Fringe Fever

Yesterday I arrived home from a mad but wonderful weekend away performing at the Brighton Fringe festival, tired out and achy but content. The weekend has sped by so quickly and I have almost no idea what day it is any more-it feels like I've had four Saturdays in a row. There's this weird atmosphere I've noticed around Fringe Performances-like you're living in a kind of bubble universe separated out from the real one. Everything else temporarily stops existing and your world shrinks down to your cast and crew, the show and the in between time (often spent flyering, eating or getting drunk!). Emotions are exaggerated and heightened and feelings get stretched and flipped about on their head until you're not quite sure what's real or what's not. The same faces become your life-you spend 24 hours a day with them-eating, sleeping, performing and of course sharing a bathroom. You learn each other's habits almost unconsciously-who snores, who isn't a morning person, who spends ages in the shower, who sleeps almost naked, who is a fussy eater, who will hog the mirror in the bathroom. Nerves are pulled taut and strummed like a harp, thoughts don't make sense and you start to feel differently about people just because you've spent all that time together.

And then, like someone taking a needle to a bubble, it all stops.

I always feel a bit melancholy on the last evening of a Fringe show, because I know that that is it, it will never feel like that again. Even if you gathered the same people together it wouldn't be the same without that fevered intensity, without the only thing that matters being The Show, without the stresses and awesomeness of living and performing together as one highly functioning machine made of many parts working side by side. It's always such a come down to reality again, to exams, to deadlines, job applications and work. And while it's always blissful to sleep in your own bed again, you still wake up half expecting to be surrounded by people in various states of undress and sleep deprivation. I always find I need a bit of a readjustment period, to get used to how normal life feels again, rather than the slightly off-kilter world of the Fringe. I find I need to realign my thoughts too, to get used to thinking in straight lines again rather than the topsy turvy helter skelter of trying to have three different conversations at once whilst drowning out several more. It's almost too quiet to be on your own, yet the solitude is lovely after being around people constantly for four days.

The come down also gives you time to think about the madness of it all more objectively, now that the Fringe Fever no longer holds you tight in its grip-time to work out which emotions and feelings were real and which would have never happened in a 'normal' situation. You can forgive people some of the things they did, decide which you want to hold on to and which you just want to forget. You can feel shame at some of things that you did or said, pride or happiness at others. You sink slowly back into your normal life and it's almost like it never happened, like the madness never wrapped you and drove your every move, your every thought.

It's always there though, at the back of your mind, waiting to be pulled on like a comfy sweatshirt the opening night of the next show that takes over your life. And I, for one, welcome it back.

The cast and crew of Titus at the Brighton Fringe, May 2013

Thanks for an awesome weekend folks. Back to reality, for now...

-Jenni-

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