Crowds during the Edinburgh Festival, 2008. Credit: © Stephen Finn/Shutterstock.com
Every August the city of Edinburgh is transformed into a smorgasbord of culture during the largest arts festival in the world, the Edinburgh Festival. Here is a guide to getting the most out of this awesome celebration of theatre and art.
If you are a fan of theatre, dance, music, improv, stand-up comedy, or all of the above, you will absolutely love the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This month long event takes place during August and showcases thousands of established and up and coming performers in the beautiful Scottish capital city.
The Edinburgh Festival is legendary and it has the distinction of being the largest arts festival in the world. In 2009, the event sold 1,859,235 tickets for 34,265 performances of 2,098 shows! This massive amount of live theatre took place within 265 venues all over the city over a period of 25 days.
There is such a wide range of artistic talent on display that you could enjoy a Shakespearean play, then head straight to a stand up comedy hour at a bar, watch a traditional dance troupe perform after that, and then see a young squad of improvisers, all within one day! The Edinburgh Fringe offers so much choice to visitors that it is really like an all-you-can-eat buffet of entertainment. You are free to pick and choose your favourites and gorge yourself on all of the live theatre, music and comedy that you can handle.
Here are a few tips for getting the most out of this awesome festival:
Actors perfmorning during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2008. Credit: © Stephen Finn/Shutterstock.com
* Plan your trip in advance. This is one of the busiest times of the year to visit Edinburgh, so make sure that you have booked your hostel or hotel in the city well before August as accommodation will fill up quickly.
* Prices will be high for accommodation in the city centre during this time of year, but many hostels and hotels on the outskirts of the city offer a shuttle bus service back and forth.
Edinburgh can be reached by bus or train from the rest of the UK, and fares are relatively cheap.
* Check the Edinburgh Fringe website, and as soon as the programme comes out you can order yourself a copy. This massive catalogue is a guide to all of the events and shows that will be played at the Fringe. Make yourself a cup of tea and curl up with this handy guide, with a pen in your hand and some post-it-notes to mark the pages of the shows that you want to see the most.
* Once you have selected your “must-see” shows, you can book tickets for them online.
* However, don’t overbook yourself! While it is good to make sure that you have a ticket for the show that you are dying to see, if you have every single second of your Fringe experience planned in advance you might miss the chance to discover a random and spontaneous show, which is part of the fun! Choose a few shows that you really want to see, and then leave the rest up to what catches your attention on that particular day.
* The Royal Mile is the main street of the Festival, and it will be absolutely buzzing with people all day long. The Radisson Blu is the only hotel in Edinburgh on the Royal Mile. The bustling energy of walking through the crowds on the Royal Mile during Fringe Festival is an unforgettable travel experience. You will see everything from acrobats being tossed in the air, performers in full body paint climbing lamp posts and phone boxes, jugglers cracking jokes to the crowds, and much more!
* As you walk along the Royal Mile, you will be approached every few minutes by a performer in costume with a small leaflet advertising their show. They will tell you a bit about the performance and most of them will claim that it has been voted the best show at the fringe. If the show sounds interesting, hold onto the flyer because this can be a great way to discover a spontaneous performance that you have not heard of yet.
* Also, the Half Price Hut sells last minute tickets at great discounts, so head there in the morning and see what it has in store for you.
Enjoy sampling a world of theatre and culture at the amazing Edinburgh Festival Fringe!