“Prepare yourself for having one person in your audience and double down on how awkward it is for everyone. It will turn out to be your favorite show.”
WHO: Erin Murray Quinlan
WHAT: “A blocked playwright with a looming deadline is haunted by the subject of her last failed show: Ernest Hemingway. Brain Hemingway returns to the Fringe for the second year in a row! This love letter to the artist’s process was widely loved amongst writers, artists, and musicians, and was counted as an unexpected favourite by audiences at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2022 and Boston Mini Fringe 2022. Once Hemingway is in your brain, you’ll never get him out!”
WHERE: Greenside @ Nicolson Square – Fern Studio (Venue 209)
WHEN: 17:30 (50 min)
MORE: Click Here!
Is this your first time to Edinburgh?
This is our second time to the Fringe with ‘Brain Hemingway’, but I have also been to Edinburgh several times. The most memorable non-Fringe visit was going through the Edinburgh Dungeon by myself and somehow being chosen for every single audience participation moment and then watching the Dungeon actors slowly realize that they had caged someone no one cares about.
The Fringe is special because it combines the things I love about theatre in one magical place: the scrappiness, the necessity that breeds invention, being surrounded by people who are as happy with five audience members as they are with a full house. The ability for every type of person to be creative is on full display, and it warms my cockles to bits.
What are the big things you’ve learned since 2022 and have you absorbed any of the lessons yet?
1. Don’t get covid during rehearsals. I know it was all the rage last year, but walking up the Fleshmarket steps everyday with post-covid lungs is not worth it.
2. When meal deals are your only option, Boots is the Dark Horse winner, followed by M&S, Sainsburys, and then Tesco if things are that dire.
3. Prepare yourself for having one person in your audience and double down on how awkward it is for everyone. It will turn out to be your favorite show.
4. DO get a QR code sticker to wear so people can have easy access to the ticket site without needing a flyer. DO NOT put that sticker anywhere near you chest or gross weirdos will take a picture of your admittedly excellent cleavage.
5. Hydrate hydrate hydrate hydrate, no not with cider.
Tell us about your show.
‘Brain Hemingway’ is a two-person one-woman show about a playwright who is harassed by visions of her last flop’s subject, Ernest Hemingway. It’s based in fact. Ten years ago, I wrote an exhaustively researched show called ‘Hemingway’s Wife’ that got bad reviews, some of which went so far as to attack my personal character. It also elicited one of my interview subjects to ask me, “what does a little girl like you have to say about a big man like Hemingway?” This play is about trying to write and be true to my voice while being hounded by the memories of those bad reviews and experiences. It’s a comedy, if I have to make that clear.
Tawnydog Productions is the company my husband Evan and I run, one because he is a very good actor and I value him as a collaborator, and two because you don’t have to pay your spouse and I’m not made of money. Our production before ‘Brain Hemingway’ was ‘God Save Queen Pam’, which premiered Off-Broadway in NYC and was published by Stage Rights. I only mention this because if you search for it, it comes up on Google Books and that tickles me.
The world is our oyster as far as what happens next with Brain Hemingway, because it is just the two of us, and once Elon Musk puts chips in our brains, we won’t even need a tech person because I would just be able to trigger sound cues by blinking. So I’m thinking the Duke of York’s, 2026…?
What should your audience see at the festivals after they’ve seen your show?
This feels like an impossible task because there are so many excellent shows coming, but the first ones that spring to mind are ‘Alan Turning- A Musical Biography’ and ‘Butchered’ which I missed last year; two from Awkward Productions: ‘Untold Diana’ and ‘How to Live a Jellicle Life’; also looking forward to ‘The Society for New Cuisine’, the new spin on classic Chekhov, ‘Three Sisters and Them’, and ‘Almost Adult’.
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