Fringe leaves a big hole where the art should be

The novel coronavirus has made 2020 a year like no other in living memory. Its devastating medical impact has altered millions of lives forever, and even for those who have escaped direct contact, the change of lifestyle and behavior has seen routine turned on its head.

School closures and altered working patterns have transformed normality, and fixtures of national and international life, such as the Tokyo Olympic Games, have been wiped from the calendar.

In the arts world, the biggest casualty is the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, one of the world's largest arts festivals, which, in the ordinary course of events, takes over the capital of Scotland for the month of August.

In 2019, more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 shows from more than 150 countries and regions were staged across 323 venues in the city, adding 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) to the Scottish economy, but this year, the shows will only be able to go on in a digital format, with the huge crowds usually drawn to Edinburgh notable by their absence.

"I'm dreading walking up the Royal Mile but I plan to do it," said Shona McCarthy, chief executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society. "I'm also planning to find some garden or park to bring our team together on what would have been the first day of the festival. It is genuinely going to be just so weird for all of us this year, we owe ourselves a moment to come together and acknowledge the weirdness of it."

So, as Edinburgh adjusts to August without performers, what about performers who will have to adjust to August without Edinburgh?

The Nottingham New Theatre is England's only fully student-run theater company, based at the University of Nottingham, which has a Chinese campus in Ningbo.

For decades, Edinburgh has been a fixture on the calendar for Nottingham's young actors, as it has for so many other student thespians, and this year the company was sending two productions, reworkings of Frank Weidekind's play Spring Awakening, adapted by student Tara Anegada.

Rohan Rakhit is the company's president, and he explained the impact of the cancellation.

"The Fringe is a really inspiring event, and if you're a student wanting to pursue acting further, Edinburgh can be a great springboard, as you can ask agents to come along and watch," he said. "We've got some great actors here who are graduating this summer－for them especially, it will be a devastating loss.

"I've been up for the last five or six years and it's where I've seen some of the best performances I've ever seen, so I'll really miss it. When they announced the cancellation, it put a big dent in my post-university summer plans－it was heartbreaking."

Stand-up comedian Olaf Falafel has performed at Edinburgh for eight years, having first taken part in a newcomers' competition, and last year he won the award for the best one-liner of the Fringe.

He said cancellation left a big hole in the calendar for everyone in the comedy industry and beyond.

"You have to prepare early for Edinburgh－as soon as I finish one year, I'm straight on the phone to rebook accommodation for the following year, and for the whole industry it's the focal point," he said.

"Of course, there are people who get talent-spotted there, but it's not just that, it's also a great social event, and a chance for people to showcase what they've been doing for the last 12 months.

"I always get some bits of work out of it and it opens doors, but it's also about having a good time. It's a working holiday for my family too－we rent a place for the month, and my kids love going there."

Lockdown dealt the comedy industry a huge blow, but Falafel has kept busy. A trained artist and children's illustrator, he has made a series of popular children's art club videos on YouTube, using comedy techniques to introduce children to the world of art.

But he said the limitations of lockdown had made him keener than ever to get to Edinburgh, an opportunity which fate seems to have taken away from him this year. Or maybe not.

"We've not had a summer holiday at home for about five years and we're getting bored of hanging around the same old park, so as I've got the accommodation sorted out, we might go up anyway, just to see the place," he said.

"It will be weird without the Fringe, though－rather than trying to hurry past people giving your fl iers for shows, we'll be able to walk at normal speed and see Edinburgh properly because the buildings won't all be covered in posters."