Jem Rolls has done more Fringes than probably anyone else in the world...
Here is his response to his amazing journey!
I've done 116 Fringe Festivals in 14 cities in Scotland
and Canada has only Alex Dallas done
more Fringes? probably
but it's hard to tell,
when she can't count to a 100
…
I first did the Edinburgh Fringe back in1996 with John
Anstiss and Mc Jabber it
was a colossal leap in the dark
I was running a weekly poetry cabaret in London
[every Thursday for 5 years] and it was my show, Big Word
I did the vast majority of the work
the flyering, the blagging, the unfiascoing
and we got massively better every day and ran round like
crazy doing every show we possibly could
and we did not fail or give up or lose money
…
and I discovered I'd missed my vocation as a second-hand
car-dealer or life-insurance salesman for if you can sell a poetry show
in August on the Royal Mile you can sell anything
anywhere
…
and our accommodation officer was
living in a shrubbery
...
so Edinburgh, August, took over my life
though we weren't a real success at first though we did
make money
while everyone else we met was losing money
but we weren't a real success
and a truly beautiful show
till '99
…
and along the way I accidentally kinda
co-founded the Edinburgh Free Fringe kinda
...
Peter Buckley
Hill was
doing it for ideological reasons with visionary intent I was doing it to not
fail because I could
because "all the other shows are cowards they get
the money off you first they think you're not going to like them
we think you're gonna like us Pay As You Like At The
End"
[PAYLATE]
because that was such a great blag line to the hordes of
possible punters
...
though I forget the first year,
'99 for definite
though i did it, kind of, in each of the preceding three
years but I was definitely first to ever get press for it from the Edinburgh
Evening News in 99?
…
while there were no Performance Poetry shows on the
Edinburgh Fringe back then
JohnnyGodClarke and Hegley and Atilla were up there but
no unkowns
and everyone [Fringe Office, punters, etc] they all knew
we were something new while no-one in London had the guts or nouse
and it was certainly a case of “fortune favours the
brave” for we all got massively better as acts and had all the fun and freedoms
of those who show up to the giant party
…
as I shed a whole bunch of skins
and began to escape the vitriolic shit-pile that was
London performance poetry
the veritable threshing machine of Metropolitan
backstabbery and all the associated arse-holes and found a way forward
a way to thrive which did not involve establishments and
their sycophants and minions all those who cleave to the estab
...
or the lame-assed go-nowhere-slowly proper poetry world
...
or the unelectric stand there and do nothing
performance poets
...
all those performers who were smug who thought they were
good enough were worth £150 a show, minimum when no-one was good enough plainly
and only massive learning and evolution and growth in
every direction the success born of joy and the joy born of success could ever
get you somewhere, anywhere, worth being
...
and you could only get this from taking part from
entering the giant art zone the world of Fringe for no-one else
establishments, cliques, bookinesses was ever going to
ever
offer me anything
…
when, in Edinburgh in 1997,
I set a quite possibly still-standing record
of the most spots on stage in one day
14
I did it to get press it worked and I now wonder who, if
anyone, has broken this record and where?
it was fourteen cups of coffee on the way up fourteen
pints of beer on the way down
and fourteen gigs along the way
…
stand out in my mind as FANTASTIC SHOWS
while there were excellent shows and times
and more
...
all the while finding inspiration acquiring techniques
watching for the original
the electric the undone
the doesn't-fit
...
though the raging success and flourishing and nourishing
of August got us no work back in London no gigs no respect
no nothing for it was best to ignore us
...
then in 2000-1 because of the Fringe I moved to Scotland
to be with a Scottish Jewish Russian diamond heiress
novelist mother as you do
and I shed a whole bunch of skins and cut all ties to
those nasty London bastards and started running poetry cabarets and slams
and was described by the Scotsman as “The Godfather of
Scottish Performance Poetry”
...
all because the Fringe brought me north
and out of London the best move I ever made
...
while, after 3 or so years Scotland on Sunday the main
Scottish Sunday called me the biggest thing to happen in Scottish Poetry since
the 50s
...
for, as the biggest Scottish poetry publisher
my friend Gavin MacDougall
told me he never saw a rise in sales like the first years after my
arrival so me, who had no intention of selling a book ever
sold a lot of poetry books
so i was putting food in the mouths of those self-loving
stationary poetry book people who were, by their very
drabness were taking food out of mine
...
all because the Fringe brought me north
and out of London best move I ever made
…
when, at the start of that project
in 2001
after a chance encounter with a Welsh Comedian in Camden
Passage I tried Toronto Fringe as a two-hander with Mc Jabber who
never showed up
so I had 36 hours to reinvent myself as a solo show
and it was a TOTAL REVELATION I'd never properly done an
hour show and this was electrifying and I shed a whole bunch of skins
…
my first show was going great but I was already thinking
THIS IS GOING BRILLIANT
I SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING THIS YEARS AGO
BUT I AM GOING TO DO THIS SO MUCH BETTER TOMORROW
…
tomorrow it went great
but I was already thinking
THIS IS GOING BRILLIANT
I SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING THIS YEARS AGO
BUT I AM GOING TO DO THIS SO MUCH BETTER TOMORROW
...
