Diary of a Black Woman At Edinburgh Fringe — Entry #26

I’m an American Black woman performing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland for the first time

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

Performer’s Log — Stardate 08242025.01

Performance 23 of 23

It’s over. It’s done. That famous Green Day song is playing in my head, “Good Riddance.” As I write this I’m on the verge of tears. I cannot express how much I’ve loved being here. It’s been a crazy dream.

Before I get too sappy on you though, I have to say, today was a hard show. Not terribly hard but I mean I had 2 annoying audience members in the front row. They were talking during the show. At first I thought perhaps the person talking couldn’t help themselves and may have a developmental characteristic of some sort but then the two people cracked open a beer during my show and started drinking it and now I think they were just rude. Which is a bummer.

But as you can imagine it’s hard to discern all of this while at the same time performing a solo show. Part of me is navigating the text, the slides and the music, not to mention my performance - timing and inflection. It’s not done by rote. Sometimes a phrase is funnier if said in a different way depending on the audience. Each audience is different.