FRINGE REPORT

reporting the edge credits Search Fringe Report home | about | news | contents | gossip | photographs | venues | brighton | dublin | edinburgh | film | features | interviews | awards | fashion | recipes | easter monday drinks 5 april 2010 | newsletter | links | contact MOST POPULAR LINKS... FRONT PAGE... MONTHLY DRINKS NIGHT The Road To Edinburgh Ireland correspondent Colman Higgins took his play A Tourist’s Guide to Terrorism to Edinburgh 06 by Colman Higgins 1 - Wake up – It's time to find a home for your Show - 30 March 06 2 - There's no turning back now - 28 May 06 3 - Auditions, first run, website, props - 1 July 06 4 - Two weeks to the plane - 18 July 06 5 - Do you have any rupees? - 27 July 06 6 - Roll on week one! We’re ready! - 5 August 06 7 - End of the road - 23 August 06 7 - End of the Road - 23 August 06 It’s hard to believe it’s all over. Six months of spending every free hour alternating between script-writing or organising this show – and now it’s finished. The rest of the run went by so fast. I was despondent on the first night - only two people showed up. But by the end of the weekend we were getting half-houses - about 15 in our tiny venue. Then, on Monday - the second two-for-one night - we had a full house. I thought it was a flash in the pan, and that when we went up to full price on the Tuesday night of Week One (the first night at full price, really), we’d be down to a handful. But no, Tuesday and Wednesday night were sold out as well. Then with Thursday there was a major dip, to half-full. Maybe it was the news that morning about the alleged plot to blow up 10 jet airliners. Maybe people were reading about terrorism in the news for real, and didn’t want to hear any more about it on stage. Or maybe it was just the weather. But by Saturday we full again – sold out at 5pm, indeed. Our closing night on Sunday was busy too, although not quite full. A lot of this success was due to hard graft flyering on the street. The three actors and our technician would do an hour or two each during the afternoon, mostly on the Royal Mile. I would do 2-3 hours in the run-up to the show itself, first on the Royal Mile, then after 6-6.30pm on the Grassmarket opposite the venue itself - and in the Meadows on Fringe Sunday. HALF-PRICE HUT From Tuesday on, we started to use the Half-Price Hut in Princes Street. I would tell the Sweet box office manager each evening after the show how many tickets I would put in the Hut – it varied from 5 to 10, depending on how sales were that night. Virtually every ticket we put in the Hut sold. This was an improvement on my experience last year (I performed a one-man comedy) - where sometimes the Hut tickets sold, sometimes not. Since the Hut only started in 2005, maybe punters are gradually becoming more aware of it. After the run finished, I tried to use it myself one day, only to find that tickets for the shows I wanted went quickly. We found it helps if you flyer the Half-Price Hut itself, rather than the overcrowded Royal Mile. One day there were 6 half-price tickets for our show at 4pm. After flyering there for less than an hour, all were gone. It is a good spot to flyer, as most potential ticket-buyers hanging around are on the point of deciding which show to see. Towards the end of the week, everybody flyering outside the hut was told to leave by security guards from Princes Street Mall, on whose land the Hut apparently stands on. We could stand on the footpath on Princes Street, but it was pointless, as most of those passing were rushing to and from buses, and the path was too crowded. PRESS Given the title of our show – 'A Tourist’s Guide to Terrorism' – we attracted quite a bit of media attention. One writer came from Norwegian magazine Ny Tid, another from German theatre magazine Theater der Zeit. One was from the Jerusalem Report magazine, though it turned out he was doing several pieces for the German media rather than for the Israeli magazine, as he’s based in Berlin. Another came from UK monthly magazine Socialist Review. Many of these are likely to produce coverage in the coming weeks, so if any of this is favourable, we can use it to sell the show (or us) in the future. Digital radio channel BBC Asian Nation, and BBC Radio Ulster did interviews with me. Radio Four and BBC Scotland came to see the show. The Stage's review came out during the run. We took some good quotes from it to staple to the flyers. Even quite simple sentences like that can take hours as actions, we found. It meant putting the quote 14 times onto an A4 sheet, doing 300 copies, cutting, and stapling to 4,200 flyers. It took ages, but it was worth it. By the middle of Week One, every second flyer by other shows has a review stapled to it - you have to keep up! THE SHOW The play itself didn’t change much in the course in the run, once the changes after the previews had been made. Alice the director gave a few notes to the actors after the first two nights – and again one night in the middle of the run, but otherwise left them to it. She said actors often warm into a role quicker if the director stays away after the first few nights. I could see this happening night by night, as I sat in on virtually every show myself. Sweet insist that someone who