New Stagers Take on Edinburgh!

This August, a group of 18 New Stagers made the pilgrimage to The Edinburgh Fringe to perform our Love-Island inspired version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We had the most incredible and exhausting week, flyering each day and performing every night. Here are the top five things we learned that made the Fringe awesome for us:

1. Set a goal: we were advised early on to choose a goal for the Fringe - did we want a sell out show? Or every magazine to review us? Yes we wanted those things, but what we really wanted was to have fun. That remained our focus throughout the preparation and during our week at the Fringe, if everyone was having fun then we had achieved our goal and anything else was a bonus!

2. Choose the right team: people thought we were crazy taking 18 people to the Fringe, but with everyone collaborating and working together, it meant that the energy required for the Fringe (which is an immense amount of energy) was shared amongst 18 people and it made everything from flyering to front of house a much easier job. 

3. Make your show an easy sell: the elevator pitch “A Midsummer Night’s Dream set in the Love Island villa” told our audience all the context they needed to know about our show, and subsequently we had big audiences and two sell-out shows.

4. See as much as possible: juggling performing and flyering with seeing other shows was challenging, but it was so inspiring seeing all the other groups hustling as just hard as us. Each day there would be different recommendations flying around the group chat. Some group favourites were Lady Macbeth Played Wing Defence, Hold Onto Your Butts, and Into Thy Hands. 

5. You can sleep when you’re dead: we existed on between three and five hours sleep a night and more than one of us broke down with exhaustion during the week, but overall the whole experience was so energizing and exhilarating that we’ll be dreaming of it for years to come! 

“Performing at the Fringe with the Midsummer crew was the most fun I can remember having as an actor and it was the people who made it so incredible - happy, sociable and having the time of our lives!. This bled into the flyering - the fact that we were all having a laugh drew people to the show and the observations made by audiences and reviewers made it clear they could see how much fun we were having on stage” Joe, cast member. 

“I have never had a week where I have been so exhausted, so anxious and so creatively fulfilled all at the same time. I don’t think I have ever laughed as much, loved as much, or felt as much joy as I did that week. I was constantly just genuinely in awe of the world around me. I loved waking up everyday in our shared student accommodation bed and heading to the girls kitchen to see what excitement was in store for the day. I already feel nostalgic for it.” Rhonda, cast member.

“My highlights were: setting myself free from the bathroom, eating haggis poutine (who knew that was a thing, and the best hangover cure!), flyering in my costume, the amazing atmosphere and giggles backstage, performing to sold out audiences who cheered in the middle of random scenes, the many drink refills, partying the night away, watching shows and re-living my student dreams in a flat party that got shut down: "There's having a party, and then there's this."” Lydia, cast member.

“My fave moments: Sam P becoming a mother hen and taking charge of the washing, getting to live out my uni halls dream with the absolute best group of people, the late night tea and toast chats after whistle binkies, feeling nostalgic every time I get a whiff of fake tan. What I can only describe as the most wholesome, hilarious and rewarding week ever 🧡” Ciara, cast member.

“My highlights: Nellie getting on the radio during the chaos of getting there, Sam invents the character of "Snoot" after he wakes up at the end of the play - and then the rest of us backstage, hoping he'd bring back Snoot for the following nights. The afterparty in the girls' flat with all of us doing the dance one last time, yelling "up up, down down, up up, down down!" Matt, cast member.

“Incredible experience with a phenomenal group of people. A real dream come true to perform at Fringe - it  was so rewarding to see all the cast and crew's hard work pay-off with a couple of sell-out nights. It says everything that I was gutted when it ended.” Sam P, cast member.

“My favourite moment of the week was arriving at our venue for the tech rehearsal and walking into the room that was overflowing with my excited, chattering cast and crew, all raring to go for the week ahead, and I thought “this is it, we made it!” Alice, director.