The Edinburgh Festival Fringe brochure’s launch day was exciting for many, but I was too shaken by slack-jawed confusion to open it. On its front cover was a parade of animals in human garb: a pug in a frilly cardigan held a microphone; a swan sported a wedding dress; a wolf plucked vigorously at his banjo and howled at the moon. But pugs can’t hold microphones! Swans can’t be betrothed! And the only time I’ve witnessed a wolf play a banjo was when I ingested 75 milligrams of tramadol in the toilets of a local wildlife sanctuary. How did the Fringe Society manufacture this nightmarish vision of quasi-human circus creatures? 

I studied the cover all night long, reliving the psychedelic odyssey that saw me banned from all wildlife enclosures in the central belt area, until I realised the truth; these animals, without the mental framework to understand capitalism or the need for accommodation, will be the only performers who can afford to attend the Fringe in a decade’s time. A different kind of AI will threaten the very fabric of the Fringe: animal implementation, turning the back alleys of the Cowgate into a feeding frenzy of culturally adept brutes and beasts who’ll grasp onto stage props with sewn-on limbs purchased from the dark web. Moving above and beyond its remit for championing grassroots and international talent, the Fringe Society will fly the flag for interspecies performers (top tip: no matter your intentions, never google ‘interspecies performers’. There are some things you can’t unsee). 

The pug is actually Cutiekins O’Brien, a prominent Icelandic canine comic whose rip-roaring act involves using his mic as a chew toy before defecating live onstage (Inn Listi magazine called it ‘a woofing work of Rabelaisian triumph refusing to play by human rules.’). Meanwhile, I forgot that the performance artist Marina Abramović recently decapitated herself to have a swan’s head surgically attached to her body for the durational piece Cygnetfier, in which she’ll co-parent a cygnet with an ambivalent mallard at St Margaret’s Loch. And the howlin’ wolf playing a banjo is in fact Howlin’ Wolf himself, whose final wish was to have his brain transplanted into a real-life wolf as soon as technology allowed. The transplant was mostly successful, yet one-third of the real-life wolf’s brain remains, meaning Howlin’ will occasionally enter a feral state and savage the front row, usually to death. Audiences must sign a release of liability form before entering, but this long-toothed strummer barks the blues so beautifully that most think it’s a risk worth taking. In lieu of affordable places to stay during August, these animals will stalk the streets of Old Town throughout the night and live off scraps of food provided to them by appreciative tourists. 

A lesson learned, then; no matter the seemingly insurmountable costs for performers at the Edinburgh Festival, art will find a way. ‘Dare to discover’ is this year’s strapline on the Fringe programme. But would you dare let a peacock in an off-the-shoulder dress serenade you while a pigeon in a bowler hat stares on? 

Main picture: Jess Shurte.