is not directly involved in the performance sits in on every show - that was generally me. I tried to tape the show with my own camcorder for posterity – and for selling the show in the future – but with my limited camera skills, heads were cut off right left and centre. So for £60 I got a professional cameraman to shoot a mini-DV tape with a wide-angle zoom lens. We can then run it into our own computer and burn DVDs. THE FINAL CURTAIN It's the end. Again next year? Ask me in March. (c) Colman Higgins - 23 August 06 *** 6 - Roll on Week One! We’re ready! - 5 August 06 *** 10 am on a Saturday morning, outside a redbrick building on Dublin’s Georgian office district. It’s raining hard and we’re still not fully awake, but three of us have to do a radio interview. It’s with Newstalk 106, the local talk radio station, which has an arts programme at this hour. It goes well, though. The presenter, Sophie Gorman, asks me if I feel worried about causing too much controversy with the show title – ‘A Tourist’s Guide to Terrorism’- but I just reply calmly that it’s about how people react to violence, rather than being sensationalist. That, of course, is before we parade around the Royal Mile and Grassmarket in balaclavas this week, giving out flyers. But first, the previews. PREVIEWS They’re in the basement hall of a film industry centre, Filmbase, in Dublin’s Temple Bar area. The hall fits about 90, so I’m worried about it looking too empty. Our Sweet Grassmarket studio in Edinburgh has only 30 seats, after all. The first show is Sunday afternoon at 4pm – carefully timed to avoid major GAA football or hurling matches, as the season is in full swing. A metal biscuit box has to be bought and emptied to be used as a prop, so we have free biscuits for all comers (no tea, though). And they come. And keep coming. A total of 50 turn up – perhaps helped by the fact that the weather breaks half an hour before the show. There are friends and relatives, but also many others, helped by the radio and evening newspaper publicity of recent days. The show itself goes off well, with all singing its praises. There are just a few adjustments for the next one (such as a louder sound effect at one point and the moving of a short beat to another position later in the play). This second piece of script surgery takes place that evening, and it flows even better the second night. We hadn’t expected too many people for the second show – it was 8pm on a Monday night, after all, but they start streaming in from 7.30pm on. All the biscuits run out halfway through and by the end there are 90 people downstairs – a sell-out. THE JOURNEY The next day, after returning all the borrowed equipment to three different places around town, it's a matter of physically getting to Edinburgh. Alice Coghlan, our director, has already left on Tuesday morning with all the set and props on the ferry via Belfast, staying in Glasgow tonight. The rest of us fly to Edinburgh on a 6.30am flight, which means being in the airport before 5am. Dublin’s taxi drivers have decided to have a 24-hour strike against a new fares structure that day, ending guess when – 5am. No company will guarantee a cab booking, even though 20% of drivers are still operating, and the airport’s long-term car park will cost €100 or more for the two weeks. One company sounds relatively confident about having a cab available, so I book with them, but if they’re not outside the door by 4am, I’ll get in the car. After several short hours of sleep, the taxi does turn up and we do a sweep through town, picking up the others. WELCOME TO EDINBURGH Our accommodation in Edinburgh is a Napier University flat at Riego Street, which is even closer than I thought to the Sweet Grassmarket venue – less than 10 minutes' walk. The five rooms are bigger than they look on the website tour, which is all I’ve seen of them up to now. Moving our gear into the venue is the usual rush job, with the aid of hazard lights and trial-and-error with the one-way street system. After this, Alice can park her car in the apartment courtyard for the duration. While the others do their three-hour tech rehearsal, I set about postering every shop and café around Grassmarket itself and at least 100m on all streets out of the square, getting rid of about 40-50 posters in the process. Many places only take flyers, some take nothing and others ask for free tickets for hanging up your poster (later I hear advice against this, as many of these people don’t come in the end – free tickets are best given to those who show real interest in your performance). OPENING NIGHTS At about 4pm on the Thursday, after munching jelly babies at the Sweet launch, we all don our white T-shirts (with show logo on the front and details on the back), with garish purple bumbags and blue balaclavas. Some of the guys cut their T-shirts to give them a rougher look, and the balaclavas need mouthholes (a compromise between shock value and survival). For the first two hours, two flyer the Royal Mile and two take Grassmarket, outside the venue. For the next one and a half hours, we concentrate on Victoria Street and Grassmarket. The 10-minute get-in runs smoothly, as our technical manager, Sarah Jane Shiels, has allocated jobs to everyone in logical