“Susan Edsall has a perfect life, a perfect love and perfect happiness. When she suddenly undergoes an unexpected loss, that all ends.
She finds it nearly impossible to imagine any future worth living. Until, on an ordinary drive to the grocery store, The Voice tells her to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain.
Told through 27 captivating characters and dynamic multimedia, this solo show is a walk through 540 miles of rain, resentment and redemption, exploring grief and surrender.”
Where: Eve at Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower
When: 30 Jul-24 Aug
Ticket link: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/buen-camino
Your show focuses on the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Can you tell me where your inspiration came from?
I had a perfect life, a perfect love, and perfect happiness. Then I experienced the greatest loss of my life and all that ended.
I was consumed by excruciating pain and could not imagine any future worth living. And then, on an ordinary trip to the grocery store, I heard The Voice.
The trouble is, I don’t believe in Voices. And yet, when The Voice told me to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain, I obeyed despite knowing nothing about this ancient pilgrimage.
My spiritual experience on the trail–including a dose of magic—was so counter to what I believed or had ever known in my life. It seemed ripe for art.
Buen Camino is a true-life story and a solo show capturing many characters. What has been the process of developing the show?
When I finished the Camino, arriving in Santiago de Compostela after walking 540 miles, I walked seventy-five more miles to get to Finisterre, commonly known as The End Of The World.
I had rented an apartment on the beach there for a week. It rained the entire time. So I sat at the kitchen table and wrote for seven days, trying to answer the question, “What just happened to me?”
Then I found Jessica Lynn Johnson and Soaring Solo Studios on the internet and asked her to help me develop my transformative experience into a one person show. I premiered it at the Soaring Solo STARS Series in December 2024 in Los Angeles, winning the Encore Award.
I then revised the script to go to United Solo on 42nd Street in New York City, the largest solo show festival in the world. After that, I revised the script again for the Hollywood Fringe Festival in Los Angeles in June 2025.
All of this performing stretched me in multiple ways. I deepened my characters, took more risks in telling the parts of the story that seemed crazy, honed in on the heart of what happened.
Testing the story out on different audiences enabled me to discover what had an impact and where the audience–and the story–was asking me to go further. I learn so much from the process of performing and rehearsing. But the process of performing delivers gold.
Has it been easy to translate experience into entertainment?
Easy? I can’t say that! But it has been invigorating and informing.
I am energized by performing and revising and deepening the characters. It’s very fulfilling to get as close to the bone as I can with the story.
It’s loads of fun to play 23 distinct characters with their own particular stories, quirks, personalities, and arguments.
I also selected visual images and sounds that captured the trail, heightening the experience for the audience so they can get as close as possible to the experience without being in Spain in the rain.
The lighting design brings the environment and mood to life on stage. Everything is designed to have the audience experience the story, rather than just hearing about it.
What are you looking forward to the most in Edinburgh? Do you find Fringe festivals inspiring?
I’m looking forward to performing for an international audience and to see how the universal themes of my show can cross borders, discovering which aspects of the story touch people from diverse cultures differently.
I will learn plenty from performing back-to-back shows for a month, something I haven’t done before. My expectation is that Buen Camino will emerge from Edinburgh stronger, deeper, and more interesting.
My view is that art matters deeply and is essential to our lives. I’m curious about which aspects of my show are particularly moving to audience members, particularly given the current upheaval in the world.
My hope is that Buen Camino stimulates conversations—and that I might be in on some of them.
Being part of the largest Fringe Festival in the world is thrilling. Being at the nexus of so much wild creativity can’t help but unleash something new in me. And to see the innovation in using non-traditional spaces to tell every kind of story imaginable will broaden my own sense of what is possible.
I expect to emerge from this experience newly inspired.
Where can we see your work after Fringe?
I head back to the U.S. after Edinburgh. I’ll be bringing the show to the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in early September and then I’m performing in Bozeman, Montana—the town where I grew up!
I’m looking forward to performing for a hometown crowd. Fall and winter performances are still in the planning stages.
I write weekly on my Substack, share updates on Instagram @susanjoyedsall, and all of my upcoming performances can be found on my website at susanedsall.com.