'I spent my Saturday nights at Dalkeith Miners Club – now it's inspired my first Fringe play'
The dark comedy written by Bonnyrigg local Kari Hall was inspired by the dialect, places and people of Midlothian
A young playwright who grew up in Midlothian is “putting Bonnyrigg on the stage” at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe with a debut show about a teenage girl who lives for her Saturday nights at Dalkeith Miners Club.
Kari Hall’s show Hame. Teeth. CLUB. centres around 19-year-old Morgan Shields, a “hedonistic party girl” who has found herself at the local nightclub every weekend for the past six months.
But after experiencing a sexual assault, Morgan is forced to confront her lack of motivation and direction, and the emptiness that remains when people believe you, but no one stands by your side.
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The play is not a true story but draws on Kari’s experience coming of age in Bonnyrigg in the 2010s, when they would hit up Dalkeith Miners Club with their high school friends after a Saturday shift at TK Maxx.
“A lot of people find it funny that it’s set in Dalkeith Miners Club, because it’s such a part of the nostalgia of growing up in Midlothian,” said the 27-year-old. “People are like, what? You’re putting this on the stage at the Edinburgh Fringe?”
“The club itself goes back years, but I knew it as a nightclub. The reason you’d go was because you couldn’t afford a taxi to go up town. You knew you could just go to Dalkeith with a fiver.”
Reminiscing about drunken Saturday nights at the club, Kari said: “I don’t even know how to describe it. It was casual and laid back and sort of felt like your Grandad’s 60th birthday party, but it was also mental.
“I’ve never been to another place like it.”
As well as Dalkeith Miners Club, Bonnyrigg hill and the TK Maxx at Fort Kinnaird also feature as locations in the play.
Kari wrote the play in 2023 while feeling “very angry” about a sexual assault in London, where they now live working as a chef while running a theatre company for Scottish and other Celtic artists.
But Kari knew they wanted to set the play in Midlothian, keen to see the language, places and people who live there brought to life on stage.
“I don’t really know any Midlothian stories, never mind working class Midlothian stories,” said Kari. “There’s not much work that reflects that very specific part of Scotland.”
They continued: “I feel like a lot of Scottish theatre draws on Celtic folklore, which is great, but I like to see reality on stage. I like reflecting the life I see around me and how I grew up.
“The people I knew and grew up with, they don’t really go to the theatre so I wanted to be able to bring those people in and have that representation on stage.”
Despite doing theatre for ten years, Hame. Teeth. CLUB. is the first play Kari has brought to the Fringe. And as a working-class artist, the process has been far from easy.
“A huge part of my experience so far has been the money stress and trying to crowd fund,” they said. “It takes away from a lot of the joy of what the art is and what the play is and why I’m doing it.
“Already I’m thinking this is not something I could feasibly do again. I’ve taken six weeks off work and I need to cover my bills.
“I’m really grateful that I’m able to do it this time round but it does make me think about all the working-class stories we’re not hearing because people can’t get here, as well as all the people who can’t afford to come and see the shows because they’re so expensive.”
Kari is the only Scottish recipient of this year’s Keep it Fringe fund, set up in 2023 by Fleabag writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge to support artists facing financial barriers in bringing their work to the festival.
Hame. Teeth. CLUB. is showing from August 5 to August 30 at the Underbelly Cowgate.