order. Then we wait for punters. Even though just a handful turn up on the first night, we are told that it’s normal for this time – after all, it’s still another three days before the Festival even opens. The show itself runs really well and everyone is on top of their game. Next day I email a dozen or so reviewers, on the advice of the Fringe Press Office, to check if we’re on anyone’s review schedule. One magazine has us on their list and this morning (Saturday) I learn that another website has booked a press ticket for Monday. That night, we go out about 3.30pm with flyers, concentrating on the Royal Mile until 6.30pm, then staying around Grassmarket. This time we almost half fill the venue. I know from flyering festival shows before, that it's all about accumulating awareness over a few days, so if we keep up the four hours of flyering, we could well fill the house by early next week. Meanwhile, I have yet to send the rehearsal photos to the picture desks and I have a trip of the hostels to do, to poster and maybe give some free tickets to staff (the rationale being that if they like the show, they will tell their guests). Roll on Week One! We’re ready! (c) Colman Higgins - 5 August 06 *** 5 - Do You have any Rupees? - 27 July 06 *** 'Do you have any Pakistani rupees?' 'No', said the bemused bank official. 'We don’t have much demand for them.' Welcome to our search for props. Eventually the elusive currency notes are tracked down in a coin collectors shop in a market arcade in Dublin. After going through three boxes, each with several hundred examples of everything from Stalin-era roubles to defunct Argentinean australs, we track down dozens of one and two-rupee notes – total cost €25, or about fifty times the actual exchange rate. Other props are easier to track, and our stage/technical manager, Sarah Jane Sheils, is looking after most of it, as well as the set – I just took on some of the more obscure corners of the props list. Costumes have also arrived, ordered over the internet from Pakistan itself. Both sets of salwar kameez fit fine and are actually probably more comfortable for the actors than their normal clothes, in the current heatwave. Rehearsals themselves are leading to full run-throughs of the show. Director and actors are happy now with the script, so I haven’t been in to watch for about a week, although I will get in later this week to see one full run-through. On the publicity front, the posters were collected the other day from Total Graphics in Dublin, who were doing a special deal on 100 A2 posters for €100, to publicise their new printer. They were able to cut them in two to make 200 A3 posters for the same price, although I had a last minute copy change that cost €20 and VAT at 21%, so the total cost was about €145. The flyer copy has also eventually been sent, to printing.com in Edinburgh. There had been a technical problem initially sending the file in the new Indesign software, which was admittedly a very very large file, but a high-res PDF arrived on the other end no problem. That copy was sent Tuesday, so it should be printed by Monday – just in time for us to collect it when we arrive in Edinburgh the following Wednesday. The total cost is £185, for 10,000 A6 cards, paid in advance by Visa. I’m confident enough, as they did a good job for me last year. Another job is to organise some visual gimmick for those who are flyering (which will be all of us, effectively!). Since the show's logo and main image combines the idea of tourism and terrorism (Hawaiian shirt and suicide belt), some other way of doing the same thing would be the best approach. However, running around Edinburgh with fake suicide belts would probably be tacky and tasteless and may trivialise the issue. An alternative would be to use balaclavas with some blatantly touristy accessory, like a garish bum bag (or fanny pack). After trying several camping and outdoor shops, I track down six blue balaclavas in a light breathable fabric. They’re about €10 each, but the cheap alterative at €5 is double layered acrylic, which is too hot for even the anaemic Edinburgh summer. Another advantage of balaclavas is that they create some air of 'mystery', as the public doesn’t see the actors' faces. Also, T-shirts – while a bit of an Edinburgh cliché – are worthwhile, particularly if combined with other accessories, as they are visible and they do carry the essential show information. (They also provide a fallback for those not comfortable in balaclavas.) I order ten, with the show image on the front with no title, as a teaser, and then all the show information in black and white on the back. I get them in a mix of sizes: three large, three small, two medium and two XL. That should cater for the three actors and three crew (inc. myself), plus any friends and family that help out. I’m toying with the idea of using either bumbags or sunglasses as the 'tourist' element in the flyering 'look'. Bumbags can double as a place to store spare flyers. However, sunglasses can be a bit ironic when combined with balaclavas – although they do evoke gangsters and terrorists as well as tourists. Maybe the bumbags… The other major priority this week is to sort out the Dublin previews. I've put up a few posters on the