and every day I threw another poem out of the show but it
never got shorter as i juggled all the differents and, as a performer, I got
progressively more
gleefully full-on and demented
...
while, in theatre terms
because i knew so little about capital T Theatre
I had no idea what was original what was risky what was
unseen
unsaid
… till
at the end of Toronto
I realised there was a big party brewing in the West in
the Prairies
but that I was heading in the wrong direction
East
…
so in 2002 I did Montreal and Ottawa Fringes which were
great but in 2003 I won the CAFF Touring Lottery and nothing was ever the same
again ever
and I did get to go West
by coach from Toronto
into the vastness of the Prairies
and freedom
where my first Winnipeg experience blew my head off the
Festival was plain gorgeous
and I got a five star review every day for four days
quickly sold out and never looked back with shows selling out in 5 minutes flat
...
and Winnipeg, late July
has almost always been my best two weeks of the year ever
since
…
while once again, on the Tour there had never really been
a performance poet and I rampaged flyering like no-one ever
Saskatoon Fringe
Edmonton Fringe Vancouver Fringe
till I arrived and survived
for the first out of 13 times, so far
UTTERLY SHATTERED
onto the beaches of the far coast
…
I'd count the thousands of dollars into wads
throw them over my shoulder
and count them again
...
all the while finding inspiration technique
watching for the original
the electric the undone the doesn't-quite-fit
...
for the Canadian Fringe is the best way of performing I
have ever heard of so doable so fabulously doable
while its the only proper money I've ever made from
concrete atoll to concrete atoll across the sea of green
and so I shed a whole bunch of skins and began to free
myself from all the tiresome cavilling done-with-that this-is-so-much-better
Caledonian grief
…
because this
THIS
was the most fun I ever had in my life
though tough
and an emotional rollercoaster for its way way up and its
way way down
it will reduce you to emotional jelly if you let it it
will shake you apart if you let it and it did
while, to push the point, it was more fun than anything
else ever
...
and all the talent all the chutzpah the mind-boggling
invention the gleeful fun of mind and word and body from Jabber, and Tim Turnbull, way
back when and Pink Sly and Akure Wall and Mr Social Control [where are you now,
Dave?] and Christopher Twigg and Stacy Makishi and
now, again, here in Canada
the family i was finding
a veritable unthreshing unmachine of unbackstabbery
the bestest gang that ever there was the tribe of which i
have slowly become kinda the Tribal Elder repository of lore and knowledge
and myth
…
and when I first arrived in Canada I had two hour shows
worth of material some of which I had done 5 to 700 times so in 2005 I
who sometimes wrote only a few new lines every year wrote
a whole new hour show of ten or twelve or fifteen poems
9000 or so words of it and then the next year, 2006 I
wrote a show I was extremely happy with though I can no longer account for 20
minutes of what was in it
...
and then every year since I have written a whole new show
apart from 2009
with an ill-conceived greatest hits show and this year
with a remount
of my show about a Nuclear Physicist no-one has ever
heard of Leo Szilard
for I can't stop the ever-compulsive
edge-of-the-edge precipice-dangly
risk-taking
…
and this has all been a colossal
aesthetic and personal adventure
and commitment and joy and struggle and joy and all
because of Fringe
... thirteen shows! thriteen hour shows!
thirteen whole wild different brain-bursting headfucking
sixty minute show
... who else has done that?
its crazy compulsive monomaniac glorious
…
with perpetual liberation perpetual slog
perpetual discovery perpetual creation perpetual newness
perpetual shows
...
where there is no establishment bullshit written into the
system and few idiots to impress no dull doorkeepers keeping you out
so you do not have to force yourself into the shrunken
prisons of other people's minds and again
skins are perpetually shed
the bankbursting lakes of bullshit are avoided while
freedom is enjoyed
relished loved mistreated and loved again
...
for it's doable so beautifully problematically
obstacle-course-ly doable
for those with the nouse and guts and energy
…
so, in 2006, I stopped having a proper home and became a
modern incarnation of the itinerant poet the wandering bard with no possessions
except laptop passport and bank-card and an evolving collection of 20 shirts
which is all I need these liberated days
...
while i was never any good at possessions anyhow or much
good at domesticity the field of which
did not mourn my passing
...
for the Fringe has released me from so many ties
freed me to create whatever I want and go wherever I want
for you can create whatever you want on the Tour as long as you create
something audience will want and give yourself time.. anywhere...
India? why not? Indonesia? why not?
way up the Amazon? why not Vietnam Spain Cyprus Winnipeg
Thailand, why not?
as long as you give yourself the time to get it first
good and then killer the space to allow it breathe and stretch
and fully extend and reach and flower
…
for the Fringe has been a vital force in my life a great
change for the good
a liberation of life of art of mind of body so here we go
the first World Fringe Day sounds good to me great to me
...
and here we go another charge into the Prairies sounds
good to me great-fabulous-killer to me and here we go Ottawa
Regina
Winnipeg, next
Calgary
Edmonton, can't wait
Victoria
Vancouver... here we go sounds good to me great to me
and here we go
...
i start Wednesday 8.15
Planetarium Winnipeg here we go sounds good to me great
to me
...
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