(Matt's Part Two article is here)

At 11 am on Friday 1 August 08, after around 11 months of planning, several dozen sleepless nights, tens of thousands of pounds of expenditure, and a similar number of cigarettes amongst senior venue management, Zoo Venues' 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe programme officially commenced as houses opened for children's shows Far Far Away and Koko the Crocodile.

As ever, this pivotal moment of truth went largely unheralded by the venue staff. Given the intensity of the Fringe build-up, you might think that the start of performances would see champagne being poured in the venue offices, or at least some fashionable high-five gestures being shared between our founders. Instead, we tend to just raise an eyebrow half an hour later and say 'Oh, we're open. Good, good', and then press on with the next thing on the never-ending jobs list.

Apologies if that sounds a little miserable (and perhaps unappreciative), but the opening days are such a blur of technical rehearsals, licensing inspections, welcome meetings, office deliveries, aesthetic tweaks to the venues, and ironing out tiny but irksome bugs in our systems and procedures, that it normally takes a good half-week before we have chance to draw breath and realise that the event we've been so focused on for so many months is actually underway. Normally this happens when we look up at the beautifully-lit Zoo banner draped across Southside's majestic frontage, see the entrance and Patio Bar packed with audiences, and remember that every moment spent on this project is utterly worthwhile.

With a team of a little over 30 working for us in August now, we can stagger our arrival dates so by the time my press team and our friends in box office arrived in Edinburgh, the technical crew had virtually completed the conversion of Southside Community Centre and Kirk O'Field Church's spare buildings into Zoo Southside and The Zoo respectively.

That meant we could immediately focus on finishing touches such as the poster boards, office set up and co-ordinating our programme launch (which thanks to a little printing confusion, ended up taking place without a programme). Although a perfectly successful event with a good turn-out of press and performers, we ended the launch event feeling that we had rather out-grown it. The technical demands of our flagship international dance and physical theatre programme in Zoo Southside's Main House are such that our largest performance space is busy with rehearsals and technical work from the moment we arrive until the start of the first show. To use this for the launch would require us to arrive one or two days earlier, or to make technicians work even later into the night than they do already - all of which has cost implications that are currently prohibitive.

However, while the small Cabaret Bar provides the sort of cosy, informal launch atmosphere that we pride ourselves on, it's no longer fully representative of our programme, as a lot of our foremost acts simply won't fit on its modest stage. Conversely though, we are anxious to ensure that the dance programme (which forms about one-third of our total bill) and its high media profile don't utterly overshadow our other acts, and with dance represented only on video screen at the launch, it gave other acts such as performance poet Luke Wright, comedian Paul Parry and new writing companies Madcap and Horizon Arts some welcome exposure on the Cab Bar stage.

It's an interesting quandary for next year, and neatly sums up our venues' current position. We see ourselves as among the larger of the medium venues. With 54 shows on the bill, we're big enough to be busy, yet still small enough for the management to have a close relationship with the performing companies, and for us always to be fully aware of what's going on. That 'bustling-yet-familial' atmosphere is definitely one of our strengths, but some expansion is going to be necessary if we want to stay relevant (and if we want to earn enough from the venue to cut back on our double-lives in various freelance worlds and give Edinburgh the attention it really deserves). If we become big enough to achieve all our ambitions, will we lose sight of what's made us special and generated so much loyalty amongst performing companies? We need to think very carefully about our next moves.

Such pondering is best kept for the next two weeks, though, as by then our 2008 programme will be virtually running itself and management minds can shift to 2009. So far, this year has proved easier than we feared it might at the height of the Fringe Box Office's traumas. The snippets we were hearing raised nightmarish visions of countless over-sold shows, duplicate bookings, and people turning up ticket-less from the Fringe Office and haranguing our already-stretched box office staff.

Thankfully, things have run much more smoothly than that. Press and promoter bookings have been a little more convoluted than usual but we've used that to our advantage: journalists booking via the Fringe are told to collect their tickets at the venue, so now more and more are cutting out the middle man and coming direct to us – which means our contacts list is burgeoning in a way it would not have if the Fringe system had functioned serenely. There have been minimal glitches amongst public sales, the Half-Price Hut bargain box office is working despite our scepticism over how it could operate given the Fringe-s wider ticketing problems, and our box office manager Mina is no longer having convulsions whenever she hears the phrase 'Fringe Box Office'.

That's just as well, because we're also selling plenty of tickets. As usual in the always comparatively quiet opening week, some shows are still building momentum and playing to small houses. But many are absolutely thriving, with plenty of sell-outs already notched up - especially for companies who have built up a reputation at our venues in previous years, such as epic dance/physical theatre/multimedia group Precarious, the comic new writing of Ankle Productions, or our own in-house talent contest Zoo Idol – which saw the Cab Bar bulging at the seams last night despite our suspicions that monsoon conditions outside would keep numbers down.

The next generation of rising Zoo stars are making themselves known, too, with Lost Spectacles' innovative physical theatre proving so popular that venue staff are struggling for tickets, and fellow debutants Collisions Dance achieving some superb figures for their intimate duet. Both companies are currently filling our smaller studio spaces, perhaps with an eye to promotion to the Main House in future years.

We've always got far more satisfaction from seeing 'Zoo-grown' talent develop than from bringing in already-established acts from elsewhere. While the latter might prove more lucrative in the short-term, it doesn't give anywhere near as much pleasure - and with our reputation growing, the days when emerging companies used us as a nursery slope before jumping ship to a larger venue a year later are all but gone.

Although time-pressures occasionally frustrate our ambitions, we always try our utmost to help companies develop as well - taking time to talk about their aims and strategies for their Fringe runs in start-of-August 'welcome meetings', following their sales trends avidly, and trying to steer them towards success in whatever way we can. Sometimes that's by gently nudging reviewers on their behalf, by sending our street team (now expanded due to popular demand, with a third Dave joining Tubbs, Ollie, Guy and Jane in our outdoor publicity army) for them, or by pairing them off with successful and experienced acts so they can learn from each other. There will always be Zoo companies who leave Edinburgh frustrated and vowing never to return - sometimes this Festival is just too tough to conquer - but we try to give each show every possible chance to succeed, and if they do head home despondent, it won't be for want of effort on our part.

So with Week One coming to an end and the venues running fairly smoothly, it's time for some analytical frowning during meetings such as 'senior management cheese and wine evening' (which started at 1am and ended at 3am) and 'marketing department croissant morning' (the latter proving particularly unpopular with my staff when I appeared on their doorstep at 7.45am on Monday announcing that I felt the street team needed to do more paperwork). Audience numbers are generally up, most reviews so far have had at least four stars, the staff are keeping themselves alive, and with the peak days soon to commence (and the weather soon to improve, hopefully), the mood in Zoo Venues' damp but homely management Portacabins is currently one of cautious optimism. Fingers crossed.

END

(c) Matt Beer 7 August 08

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012

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