venue itself and each of us has texted or called everyone we know, with Alice, our director, mailing her own theatre company's 400-strong list. I also contacted the Dublin media – while I figured they may not review such a short run (two nights), they may cover it as part of any overall piece on Irish acts going to Edinburgh. As it turns out, I get a call from the Evening Herald (similar to the Evening Standard in London). They will do not just copy, but also rehearsal shots. I was getting some done this week, so Mairead O’Keeffe, the photographer gets them ready much quicker than planned and they make it in for the 1pm deadline on 26 July (hopefully it should appear 27 July). The piece appears along the bottom of two pages, with the picture used small and in colour, with a long blurb and a few quotes about how the play is about people’s response to violence etc. Also, Newstalk 106, the local talk radio station, wants to do a short spot on us next Saturday morning. They want myself and two of the actors, with a short extract of a few minutes. Let’s hope the Edinburgh media are as interested. (For Dublin-based readers of fringereport.com, the Dublin previews are in Filmbase, Curved Street (opposite the Music Centre), Temple Bar, Dublin 2, at 4pm on Sunday, 30 July 06 and 8pm on Monday, 31 July 06. Admission €5 – tickets on door.) (c) Colman Higgins - 27 July 2006 *** 4 - Two Weeks to the Plane - 18 July 06 *** Just two weeks now and we’re on the plane to Edinburgh – time for a great experiment in sleep deprivation and stress. It’s not that bad, honestly. I just have 15 different fiddling jobs each day, plus making changes to the script in rehearsal - as well as working 9 to 5. PRESS CAMPAIGN One of the tougher nuts to crack is the press campaign after the Fringe Launch in Edinburgh on 8 June. I send out dozens of press releases to the myriad names on the three-page Fringe press list. Most of them insist on only getting stuff by email, except for a few of the newspapers. It makes life easier this end, as my tongue only tastes the gum of a dozen envelopes, rather than hundreds. The only advantage of the hard copy press release is that you can have a small version of the press image on the top right hand corner, like a masthead. Most of those who specify email also request no pictures – understandable when the alternative is jpegs for every show in the Fringe flooding your inbox. The press list mentions what each of the names does - reviews, news, pictures etc – so I concentrate on the theatre reviewers. Also, I send individual press releases to a few journalists who have given members of our company good reviews in the past. I have mixed feelings about follow-up calls. Working as a reporter during the day, I can’t stand PR people chasing up press releases. 90% of the time you can’t wait to get them off the phone. The other 10% you are genuinely interested in - so you’ve rung them yourself already. But the advice from the Fringe Office and venue differs. Maybe arts editors are more tolerant than me – or more used to harassment – and with 1,900 shows at Edinburgh 06, desperate measures are called for. I do two ringarounds, one a week after the other. More than half the time it’s voicemails. I leave messages on some, but reckon after a while that they’re unlikely to call me back, so I send the rest emails to check if the press release arrived on time. Most of those who answer the phone confirm they’ve got the email. I get a chance to give them a quick spiel about the main selling points of the show. Some listen at length. One or two say they’d be interested in reviewing it, but can’t guarantee anything. The only remotely negative response was one newspaper who said curtly that it was better if companies don’t call. I also send a release to the picture editors. In case they’re jammed with image files, I send a Word version of the press release with the image, and a link for downloading the full jpg from our website. FINAL TOUCHES – MORE OR LESS We’ve set 29 June as the deadline for sending the script to the actors. They start rehearsals on 11 July. For June, weekday evenings are for admin and press work. The weekends are for writing. Alice, director and dramaturge, is working abroad, but I send a huge 34-page email to her each Sunday night. Before long, it’s back with enough suggestions to work on for the following weekend. The main editing is cutting back on revealing too much too early, and adding extra detail to the characters, as well as local colour. By the end of the month, it’s just the ending that may need some change. I send it to the actors, with a proviso about the ending. But new plays often change - even during rehearsal. The others have been working away for over a week now, and I’ve been in every second day, usually giving the nod to minor word changes and re-writing of a few passages. The rehearsals are in Capel Street in Dublin’s north city centre – handy for me to drop in during lunchtime and close to everyone’s bus routes. It’s a decent-sized Georgian room with strong red walls, plenty of light - and a glass chandelier thrown in. After the first few days, the actors get up on their feet and start blocking scenes. Now I’m only dropping in if particular beats need work. The