Exclusive:The Scottish amateur theatre directors retiring after 30 years at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
The pair have put on a show at every Fringe festival for 30 years
They were two friends who set out to change the face of amateur theatre at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the 1990s.
Now the directors of theatre production company Arkle are to retire after 30 straight years of Fringe performances.
Rob McKean and Michael Mulligan are to close the company with a final swansong of two shows - selected by each of them as their former Fringe favourites - at this year’s festival. The pair set up the organisation in 1996 after meeting at another local club, Edinburgh People’s Theatre.
Mr McKean said: “Arkle started as the result of a couple of bottles of wine in a cottage in the north-west Highlands. We’d both been involved in Edinburgh People’s Theatre and back then, there was a set way of doing shows. It was box sets, it was two acts and we realised that we wanted to do something different, we didn’t want to do shows in a set format.
“Also we wanted to do it without a committee and a club around it. Back then, people could only act for one club. There was no crossover, that’s changed now. So we thought we’d try to do something simple for the Fringe - a short show and see how it went.”
Their first show was Womerang, by Sue Townsend. “It was great and people asked us ‘what are you doing next year?’,” Mr McKean said.
“So we did. All of that was 29 years ago. This is our 30th on the Fringe. Even during Covid, we did some radio-style productions on Zoom, so we didn’t miss a year. But after 30 years of doing it, it is time to stop.”
Mr Mulligan added: “Rob retired last year and I turned 70 in March of this year. These are factors which made us think it was time to stop after 30 years. Seventy is not the same as 40. A lot of people don’t appreciate the sheer amount of work that goes on to do this. Also, it is getting staggeringly expensive. I see the future as a lot of what I call ‘pop-up theatre’.
He added: “But the time to finish something is when you’re still enjoying it.”
The company’s second show was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which they are to reprise this year, alongside The 39 Steps, as their final performances.
“We’ve done what we set out to do,” said Mr McKean. “Amateur theatre - we prefer to call it unpaid, as we have always tried to do professional level productions - has changed a lot over the last 30 years. There’s a lot more crossover between the clubs, we help each other. All of that has developed.
Mr Mulligan also runs the Royal Scots Club on Abercromby Place as a venue during the Fringe, both for Arkle and for other amateur clubs putting on shows. He plans to continue to do so next year.
“I’ll continue to run the venue,” he said. “Some weeks are already let for next year.”
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