FOR some, the start of August heralds not the annual sweatathon to a generic foreign destination, but the pilgrimage North, to Edinburgh – where I once had to buy a jumper… in August!.

This will be Northern Stage’s third year at the Edinburgh Festival, in a different venue this time, the King’s Hall. The Newcastlebased company is also hosting the Paines Plough portable auditorium at Summerhall.

So, that’s 20 shows to look after, numerous performers and two young teams of volunteers to crew and market the King’s Hall venue. It’s the kind of crackers undertaking that needs an expert conducting the chaos.

Northern Stage’s artistic director Lorne Campbell is just that. I caught up with him in Newcastle during the run-up to the Fringe Festival.

This will be his 12th fringe, with previous ones including eight years working at the Traverse, one of Edinburgh’s leading venues.

Campbell is a native of the city and says: “So, the Fringe has been a big part of my life… forever.”

The original impetus to take North-East actors up to Scotland for a month came from Campbell’s predecessor, Erica Whyman.

“There was a disproportionately small number of artists from the North managing to get work to Edinburgh. Financial risk was one factor, with an average show there costing between £5,000 and £7,000,” says Campbell.

That is money that, in all likelihood, a company will have to write off.

“If you’re incredibly, incredibly lucky, you get to break even. As well as the significant financial risk, there’s the other 3,000 shows to contend with, the risk of going and just being invisible. How do you get your head above the parapet within that?” Campbell explains.

He’s passionate about the opportunities offered by this annual insanity, where the town turns into something completely different.

“It’s the biggest arts festival in the world.

For an artist at any point in their career, it can be the moment when something fundamental changes. Local can become national, national international and bills paid for a couple of years on the back of one winning show. So what could take years, inside the context of Edinburgh, can happen in two weeks.” Campell says.’ It is a forceful argument for a strong Northern Stage presence. The support enables artists to take more creative risks because they need not be so bound up with making a commercial product. In addition to productions which Northern Stage is hosting or providing on-the-ground assistance with promoting, the project also sees 20 volunteers behind the scenes and putting a few more bums on seats.

It sounds like a blast – living and working with like-minded young people at the start of their careers in the performing arts.

“These teams are crucial to the viability of the project. They run the venue…that makes it possible,” says Campbell.

The artistic director has helmed I Promise You Sex and Violence, written by David Ireland, with whom Campbell has collaborated many times before. They are both founder members of Greyscale, a Newcastle-based theatre company. I Promise You… sounds like a brutal uncompromising romp into the dark recesses of the early 1930s.

Campbell describes it as a romantic comedy, a love triangle and it’s powerful plot about racism, misogyny, homophobia and a lost generation who have no idea what the hell they’re supposed to be doing and no idea how to behave. It sounds like granite-black satire.

“David is so funny. He writes incredible jokes and he writes them in the most uncomfortable register,” Campbell says.

Drawing on shared popular cultural references including farce and the sitcom, the play sounds fascinating, but unsurprisingly carries a strictly 18+ recommendation. This sits the project clearly at one end of the Northern Stage’s spectrum within its Edinburgh programme. I Promise You… stars Esther Mcauley, Reuben Johnson and Keith Fleming.

The King’s Hall programme offers a huge range of the purely programmed and those shows which Northern Stage has supported creatively. These include a one-off performance by North ’14, now renamed The Camisado Club, of Send More Paper while last year’s Northern Stage graduates have flown the nest and will be appearing with Bonenkai at The Underbelly.

There are also shows like Unlimited Theatre’s Playdough, an interactive theatre game show about money for all audiences 7+ plus five showings of last year’s Fringe sellout Captain Amazing, written by Alistair MacDowall, starring Mark Weinman and produced by Newcastle’s Live Theatre.

In the Roundabout at Summerhall, mustsees include a new mysterious show by Mark Ravenhill, called Secret Theatre. The Secret Theatre will also be performing A Series of Increasingly Impossible Acts, with help from the audience, at King’s Hall.

Campbell will attend for the duration of the festival. “The Fringe is so improbable, unlikely and it makes such little sense. A quarter of a million people will go to Edinburgh and watch two or three shows a day for three weeks. You couldn’t invent it if it didn’t exist,” is how he sums up the experience.

And thanks to Northern Stage, those people will be seeing significant work from the North-East.

  • Northern Stage at King’s Hall runs from July 31 until August 23. For tickets and the Paines Plough Roundabout programme ring 0131- 477-6630 or go to northernstage.co.uk/edinburgh