Myq Kaplan on the highs and lows of the Edinburgh Fringe

American comedian Myq Kaplan is at Edinburgh Fringe with his stand-up show ImPerfect at  Underbelly Bristo Squareat 19:45.  Here he shares what he can't get enough of at the festival, his most embarrassing Edinburgh experience and the worst thing about the Fringe. Apart from the cost of accommodation, obviously…

Edinburgh Binge

I’ve only been to Fringe once before, and the best part for me was doing my show. Is that fair? To say that my favourite part of this massive festival full of thousands of performers and near-infinite things to do is… ME? 

Truly, getting to present a show that I’ve been working on for years, sharing it with folks from around the world, and seeing it grow and evolve in beautiful ways, it’s a magical experience that I’m thrilled to have. I’m excited to be the smallest me-shaped piece of the gigantic puzzle that the Fringe is.

I also love all the other pieces. I've seen clowns, dancers, and so many other beautiful weirdos! It’s delightful to see all the art so different from what I do, adding so many flavours to this whole universe soup.

So I guess I’m saying that my favourite Fringe parts are me AND not me!

Edinburgh Cringe

This may sound embarrassing, but I don’t have a lot of embarrassing stories. Partially because I’m a stand-up comedian, and when anything embarrassing happens, I can catalyse it into something funny and cathartic to share on stage, so it becomes less embarrassing and more triumphant. How’s THAT for embarrassing? This comedian couldn’t even come up with an embarrassing story.

Or here’s something, maybe. Last Fringe, I met a comedian who said he enjoyed my first album. Now, I like it, too, but it WAS my first album from a decade earlier, and since then I’d released three newer hours that I loved even more because I felt I’d been improving as a comedian, becoming more myself, making better and better work moving forward. 

And so, when this comedian told me that he enjoyed that first album, I thought it would be funny to say ‘My peak!’ as if to suggest it had been all downhill after that. And he believed me, so I felt embarrassed. 

He was like, ‘I could see that.’ And I was like NOOOO my beautiful stupid joke!

Is that embarrassing enough? If not, how even more embarrassing for me!

Edinburgh whinge

One challenging aspect of the Fringe is managing emotions in the face of external judgments. Which is to say, the worst thing can be worrying about reviewers showing up. And the OTHER worst thing can be worrying about reviewers NOT showing up. 

I love doing what I do, and comedy can’t be done in a vacuum (the comedian would suffocate), so I’m grateful for everyone who takes the time to engage with the work I’m doing AND it can be an emotional whirlwind imagining the potential consequences of this one reviewer butterfly flapping its wings and having a potentially massive impact on all that follows. Will it be a good hurricane, a bad hurricane, or no hurricane at all? 

Ultimately, I think my challenge is maintaining an emotional even keel regardless of whose wings, gums, or pens are flapping about me and my show. (Thanks for covering my comedy, Chortle! You are the only exception to this! I do not fear you! I love you!)

Published: 4 Aug 2023