If you go down to the woods today...

“The scorn from people that it's full of lazy hippies who need to get a job and have a shower is about the most impressive stack of bullshit I can possibly imagine."

That's me told. While talking to Forest Fringe's energetic, geeky co-director Andy Field I take care to omit that I have tried to avoid the place, principally due to a run-in with a plate of challenging hummus.

“I can appreciate how the aesthetic of the Forest Cafe can put people off," he says. "Whether you can totally get on board with the more extreme bohemian elements of the cafe or not, those people who are too quick to turn their noses up at its most extreme eccentricities are missing out on a whole lot of vibrant, fascinating and inspiring things that it does."

Based in a former church just off Bristo Square, the Forest Cafe is a haven for alternatives. It boasts an organic cafe, a hall for a whole gamut of events and the infamous "Sip And Snip" hair salon, where customers can get their barnet trimmed while downing vodka. Are you brave enough to surrender your hair when there's booze in the mix?

It is also a collective, so there's no leader – just two or three people employed by the charity as caretakers, plus a small army of volunteers.

In August, the building is temporarily invaded by Forest Fringe: the one-stop shop for surprising, original and radical theatre. Tickets are free but donations welcomed. Field and his partner in theatrical crime, Debbie Pearson, founded the alternative festival programme in 2007, when they were both just 23 years old.

They met as students, when Field was on a year abroad in Canada.

"I stayed in Toronto on Debbie's floor in the summer after my year there," he says. "She had just broken up with her boyfriend and was supposed to go to live in Winnipeg. I said: 'Come to Edinburgh. Stay in our flat and get to know the city.' She's never left.”

For 2011 Forest Fringe is dramatically changing the way it is run.

"We've taken eight artists whose work we love," says Field. "Each of those artists is going to be doing a relatively long run of shows, but around that they've all curated different projects, exploring ideas, hosting discussions, big exhibitions. They also help us manage the venue so they've helped us find accommodation, helping us run the box office and volunteering themselves.”

One long-term collaborator is Bristol-based performance duo Action Hero, who are mounting a show inspired by daredevil biker Evel Knievel. "It's not possible for us to repeat the show more than six times in Edinburgh," says Gemma Paintin, one half of the company. "Our bodies wouldn't hold up to it. I've broken my arm during the piece before and my partner James is covered in bruises quite often.”

Before their debut at the venue in 2008, Action Hero had always been sceptical about bringing their work to Edinburgh. But being part of a collective where no money would be made—but equally none would be lost—was too tempting. And, says Paintin, there's something unifying about having to muck in and "clean the toilets at nine in the morning before the doors open with another artist who you've never met before”.

A few years back Action Hero were just about to start a performance in one of the venue's spaces. "These two guys came in who were really angry and furious," says Paintin. "They'd been doing something with their band the week before and hadn't had a great time. They stormed about trying to drag their enormous speakers and drum kit across the stage. And we said 'we're just about to do a performance actually'. And they said: [adopting a Glaswegian accent] 'I don't fucking care. You can fuck off'."

Paintin chuckles: "It's such an open place that you have to take the rough with the smooth. Some angry drummer from a crap band might come in and reclaim their equipment. But that's what makes it this incredible place. There's such amazing work.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Forest Fringe disapprove of performers who sup with the devilish "big supermarket venues like the Pleasance". Field warns that "you have this very narrow slot and within that slot you have to create a piece that is cohesive and resilient enough that it can be performed every day of the festival, and that it can be sold as a product and something to consume. It becomes this brutal cycle of exhausting marketing and consumption. That whole ecology is not what I got into creating performance for.”

He even goes as far as to discourage theatre-makers from bringing shows to the capital: "The idea that you have to go to Edinburgh and you have to present a show and that its the best way of achieving all the things you want lacks imagination."

"The festival would benefit from having fewer people who might go to Edinburgh without having thought why they're going and end up disappointed by their experience of it.”

However, just as it's beginning to build a solid reputation, Forest Fringe will soon to be on the move. Bankruptcy has hit the landlord of the Cafe, and the building is being sold – probably to make way for a restaurant. "What that particular part of Edinburgh needs is definitely not another restaurant," grumbles Field.

But there is one key advantage: "Because we're moving out of the building about four days after the festival finishes, there's going to be one mind-alteringly huge party. On Friday 26 August, we're going to do this massive building-wide project. It's going to involve 40 or 50 artists from right across the festival, creating these amazing one-on-one encounters. It's going to be quite a send-off.”

http://www.forestfringe.co.uk/festivals/edinburgh-festival-2011/