One of the problems with making a venue out of a sports hall is that it has six full length floor to ceiling windows. In order for us to be able to achieve a full blackout a group of us spent a good part of the day boarding them up.

After tea we where re arranged into different groups, I ended up back outside working on the out door bar. We managed to get most of the roof up before it started raining again.

Other teams had been working in the Cab bar and the Studio which are almost finished.

So for me Saturday mainly consisted of the Truss being raised up in the main house,

building and rigging the booms, then running in all the Socapex through the ceiling space down to the dimmers

and finally hanging the black legs in the morning and afternoon.

In the evening I became a scaffolder and helped constructed the frame-work for the outside bar.

So for most people the morning mainly consisted of hanging Blacks in Monkey House, The Aviary and the Studio. I was in the Studio. Unlike the Monkey House and The Aviary where the blacks are tied on to the scaff structure in the Studio the blacks are stapled to the wall; but first you’re going to need a staple gun and hold on a second ummm we haven’t got one. How many Zoo techies does it take to go to the hardware store and buy a couple of staple guns? I think you’ll find the answer is five.

After Lunch I ended up in the main house rigging the rest of the Scaff bars between the trusses.

After Tea we began rigging and cabling up the lanterns in the main house.

So we woke up to traditional Edinburgh weather for the lovely walk to work. We started the day by unloading the truck full of hired lighting and sound equipment into there designated spaces with half of the load being tipped at Zoo and half at south side. After tipping the equipment truck we had the Zoo container to empty which contained everything else needed to construct the venues at South Side.

After finally emptying the container we broke for Lunch 🙂

After Lunch we split into teams with one group starting on the floor in the Main House

Another group stated on the Studio space

And the rest of us unpacked then packed and then unpacked the van shuttling stuff between venues.

After Tea the two groups at south side continued with their tasks and the rest of us headed over to Zoo to build the seating in Monkey House.

So after spending four and a half hours on the train I finally arrived in Edinburgh. After hauling my bags off the train I realised that maybe I should have condensed my three bags down to two as I now had to walk ten minutes through the city centre to get to Zoo. After battling the crowds I finally made it. Because we where all arriving on different trains we all arrived at the venue at varying times during the day. I arrived to find half the crew had already arrived and had started construction on the scaff frame-work that will eventually become the “black box” of the Monkey House. After introducing myself and attempting to remember everyone’s names I got stuck in and helped out.

Once we’d finished assembling the scaff structure in the Monkey House we moved up stairs to do the same in the Aviary.

Once we’d finished in the Aviary we were treated to a crew meal out at the pub. After food and a quick drink we returned to the Monkey house to start putting up the LX Bars after getting three of these up we called it a night, threw all of our bags into a taxi with a couple of the crew and the rest of us set off walking to find our accommodation.

Welcome to my Edinburgh fringe festival 2013 Blog, I’ll be posting here daily from 24th July till 30 August chronicling in photos and words my experience of the festival.

After Visiting the fringe for the past three years this year I decided to take the next step and become a part of it. This year I’ll be working as part of the technical team at Zoo Venues