The infantry and alternative arts are not natural allies, but for the first time in the Edinburgh festival’s 70-year history, the British army is playing host to the fringe.
A reservists’ drill hall, which once boasted its own rifle range, is being turned into a venue for the festival in August, complete with army ushers, squaddies serving drinks in the mess and an army tuck shop selling ice cream in the interval.
The events are being organised by one of the city’s most radical arts centres, Summerhall. The sprawling complex, housed in a former veterinary school, describes itself as a cultural village and stages avant-garde arts while housing a microbrewery, gin distillery, digital startups and yoga classes.
Verity Leigh, Summerhall’s programme manager, said the work would focus on “the human beings behind the uniform. That is an interesting subject for artistic inquiry, and will be interesting for our audiences to have an insight into.”
The festival’s most famous association with the armed forces has been the Edinburgh tattoo, a traditional, militaristic pageant of precision marching, pipe bands and acrobatic motorbike displays held every year in a temporary amphitheatre on the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle.
The venue for the new venture is far more humble: a Royal Regiment of Scotland reservists’ centre called Hepburn House on the eastern edge of the New Town, where infantry recruits gathered during the first and second world wars.
The full programme at the venue will be released by Summerhall this month, but one of its main events will be an army-sponsored piece of performance theatre following the lives of new recruits called 5 Soldiers: The Body that is the Frontline, which earned a five-star review from the Observer.
Lt Col Gordon McKenzie, a full-time reservist, said the collaboration with Summerhall was part of a British army strategy to broaden its appeal and support, particularly when deep cuts in personnel numbers meant even fewer people had regular contact with the army.
“Part of this is all about connecting with society and reminding people we are actually part of the world in which everyone lives,” he said. “We can’t just rely on the traditional mechanisms that we might use – people in kilts at the head of a pipe band marching down the Royal Mile or the Edinburgh military tattoo. That still has its place, but it doesn’t reach an audience which doesn’t think in those ways.”
McKenzie said the army also wanted to open different types of dialogue with the public. Debating the merits of the Iraq war would be off limits: “Ultimately, we are employees of the state, and governments decide,” he said. “But certainly, part of the idea is that the army doesn’t lend itself to being easily understood because we have uniforms and we speak a technocratic language and we work in places with barbed wire around them.”
He said there were some anxieties about how the collaboration might work, and whether critics would see the shows as propaganda: “This is a risky thing for us to do, and some people might misinterpret our motives. But all we can do is facilitate opportunities to have discussions and for people to gain insights” into what the army does.
Summerhall is also anxious to justify its decision to join forces with the army. Its natural audience of students, young activists, hipsters, art students and alternative arts fans are unlikely to be enthusiasts of British infantry. “We would suggest they come along and see the work that’s going to be staged there,” said Leigh. “The work we present at Summerhall is always work that is controversial and edgy and political, and has something to say about the world we live in. The programme at the army reserve centre entirely fits with that policy.”
