As the Edinburgh Fringe approaches, we spoke to playwrights, comics and performers from Glasgow on what they’re taking to this year’s festival.
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00:00 Yeah, my name is...
00:01 Sorry, wait, do you want me to look at you or look at the camera?
00:03 Yeah, look at me.
00:04 Yeah, okay, good.
00:04 Hello, my name's James Gardner and I'm a stand-up comedian.
00:07 Yeah, my name's Tatu Dave.
00:09 I'm a tattoo artist and comedian from Glasgow.
00:11 My name is Morgan Drew Glasgow.
00:13 I'm a theatre maker, originally from Edinburgh,
00:16 but I am setting up a company in the south side of Glasgow.
00:18 My show's called Born in a Wheelchair
00:21 and it's a show that's all about my life
00:23 with my older brother Alexander, who's got cerebral palsy.
00:26 So the show's kind of, you know, it's light-hearted,
00:29 there's a lot of good fun in there
00:30 and it kind of pokes at the sort of general ignorance of disability,
00:34 as well as my own.
00:34 So Holson Prison Blues, as the name suggests,
00:38 it's kind of prison-related.
00:39 So we've been doing stand-up comedy shows in prisons across Scotland
00:43 for the past nine or ten months now.
00:45 So we're excited that we can now perform this show for the public
00:48 and at the world's largest arts festival as well, the Edinburgh Fringe.
00:52 So my show's called Sealed.
00:53 So it basically follows the story of a young mother
00:57 living in a seaside fisherman's village
01:00 and she's on the verge of a breakdown, she's sick of life
01:05 and it kind of follows themes of post-natal depression
01:10 and female experience, motherhood
01:14 and the kind of double standards in society upon men and women.
01:18 So Alexander's a huge part of my personality
01:20 because he can't talk, my brother.
01:22 He's non-verbal, but what he can do is he communicates with his eyes.
01:26 So he looks up for yes and he looks down for no.
01:28 And trying to figure out what he's telling you is like a massive game of charades.
01:32 So from an early age, I was always having to do the talking for Alexander.
01:36 My sister does the same, so we all kind of put on Alexander's persona,
01:41 we kind of put voices on to entertain him.
01:43 We also put his voice on to kind of speak back to us.
01:45 So it's kind of almost like a collection of funny stories,
01:49 absurd incidents and just kind of things that a lot of people
01:52 maybe wouldn't naturally know.
01:54 Because I think in a lot of ways disability still is a kind of taboo subject
01:58 for a lot of people and unless you've got any sort of personal experience,
02:01 you're kind of like, "Whoa, don't know what that's about."
02:03 So for me, this show has been probably over 30 years in the making.
02:08 So the first year of the Edinburgh Fringe last year,
02:11 it was the end of the day, myself, Paddy Linton and Jack Drainer
02:15 were driving back, comparing our war stories of the day
02:18 and we started talking about a comedian we know
02:21 who had half her audience walk out through her set.
02:25 Jack suggested we should be able to lock the door on people
02:28 before we're finished and I said, "That's your ultimate captive audience."
02:33 At that moment, Johnny Cash's famous prison song,
02:36 "San Quentin" started playing and Paddy says,
02:38 "That's your ultimate captive audience."
02:41 It's a dark comedy, so there is some observational humour in there as well.
02:45 But it's just an explanation of this sort of women's life
02:48 interspersed with Selkie myth, which is...
02:53 It's a Scottish and actually Nordic as well,
02:55 myth about seal people who come to land
02:57 and they shed their seal skins to live on the land.
03:01 So it's those two things kind of interspersed together.
03:04 So we had a giggle about what a fun thing it would be
03:08 to do one stand-up comedy gig in a prison.
03:11 So throughout the Fringe last year, I couldn't get the idea out of my head.
03:15 So September, I reached out to people I knew at the ward
03:18 within the Scottish Prison Service,
03:20 set up a bunch of meetings with several prisons
03:23 and they were mostly keen to get us in, which was great.
03:26 So we did our first Holson Prison Blues gig in Lomas Prison.
03:30 That was a Thursday afternoon and the Friday morning
03:33 we had an additional five prisons contact us
03:36 saying they'd heard about the good work we're doing
03:38 and can we book in with them as well?
03:40 A disabled person, my brother for example, he's a real person.
03:43 He has real emotions, he gives love, he receives love, you know?
03:46 So he laughs every day and we laugh every day,
03:50 no matter how trying the circumstances are, of course.
03:52 There's a lot of hardship, there's a lot of struggle,
03:54 but I would say that disabled people, if I can speak for it,
03:58 are just normal people, so why would they not want to laugh?
04:02 So the punchline to a lot of the jokes ultimately are me.
04:07 And a lot of it looks at my own ignorance towards disability
04:10 despite having a disabled brother,
04:12 because I know that much on a subject
04:16 which is just huge.
04:18 So a lot of the prisons are saying the same thing.
04:20 When we go in, there's a nice atmosphere created
04:23 and it carries on for two or three days,
04:25 not just with the people that we perform to,
04:28 but the rest of the prison as well, because word gets out
04:30 and then other prisoners want to know when are we coming back,
04:33 how they can come and see us.
04:35 And it generally just gives an upbeat atmosphere to the prison.
04:39 So we're told.
04:40 It runs from the 14th to the 19th of August at 2pm every day
04:44 at Greenside and Furnemary Street.
04:46 Although the 19th has sold out, which is really exciting.
04:49 So if anybody wants to come and see Wholesome Prison Blues,
04:51 and of course you do,
04:52 we are at the Old Foundry Room
04:54 at the Grassmarket Community Project
04:56 on the Grassmarket in Edinburgh.
04:58 Six o'clock every night apart from Wednesday
05:00 during the Edinburgh Fringe.
05:02 If you'd like to come and see my show, Born in a Wheelchair,
05:04 then come through to Edinburgh.
05:06 I'm on every single day, 1.30pm at The Caves,
05:10 and I'd love to see you there.