EDINBURGH 2023: Kieran Hodgson Q&A

BWW caught up with Kieran Hodgson to chat about bringing Big In Scotland to the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Tell us a bit about Big In Scotland.

Hello! My shows are these kind-of one-man storytelling monologue things with characters and silly voices and hopefully a common idea that holds it together. This year's common idea? I move to Scotland and I'm trying to be someone different, seeking out change in a country that wrestles with change all the time. It's an attempt to understand a place that in some ways is intensely familiar, in other ways strange and unknown, and at the same time find a 'New Scottish Kieran' who is better than 'Old English Kieran'. But is that even possible? Find out this August!

 

I saw a preview of the show in Glasgow in March [side note: it was fantastic] has it changed much from the work in progress?

Thank you so much for coming and I'm glad you liked it! Cards on the table, it's changed a great deal and I hope that I haven't made it much worse for you. The central idea remains the same – I move to Scotland, I wrestle with who to be up here – but as ever my early drafts are far too busy and there's been quite a lot of work to make the show shorter and clearer. Fundamentally, I've had to tackle the question of 'why would anyone care about this?', seeing as on the surface this is the story of a man moving house, which ain't exactly Mission: Impossible. Have I answered that question? Find out this August!

 

It's quite a personal show for you, does that make it more nerve-wracking?

Oh I wish I could just write fiction, but my imagination is terrible and so I'm locked into the current formula: a rich real-world topic wedded to some sort of personal discovery. I imagine and fear that audiences must be terribly bored of it by now. 'Why is this man still talking about himself? There's nothing of worth or interest in him.' So yes, I don't fear the personal exposure so much as how dreary that exposure must be for members of the public, especially when there are people with far more engaging psyches at the Fringe. And people who can do trapeze. Go see them.

 

Who would you like to come and see Big in Scotland?

I guess this show is for you if you want to see someone wrestle with big questions of nationhood and individuality in a medium very poorly suited to it, and without the talent to reach any useful conclusions. If you like hearing different accents, if you like a song without any accompanying music, if you like a painfully sincere final 5 minutes, then this is the show for you. Oh, and if you like Two Doors Down then please come along, it is almost entirely unlike Two Doors Down.

 

What would you like audiences to take away from it?

Dear audience member, please take away from my show the sense that the more I know about Scotland, the less I understand, but that the investigation is worth it. I think that there's a great many assumptions made about the United Kingdom and how its constituent nations interrelate, and whatever future you see for us, it will probably be healthier if we all make an effort to break those assumptions down. Oh, and be yourself and all that. Thanks for coming!

Tickets are available here: 

Photo credit: Mihaela Bodlovic

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