EDINBURGH 2017: A Day At The Fringe- Eve Pearson-Wright

Eve Pearson-Wright blogs for BWW to give us insight into a day in the life of an actress at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

We've never done the fringe before, well not with our own show. The week leading up to coming here was a sleepless one. You hear stories of empty audiences, bad reviews and nightmare get ins. You have all these hopes and ambitions for your show and taking that leap is a scary thing to do. I mean what if no one likes us? We pushed those thoughts to the back of head, loaded up our vw beetle to bursting point and set off on the six hour drive up the country.

Before we even arrived we had a disaster, someone drove into our car, so I start panicking and thinking it's a bad omen, but luckily Andrew (my husband and producing-partner) has his head screwed on and tells me essentially that I'm being a wally.

We get here and the first thing we do is our get in/tech and this is where we can try out the space for the first time. We were lucky enough to be placed in the Rose theatre with Gilded Balloon and I have to say we could not have been more fortunate. Their team went above and beyond any expectations to make our show work by putting in extra hours, adding lights and patching in, they were awesome. So now it's only us that can mess everything up.

Now we need to find an audience, our show is a historical true story of some penniless Victorian mill workers who changed football and made it a game for everyone. It's about social injustice and courage and community but telling people all of that on the mile is impossible. We hoped we would have an audience and somehow we did. Our previews sold ok, we had a solid amount of audience. So now it's was up to the four of us to go for it.

Our first show was terrifying. I've performed all over the world in great shows but there is nothing like the fear of showing your own work for the first time to a paying audience. For me it felt like doing a bungee jump, the show was so electrified I couldn't gauge myself or anyone else. It felt like free falling, out of control and dangerous. So much so that when we finished I genuinely wasn't sure what the reaction from the audience would be. Then they stood up. The whole audience gave us a standing ovation. We all couldn't believe it. I cried as I bowed I was genuinely in shock. I don't think I've ever had a standing ovation before. I can honestly say it's probably the best feeling in the world. Now we just have to find that magic 26 more times....no pressure!

Timings and ticket information for Giant Killers can be found on the edfringe website.

Photo Credit: Jack Judd

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