One Week at ThreeWeeks

We learn quickly. Aside from the festival favourites of Always Bring a Programme, An Open Mind and an Umbrella (ESPECIALLY if it doesn't look like rain), we learn the importance of timing. Deadlines being at noon on the following day, one doesn't want to write up reviews minutes after seeing the show for fear of missing the next one; neither should we write them at 2 minutes to noon, typing with one hand and nursing a cocktail of fruit juice, paracetamol and pro plus with the other.

We learn the special kind of fatigue which comes from watching shows for four hours a day, walking between them all with our programme, our open mind and our umbrella in tow, and trying to socialise afterwards. See above and the fruit juice-paracetamol-pro plus cocktail.

We learn the scale of the city, we learn to powerwalk off the beaten path and to cross junctions at a sharp angle. We learn how to avoid the flyerers which now plague the busy streets- either by singing loudly along with an iPod or scribbling frantically in a notepad. In any case, throw in the odd mutter aloud and you're there.

We learn that the price of a free ticket is time, which otherwise would be spent with visitors, friends and family, in clubs, in the kitchen cooking, in the bedroom decorating, on the meadows drinking.

But above all, we learn the enormity and beauty of the biggest arts festival on the planet, the Edinburgh Fringe. I have seen sketch comedy, stand-up comedy, two-man, one-man and high-school shows, film screenings and sculpture, sensory deprivation art and badly-made MDF magic sets. Some made me marvel at the performers' talent, some cringe and wonder why they had bothered switching the stage lights on at all.

Week one, from the 3^rd to the 10^th August, has given me a total of 27 shows. Reviews of mine which have been published are at ThreeWeeks.co.uk

Two weeks to go.

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Jenni Ajderian

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