In Scotland, rising prices threaten Fringe theater and comedy pageant : NPR

Street performers entertain passersby on the Royal Mile as crowds of entertainers and festival-goers collect for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Edinburgh International Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Aug. 1, 2025. The Fringe, one of many world’s largest performing arts festivals, options over 3,800 reveals throughout 265 venues and attracts an viewers of roughly 3 million guests.

Ewan Bootman/Anadolu by way of Getty Images

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Ewan Bootman/Anadolu by way of Getty Images

EDINBURGH, Scotland — For many years, devotees repeated rumors in hushed reverence about ravenous artists sleeping in bathtubs, out of dedication to the Fringe — one of many world’s largest theater and comedy festivals.

Now they deride corporate sponsors and native residents for cashing in and renting out these legendary bathtubs.

Fringe dates back to 1947, when eight theater teams turned up on the Edinburgh International Festival uninvited. They staged their reveals on the perimeter – the edgy margins – of that extra rarefied pageant. Their vibe was various, bizarre, experimental — something goes.

It’s since change into the place eccentric theater youngsters discover kindred spirits — and typically, fame.

Robin Williams carried out within the early Seventies. In 2005, earlier than writing Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda busked at Fringe, calling it “the best summer of our lives.” It’s the place the Netflix stalker hit Baby Reindeer originated, the place Phoebe Waller-Bridge developed Fleabag, and the place the 90s percussion group STOMP received an early following.

Fringe has lengthy since eclipsed the unique pageant it was based alongside. It usually sells upwards of 2.5 million tickets a yr. But 80 years on, performers and spectators alike say rising prices threaten the Fringe’s free-for-all vibe.

“It’s put me off coming next year,” says Liz Holland, a repeat customer from Yorkshire, England, who solely managed to return this yr as a result of she locked in an off-the-books Airbnb rental three years in the past. It’s a 45-minute stroll from Fringe venues. “I used to see so many shows back-to-back. But tickets cost two or three pounds ($2.70 to $4) [per show] more than they used to. So I’m having to be more selective about what I go and see.”

Tickets are nonetheless a steal in comparison with Broadway or the West End; most value £10 or £15 British kilos ($13.50 to $20), however some value extra.

Unlike another festivals that invite huge title performers and may pay for his or her journey, the open-to-all nature of Fringe means artists themselves must foot the invoice.

For comedians and actors, “it costs so much to do the festival now, it’s a high-risk undertaking as a performer,” says Marjolein Robertson, a Scottish storyteller and comic who’s been coming to Fringe since 2011 and performing since 2016. “A lot of people will leave thousands of pounds poorer.”

Robertson lives in London and says she will be able to solely afford to carry out at Fringe as a result of she’s in a position to crash — for a month — on an Edinburgh good friend’s sofa.

One of the world’s largest occasions, however artists pay their very own method

Every August, Edinburgh’s streets fill with acrobats, mimes, and other people in all types of costumes. On a single day this month, NPR noticed two males in bridal robes, a giraffe and an entire household dressed as bananas.

This yr’s pageant ran Aug. 1-25. The final evening of performances is Monday.

Fringe coincides with the Edinburgh Book Festival and several other different occasions. Police say the Scottish capital’s inhabitants almost doubles. Fringe organizers say their occasion alone is exceeded in dimension solely by the Olympics or soccer’s World Cup.

All these individuals drive up demand. Taxis and accommodations jack their costs. Crowds are getting older, extra prosperous.

“I think it’s just about how badly you want to come!” says Zainab Johnson, a author, actor and comic who was raised in New York City and now lives in Los Angeles.

She’s had her personal Amazon Prime Video standup particular, referred to as Hijabs Off, and performed a recurring function on the sci-fi comedy present Upload. But that is her first Fringe.

“It’s made me feel like I was back in my open mic days, you know?” Johnson says. “Other big festivals around the world that I’ve done, they’ve flown me out, they’ve put us up in like really nice accommodations, even provide a meal per diem. This was drastically different. This, you’re footing the cost of everything.”

She says she needed to see what all of the hype is about. She additionally needs to be what she calls an “ambassador” for America, at a time when individuals overseas are actually interested by U.S. politics.

“You know what America’s like? It’s like that family member, they drunk, and they knockin’ s*** over,” Johnson jokes. “But you like, ‘No, my uncle, he’s a good uncle.'”

The opening line of her comedy present Toxically Optimistic is: “I’ve got a gun.” Throughout the one-hour present, Johnson explains why she appears like she wants it, as a Black Muslim girl in America — and the way she’s not giving up on her nation.

Performers say it is nonetheless value it

Robertson, the Scottish comic, grew up on the far-north Shetland Islands, a 12-hour boat trip from any comedy membership. But her father, who first attended Fringe in 1959, raised her on Fringe lore. She recounts one specific present her father informed her he noticed within the Seventies or 80s.

“The show was meant to start and nothing happened, and then this man started eating cream crackers incredibly messily and noisily in the front row. The man was like, ‘Well, if no one else is going to do anything, I’ll get up,’ and this man got up on stage! And dad said he’d never seen anything like it. He felt so awkward and cringe and embarrassment for this man,” Robertson recollects. “And then all of a sudden he realized, this is the bit! This is the joke.”

It was efficiency artwork. And the person chomping cream crackers was Rowan Atkinson, later often called Mr. Bean.

With tales like that, Robertson was hooked. She briefly labored as a city planner on her native island — the place there’s just one city — earlier than ditching that and devoting herself to comedy. Her Fringe present this yr, Lein, mixes Shetland folklore with jokes. It’s half three of a trilogy, carried out in consecutive years.

“There’s nothing better for you as a performer to do a show every day for a month, because it grows and changes, and you get better, and you develop your craft,” Robertson says.

But she says she worries Fringe — which was all the time inclusive, open to all — is turning into out of attain for artists who’re aren’t already well-known, or wealthy.

“The Fringe is now, in many ways, the beast!” Robertson says. “What’s that classic phrase? You either die the hero, or live long enough to become the villain.”

Maybe, she says, artists simply must create a brand new fringe of the Fringe.

NPR producer Fatima Al-Kassab contributed to this story. Jennifer Vanasco edited for broadcast and digital.