Last month's London bombings left many comedians at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival with an artistic dilemma, writes Brian Boyd.
British Asian comic Paul Chowdhry is on stage at the Pleasance Theatre. "I couldn't get a seat on the Tube before July 7th. Now I get a whole carriage to myself. Sometimes a whole train," he says. There is an uneasy silence and then relieved laughter.
"I think audiences expect me to refer to the bombings," says Chowdhry, who went to the same London school as one of the July 7th bombers. "Comedy is a safety valve in itself. If you start censoring your material, that's when you are restricting yourself and freedom of speech."
Chowdhry had to tear up the script for his Edinburgh show on the day of the bombings and had just two weeks to write a new show for the Fringe.
These uneasy moments during shows are happening all over this year's festival. Many comedians and drama groups were doing previews of their Edinburgh shows during early July. The bombings have forced a substantial amount of them into hurried rewrites.
Dublin comic Andrew Maxwell, a strong tip for a Perrier nomination this year, had to replace an entire section of his one-man show. "There was this whole bit where I talked about how no British Muslim would ever be fanatical enough to become a suicide bomber," he says. "So that immediately was gone and had to be replaced very quickly."
British comic Stewart Lee (the writer of Jerry Springer: The Opera) had to take a half an hour's worth of material out of his one-hour show (material about multiculturalism that he thought sounded "naive" in the wake of the bombings). "You're listening to the news thinking 'this is terrible', but part of you is spotting the absurdities that could be used for comedy," he says.
The British theatre group behind the show Terrorist! The Musical had a three and a half-hour meeting on July 8th. Their show is a dark satire that imagines what would happen if George Bush won the "war on terror" and terrorists found themselves unemployed.
"Suddenly terrorism was closer (to Britain) than ever," says director Jessica Beck. "We decided to go ahead with the show. The whole point of theatre is to provoke discussion." Song titles in this show include You've Got To Kill To Get Noticed and Grab Some Nails, Make A Bomb, but so far no (serious) complaints have been received and audiences have been flocking to the show.
Some acts simply had to drop certain material, however. Danish Asian comic Omar Marzouk used to "blow up" his audience with a fake suitcase bomb but has now cut the scene. Others, such as the opera composer Kevin Burstein, faced difficult choices. In his work, Manifest Destiny, the fictitious suicide bomber is called Omar - the same name as the first London bomber. Burstein's dilemma was to do with sensitivities but he eventually decided to leave his opera intact.
It appears that, far from shying away from anything deemed "controversial", this year's Fringe performers are intent on tackling recent world events head on. A theatre show, with the rather in-your-face title of My Pyramids, about Lynndie England, the US soldier who was convicted of torturing Iraqi prisoners, is attracting very good reviews. So too is a drama about Abu Ghraib prison, sardonically called Guardians, and a Scottish play, Snuff, a very gritty and very moving account of xenophobic violence on home turf.
The Fringe director, Paul Gudgin, welcomes the way in which performers have tackled controversial subjects this year.
"It is absolutely right that what is covered in newspapers and on television should be covered by the arts," he says. "This widespread use of current, political and war-related themes demonstrates that while spectacular, fun and energetic, the Fringe never ignores the real work but tackles it head-on in many diverse and creative ways."
Gudgin believes that this is the most political Fringe since the heady days of the early 1980s, when the miners' strike, mass unemployment and deep unease at the then Tory government's policies made the Fringe seem more like a Socialist Workers Party knees-up than an arts festival.
Ironically, a show that many thought would be highly insensitive, if not downright reckless, has proved to be the most poignant of the Fringe.
Yesterday Was A Weird Day: Reflections on July 7th, 2005, by the Look Left Look Right theatre company, looks at how the bombings changed the lives of those caught up in them. The writers of the play spoke to survivors and emergency workers at the scene and also interviewed the late Robin Cook and MP George Galloway about their reactions to the bombings. All proceeds from the show go to the London Bombings Relief Fund.
"It's a very immediate response," says the show's co-writer, Mimi Poskitt.
"You have a vast audience range, people from all over the world. People are interested in what happened. We felt the Fringe was the perfect place to air this kind of theatre."
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival runs until Aug 29. Booking details: 0044-1312260000 or www.edfringe.com