Edinburgh Festival Day 19: And now, the end is near: It's finally curtains for Richard Demarco, who is being dragged kicking and screaming from his gallery. Tom Morris reports

A MAN pedals a squeaky ice cream trolley around in circles on a dimly lit stage. The trolley is painted black, and the man is muttering in broken English. He is performing From Heaven through the World to Hell as part of the Festival of Polish Theatre at the Richard Demarco Gallery. Later that evening the dance company Polska Teatr Tanca Balet will perform extracts from their work in the decrepit vaulted studio theatre upstairs. After that, Teatr Grupa Chwilowa will give vodka and cake to their audience in A Stop in the Desert, the smash hit of last year's Fringe. Yesterday the Polish Festival, compiled by Richard Demarco and James O'Brien, his theatre director, won a special combined Fringe First award.

While the ice-cream van squeaks around the stage, Demarco is behind the scenes, pulling his hair out. He is shouting passionately on the telephone, as he has been for months, about the short-sightedness of the Scottish Arts Council, which stopped his annual grant two years ago. The man described by George Kerevan, of Edinburgh City Council, as 'the court jester of the Scottish artistic establishment', has lost his sense of humour. His gallery is over pounds 250,000 in the red and is being sold to meet the debt. An era is at an end.

At least that is how Demarco sees it. He has never been what you would call modest. Every year since he took over the Gallery building in 1985, he has divided his time between trumpeting his achievements and warning that they must end unless he receives extra funds. Somehow, with public support but without public money, he has kept his head above water despite sinking deeper and deeper into debt. This time, however, Demarco is in over his head. The Italian Cultural Institute has made him an offer he can't refuse. They intend to take over the building at the end of this month. The sale will raise just enough money for Demarco to pay his debts and leave.

Demarco's achievements in Edinburgh are extraordinary. He established himself as an enfant terrible in the Edinburgh art world through a series of avant-garde exhibitions in the 1960s. He was a founder member of the Traverse Theatre and a pioneer in the popularisation of Scottish poetry. He has been active in the Festival since 1966, producing work from such varied artists as Lindsay Kemp, Max Stafford Clark, Marin Sorescu, Julie Covington, Tadeusz Cantor, Michael Horowitz, George Melly and Ruby Wax. Since 1985, when the City Council sold him his present gallery at a knock-down price, he has developed a pioneering interest in Eastern European drama.

His achievements are only outweighed by his anger at being hung out and left to dry. 'Go and ask the Festival Director,' he says, coveting the pounds 4m budget placed at the disposal of Brian McMaster. 'Go and ask him why, when I brought Tadeusz Cantor (the visionary Polish director) to Britain, when I introduced Edinburgh to the concept of modern art, why they did not consult me about the programme for their Festival.'

When the gallery closes, the Edinburgh Fringe will lose its principal international arts forum. In the shadow of the media circus that centres on the Assembly Rooms and the Gilded Balloon, the quiet atmosphere of international collaboration found in the Demarco Gallery has become an ever more precious commodity. Once home to Wilsnieski's extraordinary End of Europe (1985) and the National Theatre of Georgia's Don Juan (1988), the Assembly Rooms now offers nothing from outside Western Europe, North America and Australia. In the Demarco Gallery this year, there has been work from Romania, Israel, Canada, Poland, South Africa, Italy, Austria, Ireland, London and Cuba.

'The thing that drives me is the desire to bring artists together from all over the world,' he says. 'The other evening I watched Bud Thorpe, who worked with Samuel Beckett on death row in San Quentin jail, talking about Beckett to a young British company performing in the gallery. Moments like that give me proof that I am creating a community around the work I put on. It's an academy, a university of the most natural kind possible.'

Demarco's 'community' extends far and wide. His frequent foraging tours have established him as a natural point of contact for East European artists seeking to extend their audience. 'I have been inundated with requests from artists all over the old Yugoslavia who are desperate to share their work internationally. And we must listen to them. Otherwise there is no hope for that vitally important part of Europe.'

But, at home, Demarco has reached a total impasse with funding bodies. Since the withdrawal of his grant, he has refused to apply for one-off funding and the Scottish Arts Council refuses to let him by-pass the red tape. 'I'm not wasting my time filling in forms and joining queues for money,' he says. 'I'm 62 for God's sake. If I can't be free to make my own decisions as an artist, I don't want anything to do with the Arts Council.'

The way forward for Demarco seems to be through the more flexible channels of patronage and education. Robert Smith, vice chancellor of Kingston University in Surrey, has proposed Demarco for a new Chair of Eastern European Cultural Studies. 'He is an instinctive opener of eyes,' says Smith, 'and that is exactly what we need in Europe.' The professor-in-waiting, meanwhile, is pursuing private funds from Eastern and Western Europe to set up a base for his Demarco East Europe Art Foundation in Poland.

No one believes that Demarco will leave Edinburgh all together. Even as he raves about his own destruction, he is casting around for new venues in which to mount his programme for next year's Fringe. The gallery in which his international programme has flourished for the past six years, however, is certain to be closed. It is a loss that should be mourned.

The Festival of Polish Theatre continues at the Demarco Gallery, 17-21 Blackfriars St (venue 22), 031- 557 0707, until 5 Sept.

(Photograph omitted)