WHAT makes the live arts experience so compelling and important, even in this digital age? That’s one of the questions that will be asked when electronic pop star Be Charlotte, comedian Ashley Storrie, TRNSMT organiser, Geoff Ellis, and music promoter Donald Macleod, come together for the third of our Cool Conversations – an event that will include chat and debate, but also some brief live performance. The event, titled Crowdsurfing, Why Live Matters will be held at the Edinburgh Grand on May 23.

Comedian Ashley Storrie’s answer to the question is that it’s because it is “among the few times in which we actually come together in a giant group for anything anymore.” Something, she says, happens when people laugh together. “It’s a great thing, as a comedian, when you can get an audience that are all different ages, races and genders and you can galvanise them at laughing. That’s a pretty magical thing.”

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For singer-songwriter, Charlotte Brimner of Be Charlotte, the live performance of her songs has always been important, right from when she began doing open mic nights in Dundee, to tours that have taken her to Europe, including Reeperbahn in Hamburg, and her more recent live schools performances of Do Not Disturb, her first single recorded with major record label Columbia/Sony. “I love the vulnerability with performing live,” she says. “I like it when you can watch someone performing and totally believe every word they’re saying. There’s something so special about that.”

Performing onstage is, for her, often an intense experience, “Because the songs I'm writing are very personal and about things that have happened in my life I find myself getting emotional when singing the songs sometimes. I performed at the opening of V&A Dundee last year and I found that pretty emotional. It was such a big moment for me and I definitely had a wee emotional moment after it.”

Brimner describes herself as “not the most confident in everyday life”. “But when I step on a stage it has such a different feeling. I’ve worked very hard to work up the courage to be less nervous on stage and just enjoy it.”

Some people, however, seem born to live performance – and Ashley Storrie is one of them. As the daughter of comedian Janey Godley, she was raised in a world where holding a mic and taking the stage, was just an everyday thing. Even before she first saw her mum gigging at about nine, she was witnessing comedians perform in her mother and father’s pub – among them Jerry Sadowitz. Performance, she says, is “disgustingly natural” to both herself and Godley. “We’ve never needed a lesson in it. It’s just something that we both do very easily. And we both feel a lot more confident as human beings in front of an audience, as opposed to one on one.”

She tells a story about the time her mother took her to see The Sound Of Music Live at the King’s Theatre, at the age of six: “I stood on my chair and sang every line, pointing out mistakes that the cast were making. My mum said it was the most mortifying day of her life. She spent the entire time covering my mouth.”

Storrie will be appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe with her show Hysterical this August. But live performance isn’t her only medium – she’s probably more famous for her viral online videos. “I’ve got such a weird relationship with live performance, because part of me sometimes hates it – because it’s so easy to be off by myself on the internet and not caring. The internet has created an environment where that’s fine. But I force myself and then once I’ve done a live gig, I’m like this is why I’m doing this. ”

Often she brings, she says, stories and thoughts to the stage which she wouldn’t share one-on-one with people. “Every horrible thing that ever happens to me that I’ll never tell another person in real life, I’ll say it on stage happily and have no qualms about it. Obviously everybody has got a different role as a stand-up, but I think mine is to put my life out there and then everybody can go, my life is not as weird as that. I think a lot of women feel a lot better that they’re not me. I think that’s what a lot of my comedy career has been. A lot of people thinking, well at least we’re not like that.”

Tickets are available at: ​www.eventbrite.com/e/cool-conversations-crowdsurfing-why-live-matters-tickets-61285315027