cast are working 10am to 5pm, although not everyone is needed all day. PREVIEWS We decide to do two previews in Dublin – to warm up, and give people we know a chance to see it. I look at a few pub locations, but traffic noise – not to mention pub noise – is a factor. The eventual choice is Filmbase, a film industry training centre in Temple Bar, which has a huge basement – the same venue as the Attic Studio reading some weeks and many drafts ago. It’s taken for the Friday and Saturday, but we’re able to book Sunday 30 July at 4pm and Monday 31 July 31 at 8pm. It’s unlikely we’ll get a reviewer to a 2-show run, but we’ll send a listings email to the Dublin media, text everyone we know - and start the countdown to Edinburgh. (c) Colman Higgins – 18 July 06 *** 3 - Auditions, First Run, Website, Props - 1 July 06 *** Running auditions is a new experience for me, and a little bewildering at first. Actors are like buses – there’s none for ages, and then loads of them come at once. On our first open audition evening – in Doyle’s pub, next to Trinity College in Dublin city centre, on 14 May – we get a grand total of three hopefuls. Maybe it is because it is a Sunday, or maybe the word hasn’t filtered through the grapevine yet, but I have never read a newspaper so thoroughly as that evening. But come the second night on Tuesday, we have at least 15 people to see in about two hours. Director Alice Coghlan is upstairs conducting the auditions and I’m downstairs trying to balance ‘first come, first served’, with giving slots those who need to leave early. In the end I do work out a system. Callbacks are the Thursday evening, which we do together, seeing actors in sample two-hander scenes. By that evening, we have three decisions made for each character. While one accepts, the other two can’t say yes right now, for various reasons. Since we want the best people, we call in some more that we know over the next week or two. Eventually, one of them takes the second part. However, the last part is the most challenging to fill – a Pakistani campsite manager. Since Dublin doesn’t have the same Asian community as the UK, our choice is limited. We are lucky to find two good actors locally, but unlucky when each turns out not to be available for the part. Then an actor friend in London recommends someone in Birmingham. He’s interested and available and after getting three glowing references from directors he’s worked with and from his school, he’s on board. Eventually, the three actors chosen are: Maeve Fitzgerald, a graduating Trinity College drama student; Shane Nestor, who runs his own theatre company, Looking Through Windows; and Daniel Naddafy, graduating from the Birmingham School of Acting. FIRST OUTING Meanwhile, while the auditions are going on, the script is preparing for a 24 May reading at the Attic Studio (www.theatticstudio.net), an actors’ collective that meets in Dublin’s Film Base each Wednesday to network and workshop, as well as doing readings of scripts in development. Two of the actors from the auditions who haven’t been able to take the parts agree to do the reading, as well as two more regular attendees of the Attic (the fourth person is to read stage directions). They meet with me twice before the reading, to go over it. But when the reading takes place, they already seem comfortable in the parts, to the extent that at times, if you closed your eyes, it is almost like staging it in full costume. Even though I’m not performing, I’m still nervous as hell. I’m used to being able to work out nervousness through performing, but this time it just sits there. However, the reaction from the 40 or so people attending (there is a big match on telly tonight) is broadly positive. Some do say that I’m giving away too much information too early – that I should tease the audience more. Note taken, but I’m encouraged that they like the general thrust of the story. MEDIA MANIA Meanwhile, in the other half of the brain, there’s a press release, press image and website to be sorted – all before the Fringe press launch on 8 June. The press release text I find relatively easy - just keep it all on one page with six paragraphs, snappy headline ‘9/11 Shockwaves Hit Pakistani Campsite’ and contact and show information at the bottom. I email it to the Fringe press office and Sweet’s press adviser and they suggest only small changes. The press image is more difficult. Since the play is about the three characters’ reactions to 9/11, it’s hard to strike the right balance between being shocking and causing offence – if there is one. One option is to use a twist on the iconic 9/11 image of a plane crashing into two towers. But even only five years on, it’s already clichéd. Comedians were using that one for posters as early as 2002. The show title A Tourist's Guide to Terrorism suggests combining tourists and terrorism in some way. One idea is taking an obvious tourist with a garish Hawaiian shirt, shades and camera, but with a suicide bomb belt around his waist. It’s the sort of thing that could work well as a staged photo (oh why did I give that dodgy Hawaiian shirt to the charity shop). But being under time pressure – and staging a shot like that properly would be too time-consuming at the moment, I decide that