The IdeasTap Team's Blog

Laura, Nell, Amanda and I have been pounding the rain-soaked pavements of Edinburgh seeing shows, meeting IdeasTap members and luring new members by any means possible. Namely, Nell Frizzell (pictured above) – our very serious theatre writer – has been making like C-3PO on the Royal Mile in a gold lame suit and promising bacon sandwiches to all and sundry.

I’ve only been here since Monday, but it feels more like a year – we’ve even been through a few seasons, from the glorious sunshine of Monday and Tuesday to full-on monsoon. And we’ve seen countless shows, which have been good, bad and ugly.

The good: IdeasTap member Sabrina Mahfouz’s witty, wonderful and poetic one-woman show Dry Ice – a monologue about a stripper that engages from beginning to end. Ideas Fund Edinburgh winners RashDash, with their rock-tastic show about sex, Scary Gorgeous. Josie Long railing against Tory cuts. The bad and the ugly? Let’s just say that Nell and I were subjected to a naked, postmodern one-man show. At midnight. At least cocktail sausages were on the house.

Better yet, today our friends at Poetry Takeaway (Innovators winners) wrote us a special poem for our members. Here it is: An Ode to Our Members, by poet Tim Clare:

Nobody told you to write a fish musical

Nobody said the Fringe needs one more show

But when you are mad, you don’t want to take orders

You’re filled with maniacal get-up-and-go

Out onto streets as the rain falls and hammers

Handing out flyers like recondite tracts

Fighting the good fight, the hard fight, the weird fight

Fighting and winning; a bunch of class acts.

Luiza