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ThreeWeeks Editorial

Lynn Ruth Miller welcomes you to Week 3

Right about now, we all realise that we are not going to be able to see all the shows we would like to see - or meet the people we absolutely must talk to - because there are no more hours left in our packed, impossibly scheduled days and nights. It is time to ask ourselves why we push ourselves to absorb as much theatre, comedy and music as we possibly can. Why is it so important to see so much that we skip meals, abandon our work-out regimes and deprive ourselves of so much sleep?

Everyone has their own reason for the frenetic Fringe pace they keep, but for me this exciting month, jam packed with young emerging companies doing innovative things, refurbishes my perspective on the world. I firmly believe that comedy is the only true commentary on the political and social milieu we live in and that theatre - especially young, experimental theatre - defines the modern human condition. New and untried performance art dares to open windows to the real world too often keeps locked and concealed.

The arts reveal uncomfortable truths, very like the little boy who realised the emperor was naked. Actors, singers, dancers… all of them… are showing us their truth. The mainstream media paint a politically correct view of reality. Theatre and comedy dare to dissect what happens when we hold a moral ideal up to the light and see its flaws. Establishment theatre only reveals the expected. It is the new, untried and innocent who have the courage to tell us what we fear.

The shows and performers featuring in this issue of ThreeWeeks cover a broad spectrum of ideas, outrages and comforts.

I was particularly thrilled to be able to put some questions to Mikelangelo. His music is even more reflective of the way we think and feel. His dark tunes show us the underside of “nice”. His lyrics are deliciously evil and the Black Sea Gentlemen magnificently scandalous. I was really glad to have the chance to put some questions to him.

Elsewhere, The Grandees make us laugh at ourselves, Kristen Schaal and Kurt Braunohler lampoon American Vaudeville, Tom Basden sings great comedy songs, Bob Golding gives us an insight into a British institution, Debbie Syrop combines science with physical theatre, and Sammy J – with or without a cast of puppets - makes us smile.

We have also included some overtly political shows like ‘The State We’re In’, ‘Detaining Mr K’ and ‘The Other Side’, and asked the people behind them about the role the arts have to play in political opinion.

I’ll admit it. I didn’t get to see all the shows I wanted to see this year, any more than you did. But hopefully we all got to more shows than we expected to, and in doing so covered the wide spectrum of ideas everyone needs to think about.

It’s been a great Fringe this year, sunny enough so that we didn’t have to swim from one show to another, and with plenty of variety for every taste. And as for those shows you missed: no worries… there’s always next year.

lynnruth@threeweeks.co.uk

published: Aug-2009

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