'You Had To Be There' - Documentary Premiere Screening at Long Play

After 6 months of planning, filming, editing, and crowdfunding, the documentary I shot at the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2022 is done. Come and see it for the first time at the wonderful Long Play theatre in Fitzroy North, and celebrate the end of this project with me!

The Edinburgh Fringe is the biggest arts festival in the world, and like many other comedians, the festival has in turns inspired, broken, thrilled and exhausted me since I first went in 2014. During the two years of the pandemic when Australia's borders were closed, the one thing that I missed more than anything else was the month I spend in Edinburgh every August performing comedy, watching shows, and seeing friends.

In 2022 when we finally had the chance to go back, I knew it was going to be a special year at the fringe, so I decided to shoot a documentary, sitting down with as many friends and fellow performers as I could, and talking to them about what the festival has meant to them. It was an amazing opportunity to share stories, and even hear some unexpected perspectives on this festival that I love so much.

The Edinburgh Fringe is such an enormous, all-encompassing experience that I've always found it difficult to explain to people just why I love it so much. That's where the title of the film comes from, it's the refrain repeated at the end of every story that tries to sum it up, but inevitably falls short yet again: YOU HAD TO BE THERE.