Pete Mitchelson, Horror Storyteller
The Edinburgh Fringe can be a daunting, frustrating and exhausting challenge, with not only the enormous outlay required to even stage a show, publicity, accommodation and the hire of a venue, but the risk that with the ever-expanding roster of competing shows, now closing on four thousand, that anything but the most exceptional high profile show cannot guarantee a return on the investment.
Peter Buckley Hill’s “Free Fringe” an alternative to the established model, it gives performers a chance not only a chance to break into opportunities which might otherwise be closed to them but also to be more experimental with their work, as evidenced by the number of shows which now promote themselves as “works in progress” or sit outwith the broadly defined genres of comedy, stand up, musical or drama.
Performed in tandem with his more traditionally structured dark cautionary tale of The Moon Pact Trial, Liverpool based Pete Mitchelson, Horror Storyteller, is also Revisiting Childhood Ghosts, utilising a smaller venue for a more intimate and personal recounting of memories and hopes and misapprehensions and the hypocrisy of teachers and the lies told by friends and the pain of being the child who sits alone and sees things differently.
Mitchelson currently studying for a doctorate in horror, he is animated, encouraging the audience in the small but comfortable if slightly overwarm space to become a part of the story, his characters relatable and often familiar even if the circumstances of the breaking of the friendships are uniquely specific, perhaps for the best, the promised horror more of an undercurrent of oddity until the embers ignite in the dry attic of the school.
Pete Mitchelson, Horror Storyteller continues at Whistlebinkies until Sunday 24th August
