Borkowski Weekly Media Trends - Edinburgh Festival Special 08-08-22

A shoutout to 12 Edinburgh Festival 'Mavericks' from the past decade...

With under two weeks until Mark Borkowski returns to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with his celebration of Mavericks, stunts and the power of spontaneity and serendipity FALSE TEETH IN A PORK PIE: HOW TO UNLEASH YOUR INNER CRAZY we round up a list of some of the biggest Mavericks to grace Edinburgh’s festivals in the last decade. 

We have disqualified any artist or show that Borkowski worked on which rules out the likes of Shawn Hitchins’ ‘Ginger Pride’ movement, the 2018 Untapped Award cohort, Jordan Brookes’ high-concept hijinks and Spiegelworld’s outrageous attempt to turn the whole of Edinburgh into Vegas for the month with Atomic Saloon Show, but that still leaves an army of brilliant trailblazers whose otherworldly imaginations, fearless artistic ambition and contempt for convention wrote them into Fringe legend.

Briefs (2012-present) - Briefs are such a mainstay at the Fringe now that it’s easy to forget how taken aback the Fringe was by the arrival of its first all-male burlesque troupe. Their anarchic tenure in Underbelly’s purple cow (which featured a ‘meat raffle’ with highly interactive prizes) subverted traditional drag and burlesque and created something a lot more high-octane, artistically interesting, and outrageous. They haven’t mellowed in the decade since with more recent routines including an ensemble performance where half the troupe donned  ‘Human Pup’ latex and mimed some acts with their drag Queen ‘owners’ that would get this newsletter sent instantly to your junk mail if described in any detail. 

Dr Brown - Befrdfgth (2012)

Comedy nerds might recognise Phil Burgers as Mae Martin’s flatmate in Feel Good but 10 years ago, as his legendary feral clown alter-ego Dr Brown, he won both the Comedy Award and its Aussie equivalent the Barry for a show that is best imagined by picturing the Phantom of the Opera as a loinclothed wild man Mime haunting a dingy cavern theatre. He also stayed in character even off stage - an eccentric enigma that seemed to stalk the whole festival.

Phil Ellis - Funz And Gamez (2014)

An ingenious concept that won the Comedy Award Panel Prize. Listed in the Family section of the programme, as far as most children knew this was just a (not very good) show for them, in which they would play games and watch songs and skits. Unbeknownst to them (and most of their parents initially) a fictionalised Phil Ellis and his motley crew were simultaneously playing out a very different show- a dark and entirely adult comedy featuring debt, heartbreak, crime, potential sex offenders and a whole lot of taking the proverbial out of young kids. Parents were genuinely shocked to watch each show descend into utter chaos. 

Brett Bailey - Exhibit B (2014)

Still controversial, the International Festival has done nothing like this since. South African artist Brett Bailey and a group of black performers and artists recreated the human zoos of the 19th century and invited the public to come and look them in the eye. It was excruciatingly uncomfortable and caused trenchant debate about where it sat on the spectrum between anti-racist commentary and exploitation. It would never be produced today. 

Christeene (2014)

A demonic but sweet-heated Horror-Drag Queen in a pillowcase Christeene’s (Texan Paul Soileau) furious hip-hop songs included ‘Fix my Dick’ and ‘African Mayonnaise’ and her final act saw her squirt the audience with water from a rather shocking source.

Kim Noble - You Are Not Alone (2014)

Kim Noble’s multimedia tour de force about grief and loneliness was a brilliant show anyway but became the stuff of legend with an ending in which the artist-comic rode off into the night on horseback.

Richard Gadd - Waiting for Gadot (2015) & Monkey See Monkey Do (2016)

A year before he won the Comedy Award Gadd had the Fringe abuzz by nightly failing to turn up for his own show. A multimedia comic (before gaining ever more acclaim as an actor-writer for Baby Reindeer) his attempts to make his own show were relayed by video with the help of a series of performers planted in the audience, before he turned up with about a minute left, naked, handcuffed, dripping with sweat, and with the police allegedly hot on his tail. His comedy award winner the following year (as well as being a brilliant and dark show about surviving abuse and tortured masculinity) was performed entirely while running on a treadmill.

Lucy McCormick - Triple Threat (2016)

Legendary performer whose work has always attracted curiosity for how it flirts with theatre, cabaret and performance art had eyes widening at this savagely weird twist on a Passion play featuring the most graphically sexual interpretation of the stigmata in living memory… 

Hannah Gadsby - Nanette (2017)

The show that went in to conquer the world wasn’t really stand up comedy at all but an art history performance lecture that descended into a harrowing but inspiring tale of personal triumph over horrendous abuse — and that incredibly brave format ended with the mic drop of retiring from stand-up forever.

Trygve Wakenshaw - Trygve vs a Baby (2017)

Trygve was already an acclaimed Gaulier clown with a Best Newcomer Comedy Award nomination under his belt but took things to another level by making and performing a show with his 18 month-old son. It worked brilliantly with young Phinneas playing a boxing opponent, a bullfighter to Trygve’s bull, and a wand-happy wizard but the risk and utter uniqueness of the show’s concept was already enough to draw audiences and headlines.

Ursula Martinez, Adrienne Truscott and Zoe Coombs Marr- Wild Bore  (2017)

Three more performers whose work has always pushed beyond the cosier Fringe genres into experimentalism. Zoe Coombs Marr made her name with a boorish drag king called Dave who in her most acclaimed show took a bad pill and hallucinated that he was a 30 year-old Australian lesbian named Zoe. The three performers guaranteed media hype by launching a scathing attack on arts critics featuring an infamous scene in which they literally read old reviews of theirs out their arses. What followed was an intriguing stand-off between the reviewers who thought this was revolutionary and the ones who thought it was crass mud slinging that simply added more fuel to the hype.

Ontroerend Goed - Are We Not Drawn Onwards To New Era (2019)

The Belgian pioneers have been playing brilliantly with theatre’s boundaries for well over a decade, from an immersive show in which the audience are kidnapped, berated and impelled to turn on each other, to an interactive game that simulates the financial crash of 2008 (think The Big Short as a theatrical poker / Monopoly game) and then 2019’s tour de force in which the first half of an abstract physical theatre piece is revealed to have been performed backwards. It is  then played in reverse, making near-perfect sense and creating a powerful metaphor for climate action.  

FALSE TEETH IN A PORK PIE: HOW TO UNLEASH YOUR INNER CRAZY runs 17-20 August at 12pm, Assembly George Square Studio 2