Glaswegians taking on the Edinburgh Fringe

National World - LocalTV

As the Edinburgh Fringe approaches, we spoke to playwrights, comics and performers from Glasgow on what they’re taking to this year’s festival.

Transcript

00:00 Yeah, my name is...

00:01 Sorry, wait, do you want me to look at you or look at the camera?

00:03 Yeah, look at me.

00:04 Yeah, okay, good.

00:04 Hello, my name's James Gardner and I'm a stand-up comedian.

00:07 Yeah, my name's Tatu Dave.

00:09 I'm a tattoo artist and comedian from Glasgow.

00:11 My name is Morgan Drew Glasgow.

00:13 I'm a theatre maker, originally from Edinburgh,

00:16 but I am setting up a company in the south side of Glasgow.

00:18 My show's called Born in a Wheelchair

00:21 and it's a show that's all about my life

00:23 with my older brother Alexander, who's got cerebral palsy.

00:26 So the show's kind of, you know, it's light-hearted,

00:29 there's a lot of good fun in there

00:30 and it kind of pokes at the sort of general ignorance of disability,

00:34 as well as my own.

00:34 So Holson Prison Blues, as the name suggests,

00:38 it's kind of prison-related.

00:39 So we've been doing stand-up comedy shows in prisons across Scotland

00:43 for the past nine or ten months now.

00:45 So we're excited that we can now perform this show for the public

00:48 and at the world's largest arts festival as well, the Edinburgh Fringe.

00:52 So my show's called Sealed.

00:53 So it basically follows the story of a young mother

00:57 living in a seaside fisherman's village

01:00 and she's on the verge of a breakdown, she's sick of life

01:05 and it kind of follows themes of post-natal depression

01:10 and female experience, motherhood

01:14 and the kind of double standards in society upon men and women.

01:18 So Alexander's a huge part of my personality

01:20 because he can't talk, my brother.

01:22 He's non-verbal, but what he can do is he communicates with his eyes.

01:26 So he looks up for yes and he looks down for no.

01:28 And trying to figure out what he's telling you is like a massive game of charades.

01:32 So from an early age, I was always having to do the talking for Alexander.

01:36 My sister does the same, so we all kind of put on Alexander's persona,

01:41 we kind of put voices on to entertain him.

01:43 We also put his voice on to kind of speak back to us.

01:45 So it's kind of almost like a collection of funny stories,

01:49 absurd incidents and just kind of things that a lot of people

01:52 maybe wouldn't naturally know.

01:54 Because I think in a lot of ways disability still is a kind of taboo subject

01:58 for a lot of people and unless you've got any sort of personal experience,

02:01 you're kind of like, "Whoa, don't know what that's about."

02:03 So for me, this show has been probably over 30 years in the making.

02:08 So the first year of the Edinburgh Fringe last year,

02:11 it was the end of the day, myself, Paddy Linton and Jack Drainer

02:15 were driving back, comparing our war stories of the day

02:18 and we started talking about a comedian we know

02:21 who had half her audience walk out through her set.

02:25 Jack suggested we should be able to lock the door on people

02:28 before we're finished and I said, "That's your ultimate captive audience."

02:33 At that moment, Johnny Cash's famous prison song,

02:36 "San Quentin" started playing and Paddy says,

02:38 "That's your ultimate captive audience."

02:41 It's a dark comedy, so there is some observational humour in there as well.

02:45 But it's just an explanation of this sort of women's life

02:48 interspersed with Selkie myth, which is...

02:53 It's a Scottish and actually Nordic as well,

02:55 myth about seal people who come to land

02:57 and they shed their seal skins to live on the land.

03:01 So it's those two things kind of interspersed together.

03:04 So we had a giggle about what a fun thing it would be

03:08 to do one stand-up comedy gig in a prison.

03:11 So throughout the Fringe last year, I couldn't get the idea out of my head.

03:15 So September, I reached out to people I knew at the ward

03:18 within the Scottish Prison Service,

03:20 set up a bunch of meetings with several prisons

03:23 and they were mostly keen to get us in, which was great.

03:26 So we did our first Holson Prison Blues gig in Lomas Prison.

03:30 That was a Thursday afternoon and the Friday morning

03:33 we had an additional five prisons contact us

03:36 saying they'd heard about the good work we're doing

03:38 and can we book in with them as well?

03:40 A disabled person, my brother for example, he's a real person.

03:43 He has real emotions, he gives love, he receives love, you know?

03:46 So he laughs every day and we laugh every day,

03:50 no matter how trying the circumstances are, of course.

03:52 There's a lot of hardship, there's a lot of struggle,

03:54 but I would say that disabled people, if I can speak for it,

03:58 are just normal people, so why would they not want to laugh?

04:02 So the punchline to a lot of the jokes ultimately are me.

04:07 And a lot of it looks at my own ignorance towards disability

04:10 despite having a disabled brother,

04:12 because I know that much on a subject

04:16 which is just huge.

04:18 So a lot of the prisons are saying the same thing.

04:20 When we go in, there's a nice atmosphere created

04:23 and it carries on for two or three days,

04:25 not just with the people that we perform to,

04:28 but the rest of the prison as well, because word gets out

04:30 and then other prisoners want to know when are we coming back,

04:33 how they can come and see us.

04:35 And it generally just gives an upbeat atmosphere to the prison.

04:39 So we're told.

04:40 It runs from the 14th to the 19th of August at 2pm every day

04:44 at Greenside and Furnemary Street.

04:46 Although the 19th has sold out, which is really exciting.

04:49 So if anybody wants to come and see Wholesome Prison Blues,

04:51 and of course you do,

04:52 we are at the Old Foundry Room

04:54 at the Grassmarket Community Project

04:56 on the Grassmarket in Edinburgh.

04:58 Six o'clock every night apart from Wednesday

05:00 during the Edinburgh Fringe.

05:02 If you'd like to come and see my show, Born in a Wheelchair,

05:04 then come through to Edinburgh.

05:06 I'm on every single day, 1.30pm at The Caves,

05:10 and I'd love to see you there.

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