor Swift popular, but popular enough to make the band a genuine cult item globally. Popular enough to make Antony Crook’s film a must-see.

(Image: Blazing Griffin)

And finally…

Herald theatre critic Neil Cooper has been busy recently seeing two shows connected by one mainstay of the Scottish theatrical scene – Pitlochry Festival Theatre. As the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh he caught up with a revival of Pitlochry’s 2023 hit, Shirley Valentine, a play which needs no introduction. In the Perthshire town itself he took in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, which tells the story of the celebrated 1970s singer-songwriter.