RAPPORT FRINGE ... MARGINAAL VERSLAG ... FRINGE BERICHT
Reviewing fringe theatre, film, art and performance in London and internationally credits
venues
|
awards
|
interviews
|
features
|
fashion
|
newsletter
|
recipes
|
news
|
gossip
|
home
|
about
|
dublin
|
edinburgh
|
links
|
contact
|
film
|
drinks Monday 3 November 08
Directing At The Edinburgh Fringe
Alex Dower directed 3 shows in a single Fringe. Advice? Trust honest Al. And he left sleeping till later ...
by Alex Dower
I directed three shows at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2003. There was NewsRevue, a topical sketch show derived from 25 years running at the Canal Café Theatre. And Popcorn, by Ben Elton. And Poptarts, a comedy double-act performed by Sam & Emma.
NewsRevue ran at the main C Venue on Chambers Street. It is a full-time functioning theatre, which at the festival is a rarity. Popcorn ran at Sweet, in a large conference room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on the Royal Mile. Sam & Emma were in a small basement space at the Pleasance Courtyard. Though very different, the venues were well-suited to their shows.
The schedule for rehearsals, previews, get-ins and performances was well-planned. But for the 3 months leading up to Edinburgh, I worked an average of 16 hours a day rehearsing and preparing the shows.
They were all comedies, but with great stylistic contrasts, both in rehearsal and performance. Popcorn was a slow burn, with one day a week rehearsals. Careful analysis of the text led to detailed development of characters, relationships and events, and a precise modelling of scenes. Poptarts was grotesque comedy employing very experienced performers – Samantha Sanns & Emma Taylor. Emma is the artistic director of the Canal Café Theatre, and produced Poptarts and NewsRevue. NewsRevue was political commentary rather than psychological analysis. It was a fast-moving production - a script could arrive in the morning and be on stage that night.
Directing a show for Edinburgh is like directing a play for any small venue. But there are many aspects of the festival that make it a particular experience. Some of them are more producer-related, but because roles overlap so often on the fringe, they are worth mentioning.
To turn out a successful show at Edinburgh, it’s worth choosing your venue carefully - and get in early. There are meetings in Edinburgh & London in February on how to take a show to the Festival Fringe. They are organised by the Fringe Office (www.edfringe.com). A lot of the venue managers attend. Slots for shows are generally finalised in April. The deadline for inclusion in the official Fringe Programme is mid-April, so you must have a short write up of your show ready by then.
All venues have their quirks, so keep an eye on what is going on. Some venues are geared to particular types of show, such as stand-up comedy. Some do a lot of promotional work for you. Some are very expensive. One venue I’ve worked in has a policy of keeping back 10 tickets for press until half an hour before the show. The show is declared to be sold out when you have actually sold 10 less than your capacity. We were wondering for days where the other 10 people were. This can lead to financial losses - so it’s important to know about ahead of time.
A lot of the venues are not theatres the rest of the year. They can have unconventional seating arrangement, stages, venue managers and bad acoustics. Make sure you have checked all these things before you book to avoid any shocks.
Unless you are lucky, there will be very strict time and space restrictions on your show and set. This is due to the amount of shows in each venue, and lack of storage space at central venues. The most unique aspect of putting on a show at Edinburgh is the extremely short get-in and get-out times at the beginning and end of each show.
Sets have to be designed accordingly, and the cast forewarned of the pressures. Two of my shows had a 10-minute get in, and if we over-ran we were fined. But if a show overruns through no fault of the company, this must be noted to the venue manager to avoid later arguments.
You have to be flexible, because once you are there, venues call the shots. You may find yourself teching at 5 o’clock in the morning. And, in my case, sharing a dressing room with unhappy Canadians who kept borrowing our piano.
It’s wise to have a few performances of the show before the Festival. There is a lot going on once you are up there. Cast members want to see other shows, publicise, and rest. If you are not prepared, you can dent morale with lots of further rehearsals.
Publicising a show is a rigorous affair at Edinburgh. As a rule, everyone pitches in. It’s a weird law of theatre - the less you are paid, the more you have to do. There are more than 1,500 shows at the festival, all competing for attention. You have to haul your audience in off the street. The clamour becomes theatre itself, and is part of the thrill of the Festival.
Anything can be used as publicity. My first Edinburgh show was co-directing Fright Nights in the underground vaults on Niddry Street in 2001. We managed to get into the Sun - ‘Absent-minded theatre boss Alex Dower loses bag of sheep’s eyeballs in motorway service station en-route to Ed Fest’.
According to Edfringe, over half the tickets are sold to people from Edinburgh. Although there are some doubts over whether this is really true, if you are involved in recruiting an audience it is worth bearing in mind. Either way it’s good to get advertising material into far-flung areas. A poster you have politely asked to place in a chip shop or newsagent window on the outskirts of Edinburgh may stay up for the entire run of the show, while a poster you put up on the High Street will stay up for about 2 hours before being covered by someone else’s.
What we found hugely beneficial in marketing NewsRevue and Sam & Emma was having reviews from pre-Edinburgh performances to use in our promotional material. Once at the festival, you can staple good reviews that come in to flyers and hand them out. If the review has stars, highlight them. But don’t make your daughter out to be the theatre critic to impress punters, Mrs Worthington. It doesn’t fool anyone.
The Festival can become a sick game-show, with thousands of stressed contestants competing for 5 stars from some fickle and not necessarily credentialed critic. It’s worth not becoming obsessed by reviews. The important thing is the audiences, and their enjoyment of the show. Word-of-mouth counts. It’s better to have your satisfaction depend on something you have some control over - the quality of the show.
I have seen excellent shows received by happy appreciative audiences, which have received 1-star reviews. And some really tedious tosh, in the company of 8 half-sleeping punters. With 5 stars. Of course I might have been wrong. But that’s the point – the critics might be too. More relevantly, I’ve seen shows with a 5-star review from the week before and no audience, and packed 1-star shows.
When casting a show, a factor is often whether an actor is going to be enjoyable to work with. For Edinburgh, it is particularly important to consider whether they are going to pitch in, enjoy themselves, and be professional enough to do a good job even if there are only a handful of people in the audience. Most actors have some idea of what it can be like doing a show at the Festival and won’t be auditioning if they aren’t up for it. But it’s worth talking about these things at the audition.
Popcorn was a play I had been asked to direct at the School of the Science of Acting one afternoon a week for two terms. It was only towards the end it was chosen to be included in the School’s program for their annual Edinburgh trip. They were an excellent class, with some fantastic young actors. For a drama school play, it was very accurately cast. And it was fun being able to bring up some first-year students to play the police who storm in at the end.
There is no definitive Edinburgh audience that you should gear your show to. But it’s advisable to keep your show under two hours. People like to fit in a lot of shows. If it’s longer than that, they may either leave early, or not come at all.
Book your accommodations early if possible. If you’ve seen Shallow Grave you’ll know Edinburgh flats can be large. They can be lovely. But even in August they can be damp, so check them out personally before you commit.
Producing a show can be a very expensive business, and although there are a lot of things you can do to create success, you can’t guarantee it. However, with excellent producers, Sam & Emma, Popcorn and NewsRevue all turned a profit. Newsrevue was one of the top-selling shows on the Fringe.
Summary? It’s fast, intense, fabulous fun. And in October, you sleep.
END
(c) Alex Dower 28 July 2005
An earlier version of this article appeared in the magazine of the Directors Guild.
Fringe Report sub-editor for this article - Sarah Shavel 2005.
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2008
