In our wildest dreams a David and Goliath style battle would see the tiny Camden Fringe bring down the unwieldy Edinburgh Fringe with a meagre slingshot, making us two of the most powerful and important people in the arts. More realistically, we hope to build up a genuine alternative to Edinburgh for comics and theatre groups hoping to get a foothold in the industry, and perhaps to remind people what ‘fringe’ should be about.

Zena and I are uniquely positioned to try and establish a festival season in London. As comedy company It's Alright For Some we’ve been producing shows at the Edinburgh Fringe since 2002, prior to that working with various venues and organisations involved with the festival. Most of our adult lives have revolved around the summer exodus from London to Edinburgh. In addition to this, we have been running our own London venue since the beginning of 2004 – the Etcetera Theatre in Camden, London. Our experience of the London scene and the ways of the Edinburgh Fringe have given us an insight into the strengths and failings of both - and have led us to come up with a scheme to attempt to deal with some of their problems.

'Everyone’s in Edinburgh'?

The fringe venues of London struggle to find shows during August, and the comedy scene goes into a coma for 4 weeks. The received wisdom is that ‘everyone is in Edinburgh’, so companies are reluctant to put on shows. In fact: London is full of visitors during the summer; plenty of performers can’t afford the time or expense of a month in Edinburgh; London media still have to print articles and reviews. And the industry types - agents, TV producers, etc - whom people hope to entice to their performances in Edinburgh - are unlikely to spend more than a week there.

It became apparent to us that there is great potential for shows taking place in London to get good audiences and press coverage; it just needed to be orchestrated.

Best and worst of times

The Edinburgh Fringe is an amazing trade show. It is a magnet to actors and comedians wanting to get ahead in their careers as there is such an industry focus on the Fringe. Careers can be made and broken in the huge melee of promoters, press, producers and your peers. The Edinburgh Fringe provides the best of times and the worst of times (sometimes within the same hour).

Edinburgh – the costs

On top of the career pressures there are often huge financial worries to contend with. The cost of taking a show to Edinburgh can be enormous. There are cheap ways of doing it (the Free Fringe / Free Festival being great innovations, providing performers with free venues and punters with free tickets) but there are usually two big costs that are difficult to avoid: accommodation and venue hire. Given the scope of the festival it is impossible to give exact costs – but even the smallest space in one of the big-name venues can cost £3,000 for the month. Domestic landlords are keen to exploit the population explosion and can charge 2-3 times more for a flat during August than they do for the rest of the year. Similarly, bars and restaurants up their prices to festival levels. (A can of Coke cost £1.30 in the Pleasance Courtyard in 2006). As a performer/company you will also need to pay for your travel, posters, flyers, perhaps a press officer, flyerers and a technician, a ridiculous amount of alcohol, and no doubt you’ll also be paying rent on an empty room elsewhere in the country. It all adds to the ‘pressure cooker’ environment of the Fringe.

Big acts, big venues

The most recent and most frustrating development at the Edinburgh Fringe is the increase in big venues. Given how the Fringe started as a response to the inaccessibility of the Edinburgh International Festival - being open to anyone who wanted to perform and giving a platform to unknown and experimental acts – the proliferation in big-name acts performing in huge venues is making it harder and harder for unknown and experimental acts to be noticed.

A few prime examples. In 2004 the Pleasance launched the Pleasance Grand (700 seats), in 2005 the Assembly Rooms opened Assembly Hall (840 seats) and Queens Hall (694 seats). In 2006 we got the UdderBELLY and Cowbarn in Bristo Square (322 and 230 seats respectively). 2007 promises C venues SoCo (a 400 seat tent). Our experience is that is increasingly difficult to get audiences to come and see unknown performers in 50-seat sweat-boxes. Given the choice, punters would rather fork out £15 see Danny Bhoy or Omid Djalili in a cavernous venue, than pay a fiver to get up close and personal with the winner of the Suffolk new-act competition in a double bill with a fella who has sold two jokes to The Now Show.

The Edinburgh Fringe is increasingly less of an opportunity to build a career and simply the chance to lose a lot of money.

Low-cost alternative

The Camden Fringe is a low-cost (£150 for venue hire, administration, box office, press and inclusion in our brochure) alternative. A key plus-point for London-based performers - and audiences - is being able to stay in their own homes. It’s ideal for performers who have a brilliant idea for a show, but don’t have the money to perform at Edinburgh, or who can’t commit to the full month there. The Camden Fringe will host one-off shows and runs of up to six nights.

Camden

Camden is a very lively part of North London and is well-known for its trendy markets and numerous music venues. It’s also notorious for its large population of drug dealers and d-list indie stars. On a sunny day Camden can be beautiful – it’s a short walk down the canal to Regent’s Park and London Zoo – and there are a large number of great places to eat and drink. Camden is also quite a tourist hot-spot – in the summer the streets are full of visitors, who will hopefully be keen to see some of London’s famous fringe theatre. The two spaces we are using are both within 5 minutes’ walk of Camden’s Zone One tube station, and are under 10 minutes’ walk from each other. And no hills.

END

(c) Michelle Flower 10 April 2007

Further information: If you are interested in performing please contact Michelle Flower or Zena Barrie on perform@camdenfringe.org . If you are interesting in visiting Camden Fringe, all tickets for 2007 are £7.50. The programme will be announced 1 June. www.camdenfringe.org

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2008