Standups used to think they’d never make it if they didn’t play the festival. But it’s leaving many saddled with debt, stuck in squalid flats and even suicidal. Refuseniks tell us why they’re bowing out
Rose Johnson has spent eight Augusts at the Edinburgh festival fringe, her first in 2008. As one-third of the sketch group Birthday Girls, the comedian and writer often shared accommodation with her fellow performers. When she could finally afford a room of her own, the move didn’t feel like progress. “It didn’t have a window or a door,” recalls Johnson. “The landlord had just put a bed in a cupboard.”
Her fellow comic Jack Evans tells a similar tale. “The first fringe I did,” he says, “I slept on the linoleum of a kitchen floor. Never again.” Others slept on sofas or shared beds. One comedian even survived the month living in a tent. Why do performers put up with such laughably bad conditions? The answer is that they couldn’t afford to do the fringe otherwise. And, as standups, the pressure to play the fringe is huge.
