Puppets, booze and swine flu: Irish fringe activities in Edinburgh

The cafe where I have arranged to meet two Collapsing Horses, one Pondling, a man named Bush and their long-suffering producer, is closed.

There is a corrugated covering over the window; in fact, it looks as though it has never been opened. We reconvene in a flat over the road that functions as the Collapsing Horse rehearsal space: the walls are black, furniture is non-existent and toddler-sized puppets crouch on every surface. Welcome to the surreal side of the theatre.

Collapsing Horse is a Dublin-based theatre collective consisting of Eoghan Quinn, Aaron Heffernan and Jack Gleeson, along with myriad collaborators. This month they join the annual Irish invasion of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and not for the first time. They are bringing surreal ursine adventure comedy Bears in Space and mythical fantasy Human Child to the Scottish cultural capital.

Another Irish theatrical export making the trip is Gúna Nua's Pondling, written and performed by Genevieve Hulme-Beaman, winner of best female performer at last year's Dublin Fringe.

Dead Centre's Lippy, which won this year's Irish Times Irish Theatre Award for best production, is represented by artistic director Bush Moukarzel, and will be heading to Edinburgh's Traverse theatre. The voice of reason is provided, not infrequently, by their communal producer, Matthew Smyth.

Dublin versus Edinburgh

How does the atmosphere of Edinburgh compare with the Dublin Fringe?

Smyth is quick to point out the disparities. “You can’t really compare them; they do different things and the audience come looking for different things. Dublin is more about carefully chosen curated work, whereas Edinburgh sets the city alight. They make a third of their annual revenue in that month: it’s like Mardi Gras for the arts.”

“Dublin isn’t really a fringe festival,” says Moukarzel. “That’s a misnomer. I’d describe it more as an alternative performance arts festival.”

Producer Jen Coppinger agrees. She will be travelling with Riverrun, Olwen Fouéré's lauded ode to Finnegans Wake, which is showing at the Traverse. "Edinburgh Fringe is incomparable because of its vastness," she says. "Although you can see links between the Dublin Theatre Festival, and Edinburgh's Traverse and Summerhall. They curate work which often has had success elsewhere."

So what can first-time performers do to survive the fringe season? “Stay focused on your work,” says Fouéré. “Grab as much solitude as possible.”

Back in the puppet lair, Smyth opens with a practical suggestion: “Don’t drink in the first week. It’s advice we were given, which we obviously didn’t take. And then we got swine flu in the second week.”

Smyth also warns against reading the more carnivorous reviews that circulate at Edinburgh. “If you must read them, make sure you enjoy the positive ones rather than concentrating on the negative. It’s easy to become obsessed, and think that’s what it’s all about. The most important thing is to know your own show and be happy with it.”

Jack Gleeson gleefully undercuts all the earnest wisdom: “Just dive right in and don’t take a breath until the 25th. Put that in an ironic font. You have an ironic font, right?”

The group is full of amusing anecdotes from Edinburgh, all hilarious, mostly unprintable.

"We're trying to think of something that's not too . . . loutish," says Quinn. "This probably isn't for public consumption," Gleeson warns, "but I'm going to tell you anyway." What follows is a hazy recollection of an evening spent drinking, being at a show and vomiting on the Guardian journalist he was sitting next to. Smyth buries his face in his hands.

‘Creepy little girl’

One-person shows and self-penned works are common on the fringe circuit. Genevieve Hulme-Beaman will be bringing Madeline, the "creepy little girl" in Pondling, to Scotland, and Moukarzel, Fouéré and Quinn will also perform in work they have written themselves. Does this make them more, or less, self-critical as actors?

Hulme-Beaman says that performing in a one-woman show is "terrifying from beginning to end", but she also thinks "Pondling is great, because it can come out differently in performance to how I imagined it originally, and I don't feel like I'm messing with someone else's play."

Fouéré offers a similar response. “Performing someone else’s writing makes me much more self-critical as an actor because of my sense of responsibility towards the writer. Performing my own writing, or adaptation, releases me from that and allows me to go further into the unknown.”

Moukarzel gives a typically analytical answer; it comes as no surprise that he has a master’s in psychoanalysis. “I feel freer doing my own work. If you’re interpreting someone else’s work, you’re always worried about disappointing dad. This anxiety about paternal approval is gone when you give birth to yourself, by performing your own thing. You are just accountable to yourself, which is easier to live with.”

Human Child and Bears in Space are at the Underbelly, Edinburgh (August 2-24). Lippy (August 5-24) and Riverrun (August 2-24) are at the Traverse. Edinburgh Festival Fringe runs August 1-25, edfringe.com