Edinburgh Festival And The Community Of Aidan And Hilda

The international Edinburgh Festival Fringe is back with a bang after the Covid years. This year the Community of Aidan and Hilda played a small part.  Sally Simpson, a co-ordinator of the East Anglia CAH group joined Scottish and Borders members for a day there.

We enjoyed floral displays at Old St. Pauls Church in the Royal Mile depicting scenes from Jesus's life such as desert, garden and river.  We then led Midday Prayer which other visitors shared in.

Then on to Layers Theatre. Layers is an innovative one-man play depicting 10 minutes of a day in the life of the performer, Yuuya, and his family. Projection onto layers of fabric help to depict the recorded voices of the characters. What you can say because you are family. What you don't say because you are family. By disassembling and reassembling the clumsy family dynamic, the show seeks to understand it by looking at it from a new perspective.  The leading character has dementia.  The leading mainstay is Max, the dog.

This show came about because the Japanese actor Yuuya amd his wife had nowhere to stay during a previous Festival. Someone pointed them to Gill Davidson, who was the carer for her husband Ian, who although he had dementia, was made happy by his faith and his dog Max, and periodically raised his arms happpily and said 'How do you do?'  Yuuya was so deeply inspired by the spirit in Gill, Ian and the dog - Gill's care, Max's faithfulness, and Ian's indefinable spirit shining beneath mental disintegration, that he wrote this one man play on the theme of a man with dementia and his dog, Max. I, too was inspired by Ian and took Max for a walk. 

After the show we met Yuuya and his wife, and had lunch on the green  play area that served several shows. 

Ian was a member of the Community of Aidan and Hilda.  The show goes on.