After years of disruption, Edinburgh’s world-famous Fringe Festival will be back in full swing this year, and social media platform TikTok has decided to get in on the action.
The popular social media platform is an official sponsor of this year’s festival, and some of the app’s famous faces are set to show TikTok has come a long way from thirty second lip-synching videos. More recently, the platform has allowed longer videos, as well as offering a wide range of filters, backgrounds and effects, which has helped create lots of new comic content.
Humour has become a big part of the app, so much so that some users have been able to establish an impressive following through their jokes and sketches. Here are some you will be able to spot at this year’s Fringe Festival:
Finlay Christie
Having started doing stand-up at just seven years-old, Finlay Christie has already established himself as one of the UK’s most exciting young comics. However, on TikTok he is more known for his sketches, which have helped him rack up more than 170,000 followers. He is making his festival debut with his show “OK Zoomer”.
Despite his many years of experience as a comedian, this will be the first time that Finlay has performed one of his shows at the Fringe.
He says: “I knew that Edinburgh was gonna be something that I had to do, and I was kind of scared of it because there’s so much pressure. You’re making your statement as a comedian saying “this is who I am” and it better be good.”
The idea of his show is to set the record straight about the younger generation.
“The bulk of it is about Gen Z and dispelling some of the myths about young people, a lot of it is kind of defending us.
“I want the outcome at the end of the show to be me saying “look if you thought young people were all p****s before, hopefully now you think the kids are alright.”
Finlay will be coming to the festival off the back of gigging in Montreal, where he is performing his stand-up shows in French after studying the language at university. However he’ll stick to English for his debut Fringe show at the Gilded Balloon.
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/finlay-christie-ok-zoomer
Finlay Christie: OK Zoomer, Gilded Balloon Teviot, 18.00pm, August 3-16, 18-28
Sugarcoated Sisters
Off the back of winning Best New Act at the Musical Comedy Awards, the Sugarcoated Sisters are bringing their new show “Bittersweet” to the Fringe. Chloe and Tabby are sisters in comedy as well as being sisters biologically, and the pair began gaining recognition on TikTok when they started posting their musical comedy over lockdown.
Whilst the pair have performed at the Fringe before, this will be their first time performing on their own with their own material.
“Because our show is just us and it’s all original music that we’ve written, based off of our TikTok, we’re just really, really buzzing for it.
“It really is the centre of new comedy in the UK and in the world, it’s the biggest arts festival in the world and it’s really just so exciting for us to be included in that.”
Despite their success on TikTok, the pair say they had to overcome feelings of being too old to use the app, and are grateful for how well-received their videos have been.
“We’re very humbled, and happy, when we think about our journey and sometimes it makes us cry because we’re so grateful to TikTok as a platform firstly, because honestly we thought we had given up on creativity…we would never be doing this right now if it wasn’t for that random TikTok stuff that happened.
“We’ve had the best time, we’ve had so much fun (writing the show). We originally thought “maybe we could take our TikTok parodies and do a TikTok show of our TikToks live” but we were talked out of that.
“I think the penny dropped of what we wanted to make the show about. Our sisterhood, our shared life experience, moving back in with our parents when we’re thirty.”
Despite their nerves about performing such a personal show, the comedy duo are excited to share “Bittersweet” with audiences this August.
“We’re gonna go through it, and do that, and maybe the next show will be about something else.”
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/sugarcoated-sisters-bittersweet
Sugar Coated Sisters: Bittersweet, Just the Tonic @ The Caves, 20.50pm August 4-14, 16-21, 23-28
Stokes and Summers
Kate and Claudia began doing well on TikTok with their sketches, characters and costumes. Their series in which they sum up a film in sixty seconds has gained them tens of thousands of likes, and their brand new sketch show is coming to the Fringe in the form of their show “Careering” a collection of tales of workplace pitfalls.
The pair received fundraising from some of their TikTok fans to get them to this year’s Fringe Festival, and they’re grateful to get the chance to perform this year.
“It’s something that we’ve wanted to do, because we’ve been a duo for about seven years now, since we met at uni, and we’ve always wanted to go to the Fringe because it seems like such a big milestone for performers, especially comedy performers.
“We’re building on our momentum, but we probably wouldn’t do it without that momentum because it is such a huge commitment practically as well as creatively. So that’s why we did the fundraiser, because it’s going to make such a difference.”
Their show “Careering” is different from the sketches that have gained traction for them on TikTok, but the duo are excited to showcase their sketch-based comedy.
“The show is set in a multi-company office block, and we wanted to create a show where we could play lots of different characters and tell different stories, but we like having one theme.
“We thought we would go with the theme of work because it’s generally so relatable for everyone and for us it’s quite a big thing in our lives while we’re pursuing our creative ambitions, we have to work in day jobs to pay the bills.”
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/stokes-and-summers-careering
Stokes and Summers: Careering, 15.00pm, Gilded Balloon Teviot, August 4-13, 16-29