a cartoon-style illustration is better than having a rushed photo. A friend recommends a cartoonist – Robbie Bonham - and he gets artwork together over a weekend in mid-May. One scan later and I have a 6 MB press shot (with smaller versions for the press release and website). Once the graphic is there, I can send 25 press releases to Sweet for distribution at the launch, as well as giving electronic copies of both release and image to both Sweet and the Fringe office well before 8 June. My efforts last year to write HTML for my own website resulted in countless frustrating hours in front of the computer, so this year I decide from the start to get a professional on the case. A quick call to a friend who works ‘in computers’, as they say, yields a colleague of his who’ll write up three pages for 150 Euros. However, putting it up on the web is more fraught. I buy a domain name, www.touristsguidetoterrorism.com, from a cheap domain name site based in the US, for about $10. But attaching this to my webspace, which is at an Irish-based server, www.freehost.ie, is a complicated operation involving emails and phonecalls that I barely understood what’s going on. For the sake of 30 Euros, I could have registered the domain with Freehost to start with and saved myself some trouble. Eventually, it all gets put up – and at least all the words are right-side up, unlike last year! It doesn’t get up exactly in time for the Fringe launch, but is in place by 12 June. WHAT’S UP NEXT? At the start of June I also have my first meeting with the stage manager, Sarah Jane Sheils. We make a rough list of what will be involved in the stage set and she starts looking for materials. On costumes, they will mostly consist of Pakistani-style salwar kameez traditional dress for two of the characters. I know of a place on the internet (786shop.com) where I can get them for about $50 per suit. The other sets and props could be less straightforward. Welcome to just one of next month’s challenges! (c) Colman Higgins - 1 July 06 *** 2 - There's No Turning Back Now - 28 May 06 *** There’s no turning back now. The other day I went to my local bank and made out two sterling bank drafts to pay the balance of the accommodation and the venue guarantee. In fact, apart from the print run and transport, most of the costs are already shelled out at this stage. As you may gather, things have definitely moved on from the last instalment. The early Fringe deadline was met, with a run for weeks zero and one booked for Sweet on the Grassmarket, at the prime time of 7.50pm for 50 minutes. Sweet seems like a good idea – they have 70 shows in this year’s Fringe and five new spaces at the one site in the Edinburgh College of Art, which could result in something of a ‘cluster’ effect. One thing I noticed from last year is that if a large number of shows are in the same building, people will roll up in the knowledge that they can take a chance that there’ll be something that they like that isn’t fully booked up yet. The ECA venue is just around the corner from Sweet’s relatively long-running Grassmarket venue, which should benefit to some extent from this cluster effect – as well as having frontage on the Grassmarket in a prominent building, the Apex City hotel. The total deal is for 11 nights (August 3-13 inclusive), for 1 hour 10 minutes, including 10 minutes get in and get out time – thus 50 minutes of show time. The guarantee is £832 for that period, in a 30-seater venue. The price is £7 for most shows, with £4 for the first two nights, which are well within the ‘preview’ week. So if I get a 50% attendance, the total revenue will be £90 per night, or almost a grand over the run. That should cover the venue cost – covering the other costs, of course, was always a pipedream. Indeed, getting 50% attendance would be doing very well – my average for the one-man show I did last year was 25% (of paying customers, anyway!) Once the venue was booked and the contract signed, the next port of call was accommodation. Early on I hit on an available student apartment belonging to Napier University, just 10 minutes walk away from the venue. It has five single rooms – a godsend, since most of the apartments offered by the agencies have only double rooms (maybe they think that all performing companies consist entirely of couples, or at least people who are very comfortable with each other). Total cost is about £800 for ten nights. However, like many apartment rentals, once the Fringe proper starts, they only run from Saturday morning to Saturday morning. Since the run I’ve booked goes finishes on a Sunday night, this leaves two homeless nights. Short of booking an entire second week at ruinous expense, the next best option was to book a hostel room, with six beds, but right on the Royal Mile, for those last two nights. If better options come up, great, but at least we’re covered. The next step is to find a director. While actors in Dublin are plentiful enough, directors are a bit thinner on the ground. Several say they’re not free, others are shy of the subject matter. However, after several days I do find one woman interested – Alice Coghlan, who has directed about 20 plays, operas and musicals and who has been assistant director just a few months ago