Sophie’s choice
Good luck to Sophie Sandor who is performing a one person play at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, starting today.
Sophie is a writer, director, and performer, but our paths first crossed a decade ago when she worked at the Institute of Economic Affairs. She then took the brave decision to move into writing and filmmaking. According to the Girls in Film website:
Her films are inspired by her childhood in Scotland, socio-economic issues, Thedore Dalrymple's book Life at the Bottom: the Worldview That Makes the Underclass, and British social realism features she started watching at the age of 15, in particular Peter Mullan's Neds.
Giro Baby marks her Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut. It’s described as a comedy drama that contains ‘distressing or potentially triggering themes’ which you can read more about here, but on a more prosaic level I was struck by the cost of putting on even a small production like this.
Venue is the intimate Jade Studio at the Royal Society of Edinburgh in George Street and, according to Sophie, the 65-seat venue costs around £9,000, and that’s before you factor in accommodation, PR/marketing and other costs, so credit to her for having raised the money via crowdfunding and a grant from Emergent Ventures, a ‘low-overhead fellowship and grant program’ based in the US.
The venue is in an area I know well because my wife and I spent 18 very happy months living in a small flat in Thistle Street, which runs parallel to George Street, shortly after we got married and moved to Edinburgh from London in December 1992.
Funnily enough, during the six years we lived in Edinburgh I don’t remember the Festival or the Fringe playing a huge part in our lives. In fact, even though the Fringe is the largest performing arts festival in the world, I once described it as no more than‘background noise’ and sometimes a ‘bit of a nuisance’ because of the volume of visitors.
Yes, we went to one or two shows each year but I suspect you have to be a visitor, performer, or one of the Festival team to enjoy a proper immersive experience. In 1977, for example, when I was a student, I spent a week in Edinburgh with a friend and we must have seen four or five shows a day so I do know what it’s like to fully embrace it.
The last time I spent a week at the Festival was in 2015. We were lucky enough to rent a lovely flat in a quiet square in the city centre, which meant we were within walking distance of every production for which we had tickets. And, yes, I did enjoy it but not enough to do it again.
Anyway, Giro Baby is on from 7-29 August and tickets are available here.
