When the World Comes to Edinburgh: The Magic of the Fringe

The people behind Geotoys make our business what it is: learning full of fun and adventure. We're going behind the scenes with our Marketing Manager, Jana Doughty, who spent much of her early career in Edinburgh, Scotland. Read on to find out everything you need to know about the legendary Edinburgh Fringe Festival and how geography is more than landscapes and borders.

Every August, something a little magical happens in Edinburgh, Scotland: the whole city becomes a stage. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, now the largest arts festival in the world, fills Scotland’s capital with theater, comedy, music, dance, street performers, and artists from around the globe. I know the experience well. I lived in Scotland for nearly six years, earned my MBA from the University of Edinburgh, performed at the Fringe three times, and directed a show there once. The Fringe is exhilarating and overwhelming, crowded and chaotic—and absolutely unforgettable. For a few weeks each summer, it feels as though the world has arrived in one beautiful, ancient city to see what might happen.

If you're interested in where Scotland is, you should check out GeoPuzzle Europe.

Each year every Fringe act is listed in a thickly printed program with the cover designed by a local Scottish advertising agency.

My first Fringe experience came when I was fresh out of college and eager to make my mark. I brought an all-female production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest that I had created with fellow actors while studying at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. Later, I returned to perform in Black Comedy and a more traditional one-act show called Collateral Damage. Like many Fringe productions, our shows were short—usually around an hour—which meant audiences could wander from performance to performance all day and well into the night. We performed every evening, saw as much theater as we possibly could - to the point where I was sitting in a show and physically holding my eyes open - I was so delightfully tired, and learned how to pitch our show to strangers when hundreds of other performers were trying to fill their seats, too. Along the way, we met artists from around the world, including Be-dom, an energetic drumming group from Portugal who became our friends and whose performances seemed to electrify the heart of the festival.

Jana Doughty performing in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival's Black Comedy in 2016.

That sense that anything might happen is one of my favorite things about the Fringe. Years later, while I was working at an advertising agency in Edinburgh, the actor, Allan Havey, from Mad Men came through the festival to perform stand-up comedy. He used our agency to film a series of videos imagining what would happen if Mad Men characters tried behaving the same way in a 21st-century advertising agency. I got to appear in a couple of the videos (see one below) and work briefly with him—an unexpected treat that felt perfectly Fringe. For most of the year, I was simply going to work at an ad agency. Then August arrived, and suddenly a television actor was filming comedy sketches in our office. That’s Edinburgh during the Fringe: the extraordinary has a funny way of wandering right into ordinary life.

Jana works briefly with actor Allan Havey in YouTube shorts.

And the festival itself has a wonderfully unconventional beginning. In 1947, eight theater companies arrived in Edinburgh without invitations to the newly created Edinburgh International Festival—and decided to perform anyway. Those performers on the “fringe” of the official festival started something that has grown for more than 70 years, and its open spirit remains: anyone can take part. You can see famous performers alongside artists trying something brand new, experimental shows alongside Shakespeare, and musicians, comedians, actors, dancers, and storytellers from all over the world. You can feel the city changing as August approaches, too. When I lived there, traffic would build until my bus ride through the center of Edinburgh sometimes took twice as long. Friends and family wanted to visit. Streets, pubs, theaters, university buildings, churches, and unexpected little spaces became performance venues. Everywhere you turned, there was something—or someone—new to discover.

The Royal Mile teems with performers tempting visitors to see their Fringe shows.

Credit: Olney Theater Company

That’s also what makes the Fringe such a wonderful way to explore geography with kids. Geography isn't only about memorizing capitals or finding countries on a map. It’s about discovering the people, traditions, stories, art, and ideas that make each place different—and the fascinating things that happen when those worlds meet. This August, find Edinburgh on a map with your kids or grandkids. Then follow the journey outward: find England, where my first Fringe show began at Shakespeare’s Globe; Portugal, where our drumming friends came from; or the home countries of this year’s Fringe performers - you can look them up on the Fringe website. Suddenly those shapes on a map aren't just countries. They're filled with music, accents, stories, friendships, and people with something new to share. That’s when geography starts to feel a little bit magical, too.