Trifter

September 2007

I’m not jet lagged any more, and the past four weeks are swirling in my head. I was lucky enough to spend the whole month of August in Edinburgh, Scotland. There was so much to do and take in! This is the first of three parts of a performer’s story behind the scenes.

The second big culture shock was coming back home. (The first being my temporary home). Transporting myself around town is something we don’t give much thought to. I got in my car and headed to the gas station. (The sign reminded me how we’ve been trained to be happy when gas is under $3 a gallon). I pumped it in the tank and started driving. In Edinburgh, I’d look out the window, decide how many shirts and sweaters to wrap around my waist, whether to bring my umbrella or not, and start walking.

Edinburgh
The City With Many Stories

I happened to turn on the history channel the night I was packing for my trip to NY and Edinburgh, where I saw documentary on a city that caught my interest. There were many stories about people living and dying. Ghost stories. Stories, as in vertical, too. It turned out to be Edinburgh, right where I was headed!

On the plane, as we descended over the Scottish countryside, the woman sitting next to me enthusiastically filled me in with her previous experiences there. She was accompanying her husband who was playing in a golf tournament. She had no interest in golf, but loved the city so much so she loved to come back any time she could.

In the 1700s, people were living in the capital of Scotland surrounded by farmland. They believe in keeping their farmland as large and as fertile as possible, so urban sprawl isn’t the same as here in this country. Edinburgh was the first city in history to have a skyscraper. In fact, they just kept on building on top of each other. The merchants lived in their shops at the bottom. The poor lived at the top, and in between you would find the middle class, like lawyers and doctors. There was little or no sunlight, because these six and seven story-high buildings were built so closely together that people on the upper floors could reach out and shake hands. Edinburgh is a hilly place. People would walk uphill to town in seven inches of sludge. It was human waste. On one of the tours I took, I will never forget the re-enactment of a straw haired actress. Dressed in an apron, holding a bucket, she stuck her head out the window of a home, shouting “GUARDIE LOO!” and immediately threw the family waste out the window onto the street. Whoever might have happened to be walking below got out of the way as fast as they could. The streets were called “closes”, or “wynds”. There was no drinking water for anyone. The rich people could afford to drink ale. The poor man’s drink was port.

The plague got many of them in the end. The people who didn’t get it would just shove all the dead bodies, (and a few living ones who were thought to be sick) in a cave, start a fire and board it up. Eventually they cut the tops off all the buildings and started building the city over. Nowadays, you walk along High Street, The Royal Mile, and you see the closes. Mary King’s Close is the most famous. Mary King is another story. Every few feet there’s another close. Some of them have locked gates, and some of them have been brought back into use – to a certain level.

Gravity doing its job, at the bottom of the hill, there was a lake, below the palace (another story)… This was a man made lake. Can you picture someone yelling “GUARDIE LOO!” out of every window, every day? 25,000 people lived there. They threw the witches in it. If a woman were thought possibly to be a witch, they would tie her hands and feet together, and toss her in. If she floated back up, alive, she was a witch, so they would take her out and hang her, or burn her at the stake. If she drowned, oh well, “sorry for the inconvenience to the family”, she wasn’t a witch after all. When they drained and cleaned up this lake, they apparently found $10,000 skeletons. Now, it’s a beautiful garden and art gallery. An Andy Warhol Exhibit was there when I was there.

Ghost stories are everywhere.
I visited “Annie’s room”. Annie was a little girl who got left behind by her family. Whether it was because the rest of the family died of the plague, or another reason, I don’t know. What struck me was the room I visited. Her room. Her family’s HOME. A small stone cave with one window. There, under the window, against the wall, piled on top of each other, were hundreds of dolls. The story the tour guide told us was how she loved dolls, and really wanted one of her own, but they were too poor. She was left alone to die. Many people say they’ve seen her ghost. But in the early 1990s, when a famous psychic had a strong reaction, the story got bigger. The psychic felt “an overwhelming feeling of sickness, hunger and cold.” And a little girl was crying because she was so lonely and wanted a doll to hold. She said her name was Annie. As the psychic was leaving, she felt the tug of a hand on her leg. Since then, people from round the world come and leave dolls for her.

There is so much more to tell. I was in Edinburgh to perform at the Fringe Festival, the largest theatre festival in the world. The experience of performing, seeing other plays, promoting ours, and cramming in as many things to see as a tourist was amazing. Do you know how many famous people were from there? Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, Allan Ramsay, Lulu, John Paul Jones, Sean Connery, Alexander Graham Bell…
The locals are so friendly. It’s such a beautiful city. And becomes incredibly alive for the theatre world’s famous Fringe Festival!