Hundreds of volunteers took part in reading of 2.6m-word Iraq war report which began on 8 August and finished on Saturday

Performers at the Edinburgh Fringe festival have finished a non-stop reading of the Chilcot report into the Iraq war, 284 hours and 45 minutes after starting the 2.6m-word document.

Hundreds of volunteers have taken part in the reading, organisers said, which began in a garden shed on South College Street at 6pm on 8 August, and finished at 2.45pm on 20 August.

The show’s producer, Bob Slayer, was emotional in the immediate aftermath of the end of the reading, which he called “powerful and phenomenal”.

“[The report] wasn’t expected to be read,” he said. “The establishment didn’t expect anyone to read it. Rather like the Latin bible, it’s not for the public, it’s to be shelved away. And yet it has been read here.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Comedian Mark Thomas attends the the launch of the reading of the Chilcot report in a shed at the Edinburgh fringe. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

As one of the few people to have genuinely engaged with the 12-volume report in depth, Slayer said he was struck that it did not turn out to be a whitewash, which many people had feared. “This is the establishment admitting that they’ve fucked up,” he said. “Throughout the document you can see that they’ve fucked up. Why did they fuck up? Well, was it for incompetence? Was it for greed, selfishness? I think a combination of all of those. I just keep coming back to what can be done to ensure it doesn’t happen again?”

Veterans of the Iraq war, a six-year-old girl, and a man celebrating his 82nd birthday were among the many volunteers who read from the report, according to organisers. “Just in the last hour there was a 14-year-old boy and an 84-year-old man, so there’s been a big range in the sorts of people that have read it,” Slayer said.

“And then we had some people go in with guitars, some people rapped, and then there were very reverential readings. I didn’t see anyone who was not giving it respect, but they were doing it in their own way.”

Asked about the most poignant moments, Slayer identified volume 12, which dealt with the preparation of the dossier on Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, as one that had affected him and other readers. “The quite clear implication was: which is the best way that would lead us to go to war? Which would convince the population and the media that we can go to war, as a PR and marketing machine?”

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The longest reading stint was put in by Cammy Sinclair who stayed in the shed for five hours straight, from 2am to 7am on Saturday morning, dressed throughout as a giraffe. Sorcha Shanahan, who helped organise the volunteers, said the most important part of the performance was the way it connected people to the way power is exercised.

“So many people have been coming out realising that people in power and people who make these really big decisions are not actually the wisest and doing it from completely altruistic point of view,” she said. “So many people kept coming out and saying: ‘Well, I could do that better than they did!’”

Slayer said the reading had made them notice some bizarre coincidences in the report. “Mark Lawson read on page 666 the declaration to go to war; the executive summary has 911 chapters – nine eleven,” he said.

After filming the whole of the performance, Slayer, Shanahan and the rest of the performance team now hope to take their footage and use it in another, more permanent work of art.

“There’s more to be done with it, we’ve filmed everything. We’re talking about creating an installation or something that just keeps this from being forgotten,” Slayer said.

