What price an arts festival?

I have now started to dream about improvising narratives, so I am no longer sure what is real.

I shall therefore talk about other shows I have seen, as I am pretty sure they are real.

The Principle of Motion is a very exciting piece of devised theatre by Activated Image. Unlike much of what I've seen on the fringe, the inventiveness of the ideas is more than matched by the skill of the cast - great ensemble work and great fun.

Making Fish Laugh is an inspired show by Alex Horne, who is always entertaining and occasionally reaches heights I would go as far as to call brilliant. Unique.

Of course, the fringe is almost inconcievably huge, and nobody can see more than a handful of the shows on offer. While these shows are undoubtedly of variable quality, what has impressed me is the self-sufficient nature of the fringe festival. Three weeks containing an unbelievable amount of sustained creativity, and it all runs itself because it's essentially subsidised by the performers. It's possible to take this for granted when you're here for the duration - but when my old sparring partner Adam Karni Cohen visited a few days ago I finally ended up walking around as a spectator rather than a participant, and realised quite how amazing the scale of the whole thing is.

I've always been ready to leap on my high horse and get cross about the state of arts funding in the UK, but having seen so many artistic risks taken and ideas tried out in Edinburgh I've started to wonder if a lack of arts funding is actually rather conducive to bold and inventive theatre. Sure, it's a pity that several hundred people have to go bankrupt for the fringe festival to happen - but there's no chance that it will ever get boring.

Something that other arts festivals could do with taking notice of.