Associate Producer Kat Portman Escapes Edinburgh For A Few Days

So, I am on a train heading back to London for three days, listening to some popular music on my iPod, looking out to sea as we pass Berwick and enjoying not having to speak to anyone.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to talk and in my capacity as producer on five of Festival Highlights’ shows, I have spent a lot of the last couple of weeks talking, with some of it even making sense.

The fringe experience is hectic, which makes it what it is, with all the highs and lows it brings. From the early excitement of our Fringe First award for Somewhere Beneath It All a Small Fire Burns Still, performed by Phil Nichol, to the delight of the Edinburgh weather and the leaking flats (my bedroom), soggy street team, and reluctant audiences that it brings with it.

For a month you live and breathe the festival so that anything outside of it feels a million miles away and the most important thing is making the best show possible, getting the best reviews and the best audience.

Each day starts the same with a team meeting at 10am to work out priorities for the day and then the rest of the day can be anything depending on what problems or issues come up throughout the day.

With two weeks of festival to go I am just starting to see some shows that aren’t Festival Highlights’, some are as potential touring shows, some that friends are involved in and then there are the completely random shows. You have to take a risk on a few shows that you know nothing about but like the look of the flyer or the title, the worse case scenario is you have wasted 60 minutes of your life but you may just find a gem as well.

Today though I am wrestling with East Coast’s WiFi on my way back to London. A couple of days in the office to catch up on our projects outside of Edinburgh and more excitingly to see my daughter. See you in a couple of days Edinburgh!