Edinburgh Guest Blog: Charlie falls ill & the glory of the cyclofun

I must confess I am suffering from a chest infection. I sat down on my bed to write this blog in between flyering and our show tonight and promptly fell asleep. My friend, colleague and room-mate Maria took over this blog because she’s wonderful. This is what she had to say:

As I write, Charlie has just laid down on the bed next to me. A completely lethal move. We’ve all been trying to master the power nap between flyering and showtime with no success stories yet. I feel like these beds have some sort of extra-gravitational pull installed.

Anyway, before I actually hit the pillow, I’ll try and write something of interest. There are 4 Fourth Monkey houses at the fringe plus a production team house, and Charlie and I are in the biggest of them, with 16 of us under one roof. There’s already been one all-out house war stemming from an incident in which all of the cups in the house were found in one of the girls’ rooms.

The boys, perhaps surprisingly, have proved far more domesticated creatures so far. Our resident bromance — Jack and Sean — cook their lunch and dinner together, the wonderful Max cleaned the entire kitchen and mopped the floor, and all 3 of them left a note (I know, impersonal) telling the girls to wash their cups. The war was quite bloody but only lasted about a day and mostly involved cups being moved around and half-arsed attempts to hit people with broomsticks.

Amongst the conflict however, there has also been much unity in living together. The boys all ganged up on Max, in one the most “ensemble” moments in Fourth Monkey history, and charged in on him in the bath causing much mirth in the house for days.

Outside the house, we are also spending much of the day together, hitting the mile at 11 most mornings. We’ve been incredibly lucky that 4:48 Psychosis has been selling out every day and needs little flyering but I’m sure that the other shows, who don’t have Sarah Kane’s legacy behind them, are also getting brilliant audiences because of the hours we’re putting in.

It’s always quite daunting to approach someone you don’t know with a leaflet of 6 shows, try and give them a synopsis of all of them and convince them that you genuinely think they’re all worth seeing. We’ve employed a few tricks. We even dressed Charlie in a monkey suit and gave out free bananas with our twitter name on them. We also have the CYCLOFUNS.

The Cyclofuns (if that is there real name..) are like tricycles but with no handlebars. They can be ridden by two people at a time with one person standing at the back, making them ideal for bombarding people with flyers and escaping quickly.

Charlie and I rode the Cyclofun down the mile and past our space today ending in a spectacular crash on the cobbles that left us in fits of laughter while several Edinburgh regulars looked on from a pub opposite, unimpressed and unconcerned.

That’s the fringe for you in a nutshell. I must now concentrate on waking up poorly Charlie as we have a show to do.