Roundtable Shambles
As both of our shows were of a political nature we were invited to attend one of the ‘Roundtable Rumbles’ at the Calton Hotel. The discussion was about political theatre. Or so we thought. Five of us attended and after we witnessed much hobnobbing going on in the bar we went into the theatre. The critics sat around a table complete with booze and cigarettes on the stage area. The rest of us lesser mortals sat in the audience. The discussion began with some of the plays that the panel were involved in. This was incredibly dreary, especially as the majority of the exhausted performers in the room had had no time to go and see any shows. This then went into thoughts on ‘what is political theatre?’ to which most people seemed to be saying bland statements such as ‘you can’t have politics in theatre’. When opened up to the audience, most people seemed more interested in plugging their shows to everyone else. At which point our stage manager Ben, lit up a fag and was immediately told that he couldn’t smoke in the theatre. We found this rather strange considering we could hardly see the panel for smoke. He did a critic himself and flamboyantly left the auditorium!
The discussion then took a turn for the worse with the panel openly sneering at the efforts of the People’s festival to provide affordable theatre amongst communities. We were enraged by the whole proceedings. Not only had there been no proper discussion on the issues, but it seemed that the panel’s conclusions were (as they obviously had been to begin with) that politics should be entirely separated from theatre and that if people wanted theatre then why ‘couldn’t they get on a bus.’
Events like these are a sad reflection on what the Edinburgh Fringe seems to have become.
