The Edinburgh Fringe Festival. These words alone make a theatre fan’s heart beat a little faster. Over 3,000 troupes of actors, directors and techies migrate to the heart of Scotland for a month, and the city turns into a thespian’s paradise. The whole city plays host to these performances, from back rooms in dingy bars, to cars driving around the city with a tiny audience sitting the back (an innovative idea by another Cambridge show!).

I was lucky enough to attend this year as Assistant Producer for Alice. We’d already had a fantastic sell out run in Cambridge during Lent Term, during which I was Deputy Stage Manager, so I was incredibly excited to help take this show to a larger stage and much larger audience. Alice was a contemporary circus interpretation of the classic Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass stories. It was completely devised by Joanna Vymeris, the director, with bits of wacky dialogue lifted straight from Lewis Carroll’s books. The result was a truly magical hour of dancing, aerial circus, gymnastics, juggling and acting, and I can assure you I had no problem watching it over and over again 13 days in a row!

I arrived in Edinburgh late one evening when the festival was already in full swing - our run was in the last two weeks of the four week festival. When I walked out of Waverley train station it felt like I was in a different world, despite having visited Edinburgh a number of times before. The atmosphere was like nothing else. Pulling up at the student accommodation we had booked for our ambitious team of 30, I had no idea whether they had received my close to £10,000 payment, which I had sent off a few nights before with shaking hands, praying it wasn’t an elaborate scam. Fortunately we did have somewhere to stay for the next two weeks, and my exorbitant payment wasn’t lost in cyber-land. Unfortunately, our technical rehearsal on the stage the next day was cut short by some double scheduling and miscommunication, and we were faced with the prospect of performing our first show in front of a paying audience without having been able to have a full tech rehearsal, let alone a dress rehearsal!

Thanks to our Producer Jamie Rycroft’s fantastic ability, and a few last minute rehearsals scheduled by Joanna, the first and following twelve performances progressed smoothly with great feedback from the audience and positive online reviews. We had over 1,800 people watch Alice, and we contributed 13 to the total of 50,549 performances at the festival.

Our afternoons were spent flyering on the Royal Mile, where it wasn’t too difficult to generate attention once our jugglers and gymnasts started working their magic, as well as watching as many other shows as possible. I watched about 30 shows while I was there, and was surprised by the amount and variety of what was on offer. I saw magic shows, stand-up, musical and sketch comedy, plays, musicals and new devised writing. The amount of talent on display was incredible, and I felt extremely lucky and privileged to be able to spend two weeks of my summer fully concentrated on helping to create, and watch, art.

So, would I go back next year? Absolutely. However, it is a very expensive endeavour. This year, I was fortunate enough to be involved in a show that I genuinely loved and was passionate about. If I’m not so lucky next year I might go up for just a couple days and pack in as many shows as I can (I know someone who saw 12 shows in 36 hours!). The Fringe turns 70 next year, and I hope it continues long after that as the magical theatre playground that I encountered this year.