A Festival of Inclusion
Singaround with Sh!t Theatre
I'm writing from Edinburgh, Scotland, where I will spend a week before meeting my sisters in Inverness for a hiking vacation on the islands of Skye. I came to Edinburgh because I have long been curious about the Fringe Festival. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival began in 1947 as an alternative to the Edinburgh International Festival. The International Festival, an invitation-only event, was created to celebrate European culture and help heal the U.K. after World War II. A group of eight theater companies excluded from the event performed their shows on the fringes of the International Festival.
These shows were successful, and the following year, more performers joined. This alternative scene became known as the Fringe, and in 1958, the Fringe Society was formed to help facilitate the festival. To this day, the Fringe Society never vets the festival's programming, which includes theatre, comedy, dance, cabaret, music, spoken word, and children's shows.
The Fringe is now the largest annual festival of inclusion. Held for three weeks every August, it maintains its grassroots spirit; anyone can participate and express themselves creatively. The hour-long shows across the city are affordable, with some events using a "pay what you can" model. They take place everywhere on hundreds of stages. Venues include well-known theatres, concert halls, and spaces like bars, buses, parks, and shipping containers. In 2023, the Fringe had over 3,000 performances.
Arriving on the pentultimate day of the fringe, I wandered the streets and a man outside a club invited passerbys to attend a free comedy show starting in a few minutes. I and others were led into a building up many flights to the attic of an old building. The show was hit and miss, but the man in front of me guffawed with abandon, so much so that I supported the performer by responding to my neighbor's laugh.
I also bought a last minute ticket to a show by an Irish woman stand-up comedian held in a shipping container. It was well-attended and she was quite funny, even though the material was a bit hackneyed and "woe is me," centering the travails of being a single woman.
I booked one show well in advance from a "best of fringe" list in Time Out Magazine entitled "Or What's Left Of Us" on its final night. It was performed at the Summerhall, an extensive events and cultural space in the city's heart that curates its Fringe offerings. I couldn't resist a singaround by award-winning artists, Sh!t Theatre, composed of the duo Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole.
A singaround is an informal gathering where people sing together. It is often part of folk clubs, offering a communal environment where people share songs and learn from each other. People might sing songs they know, sing back up and create beats for others to sing, or request songs from the group. People take turns, and often included are traditional folk songs known to the entire group.
Both performers of "Or What's Left Of Us" had significant losses, which inspired the creation of this production. At the start of the performance, they tell the audience they are getting through a rough patch. They pass a bowl around and ask audience members to contribute some of their alcoholic beverages to the collective drink (at the end of the show, they invite audience members to take a sip!) Biscuit and Mothersole share stories about how they joined the community of a Yorkshire folk club and took mushrooms before attending a music festival.
The women introduce the most songs as "a song about death," but the mood is far from somber. Their humor and wit are a source of nonstop pleasure and laughter for the audience. They declare that “it is possible to be desperately sad and have fun at the same time.” The truth of this motto is borne out throughout the show.
In real life and in the show, these performers discovered traditional folk music to be a balm to their grief, helping them move through it. They tell us that a singaround isn't about watching a rehearsed performance. It's about leading the room in a communal, informal song.
"Folk can be twee. Yes, it is a bit embarrassing. But it's also unnerving, terrifying, comforting, and joyful. Sh!t Theatre strives for the same. Twee and terrifying." (Note: Twee means dainty, delicate, or quaint.)
Following the hour-long performance, the performers invited us to join in a real singaround in the back room of the Royal Dick Bar, located in the same complex as the venue. We crowded inside the room, and those who could not fit sang from outside the doorway. The first song (included as audio below) is a joyful ballad about things that "wouldn't do us any harm," followed by a repeated chorus. The audience quickly caught on.
After Biscuit and Mothersole led the first few songs, they welcomed everyone to sing. They looked up the songs on their phones and accompanied audience members who took the lead. A young woman stood up and dedicated a love song to her friend who died the month before. An Australian woman sang a favorite children's song. A Portuguese historian chose a ballad sung in the 1970s revolution to inspire the fight against an authoritarian regime. An Irishman led the group with Danny Boy, a ballad sung at his father's wake.
The Fringe Festival was the perfect introduction to my first visit to Edinburgh. Still a little high from jetlag, I felt a warm connection to this pop-up community of strangers who allowed themselves to be vulnerable and raise their voices in song. It was a vibrant reminder of how music connects us to important moments in our lives and to each other.
As the women in Sh!t Theatre remind us, let's not look for beautiful voices. Instead, let's be grateful for those who bring the song to us.
I'll take a week off Substack to hike Scotland's wild places and one of the most diverse regions in Europe, the Outer Hebrides and Skye. The 3 Cs of Belonging will return on September 18th.