on a main stage Abbey Theatre show. Her CV looks impressive – even though she’s just 27, she’s already worked in Moscow, Ghana, Bangkok and California, not to mention a strong academic background. But while she likes the idea and the characters, she does feel that the script needs major structural changes, as I’m trying to pack in too much into a short space of time. We agree a schedule of producing three new drafts: one by 7 May, one by 21 May and a final draft for the actors by about 21 June. I sit down over the May bank holiday weekend (at the start of May in Ireland) to engage in some serious script surgery. One major decision is made: to drop one of the four characters. This has a huge knock-on effect throughout the script, with tracts almost entirely re-written. Thankfully, this is favourably received by Alice, although the ending, detailed characterisation and local slang of each character still needs plenty work. Meanwhile, actors need to be found – and fast. We have two dates for open auditions organised – 14 May and 16, with callbacks on the 18th. Three actors are needed and this is a more challenging play than most, as two of the characters are over 30, an age group in which actors have either (a) made it and won’t do fringe productions, or (b) they’ve given up and got ‘real’ jobs. But on one of the websites the audition note goes up on – crookedhouse.ie, as many as 150 people click on the notice in barely a day, which is a good sign. Meanwhile, there’s a press release, press image and website to be sorted out – all before the end of May. (c) Colman Higgins - 28 May 06 *** 1 - Wake up – It’s Time To Find A Home For Your Show - 30 March 06 *** The clocks have gone forward, Easter is approaching – it’s that time of year again. The Fringe programme deadline, the first real deadline of many in the process of bringing a show to Edinburgh, is looming. Decisions on so many things need to be made, almost all in the same 24 hours, or so it seems. A venue has to be chosen – then it’s time to book accommodation, flights, printers, sporrans for your kilt and probably several other things I can’t think of right now - before everyone else has them booked before you. The temptation is there to keep doing all these things at the same time. Sometimes it’s easier to calm down enough to devote an hour or two at a time to doing one thing properly, forgetting about all the other stuff, and then remembering it again when you’re finished and having another tizzy about it all over again. This is my second year bringing a show to Edinburgh. Last year is already looking like a doddle compared to this year. It was a one-man show (‘Bus-spotting’, about a bus journey around the world) and played for just Week One, at Greyfriars Kirk House. It went well – a few good reviews, decent crowds, and a bit of crack after the show each night. This year’s project is an entirely different animal. It’s a four-person play and I hope to do it for the full festival. Right away, the four people and the three weeks send the costs rocketing. The budget figures are scary – ranging from £5,000-9,000 – as opposed to about £1,500 last year. Unless the show is a complete sell-out, the financial hit will be a lot more than last year’s. Now I know why the Fringe is full of stand-ups and monologists! On the plus side, having four people around will make flyering and postering a lot easier – although I still had some friends and family with me on and off last year as well. Also, doing the full run means that all the fixed costs (like director, Fringe entry, design) are spread over a longer period. Most of the last few months I’ve concentrated on developing the script – which, by the way, is about four people of wildly varying backgrounds thrown together on a backpackers’ campsite in Pakistan on the week of 9/11. It’s called The Week That Shook Their World. I’m happy with it now – although doubtless it will be refined and distilled again many times before August, like the finest Scotch whisky. Now it’s time to get the other side of the brain working. At the moment, my plan is to sort out the venue, accommodation, travel and Fringe Programme entry before Easter, find actors after Easter, rehearse from mid-June for several days of a preview run in early July, make changes based on this run and go into two more weeks of rehearsal before going to Edinburgh. On the marketing side, the plan is to get the press and flyer image together by the end of April, write the press release and design the flyers, posters and website in May and devote most of June to the press campaign and organizing printing. July will be busy with the preview run and all the last-minute things and bureaucracy – as well as packing all my clean underwear. Then again, as Robbie Burns said, the best laid plans . . . (c) Colman Higgins 30 March 06 END (c) Colman Higgins 2006 Colman Higgins is Fringe Report's Ireland Correspondent. His play A Tourist's Guide to Terrorism (www.touristsguidetoterrorism.com) is at Edinburgh Fringe 2006: Sweet Grassmarket, 3-13 August 06, 19:50pm (50 minutes) - details Colman Higgins reports the 2006 Official Fringe Roadshow here. Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2010

	reporting the edge	credits
		Search Fringe Report