Sunday, 4 September 2011
Thursday, 1 September 2011
4. My Virgin Fringe
This post is not an anecdote
about my first hair-cut – as hilarious as that probably was, I don’t remember
it – but about my first ever Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Fringe). The Fringe is the biggest Arts Festival in the
world and attracts a variety of performers – anything from serious theatre to
street dance to comedy and everything in between – and audiences from all over
the world. This year there were a staggering 41,689 performances of 2,542 shows!
I’d never been to the Fringe before,
but I’m so thankful I’d been to Edinburgh (twice), so I knew the lay of the
land a wee bit, because with over 250 performance spaces that shit can be
confusing!
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| Beautiful Edinburgh! |
Now usually people who attend
their first Fringe do so to sample the atmosphere, see some shows and generally
see how that organised mess works. I’m
not most people. I decided with my two
comedy bffs (Gary Tro and Kate Lucas – two of my favourite comics, check them
out if you can, they’re aces) to take a show for the entire run, 25 nights… Say
whaaaaat! We decided that our comedy
collective will be called Chuckle Sandwich and our show was ‘intriguingly
titled’: Gags, Songs & Bombs! The
idea was that Gary was gags, Kate was songs and er… I was bombs – lazy
stereotype? CHECK!
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| Chuckle Sandwich presents: Gags, Songs & Bombs! |
You may be thinking… ‘Wow,
that sounds bare expensive bruv’… You’d be right, it can be. You can expect to pay anything from £3k-£15k
for a venue for the entire run! Then you
take into account accommodation costs, day-to-day living expenses and money
spent on leisure and you’re looking at a considerable loss! However, there exists two avenues for
inexperienced and financially inept performers like me, Peter Buckley Hill’s
Free Fringe (PBH) and the Laughing Horse Free Festival (LH). Two rival companies who essentially offer the
same service. They have a clientele of
around 15+ venues each, which provide free space for performers during the
month. A room above/below a pub kind of
deal.
We were originally going to
sign-up with PBH and made tentative enquiries with them, but things like ‘if
you think you’re doing us a favour, you can fuck-off’ written into their
contract was a bit of a turn-off, so we ended up with LH. A decision which has led to me being
black-listed by PBH. Whatevs, my
conscience is clear as water as I did nothing wrong. If you want to know more about this episode
(I promise you it’s not very interesting) and my thoughts about it then get in
touch with me personally. We had no
regrets with LH and will definitely use them again in the future.
It’s quite a big endeavour
taking a show to Edinburgh, especially for the whole run. You have to find accommodation and I owe
Rachel Anderson (hugely funny comic) a lot in that regard as she sorted this
out for us. The other big thing is
sorting out your performance space. We
ended up with ‘A Room with a View’ in the ‘The Three Sisters’ pub on Cowgate,
one of the main through fares for tourists and locals, so a pretty awesome
space all things considered. The only
negative we had, was that we did occasionally suffer from noise pollution, both
from the adjacent room and the courtyard below, which did affect our
performances at times, but it was part of the steep learning curve we had
signed up to.
Once you’ve done these two
big things, you then have to register (circa £300), make sure you submit your
show to the Fringe magazine and LH brochure, design flyers and posters, print
flyers and posters, negotiate leave from work… All of this before you even
start thinking about what you’re going to say once you’re up on that stage!
We organised two previews on
successive nights in late May in the basement room of Leicester Square Theatre,
a room which held good memories for me as I’d previously qualified for the
final of the Leicester Square New Comedian of the Year Competition there in
December 2010. The previews went really well,
which was important for me as I had a lot of people from work there who’d never
seen me before. Going into the festival
I was confident of my 15-20 minutes and even left some ‘gold’ material out as I
wanted to hone as much new stuff as possible
Speaking to people who’d been
to the Fringe in previous years, we were told to be prepared for rain, low
attendances, rain, mental breakdowns, rain, fall-outs with friends, rain, lots
of fun, rain and general debaucherous mayhem… oh and rain! We got the rain, we had the fun, we were
stretched and pushed, but all-in-all we didn’t really have the nightmare
scenarios that others had experienced before us and long may that continue!
I arrived in Edinburgh, late
evening on the 4th August after work, 90 minutes before our first
show. Not ideal preparations before my
Fringe debut… Gary and Kate had arrived the night before and had been busy
flyering, thankfully and we had a full-house! Over 70 people in… for our debut! We were chuffed, it was a very good first
show and we decided that first night to give our ‘bucket’ collection to
charity, specifically the victims of the Somalia famine. The ‘bucket’ is what we earned essentially. As we were part of LH we didn’t charge people
to come see the show, so we made a plea to the audience at the end of each show
that if they enjoyed it, ‘take some change, fold it up and leave it in the
bucket’ on their way out. This kept us
going day-to-day and we probably averaged around £15 each per day. Our record bucket collection was £50 each!
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| Kate, Gary and Me before our first show! |
Our flyering started at about
5 hours a day and we actually enjoyed it at the beginning it tapped right into
my attention-seeking and obnoxious sensibilities, but once the rain started and
the tourists became more and more jaded, flyering became harder to the point
that by the end we barely did it an hour before the show. Our flyering technique was pretty laughable
too. We’d flyer for two minutes and then
chat to each other for 10 minutes and then flyer for another two minutes before
another well earned ‘time-out’!
Considering this and our late time slot 23.15-00.15, we did really well
attendance wise. The odd night wasn’t
great, but I’d say we averaged circa 40 people a night which is pretty darned
impressive for three unknown comics!
I should mention at this
stage our wonderful Emcee, Laura Carr who did a fantastic job for us. She was great at bantering and warming the
crowd up for us ensuring whoever was on first had it easier than could’ve been
otherwise! In hindsight we probably
should have done our own emceeing with the opening act, sacrificing 5 minutes
at the top to build audience-rapport, but we were so nervous about our own
material we took the easy option and to be fair Laura was aces! I hope to gain a lot of emceeing experience
over the coming 12 months.
My next post will be about my
Fringe highlights, but I would say our show was a success… We weren’t great
every night, but as luck would have it, when we needed to be we performed
well. We received a 5* review from
WhatsonStage and a 4* review from Three Weeks!
Happy Days! We also got a mixed review from Fringe Report, but they didn’t give stars. I took a couple of things away to work on,
notably taking every gig seriously and not treating the audience with contempt
as I sometimes can do and to appear more energetic on stage.
The other big part of doing
Edinburgh as a comic is the open-spots.
This is when you’re a guest on other people’s shows. This can be a mixed-blessing as it can be a
good advert for your show, or it’s just a spot you take for granted and don’t
give your all at. Having said that I’d
like to thank all the people who gave/offered me spots at the Fringe… Thank
you!
It is important when taking a
show up with someone that you have a good relationship with them and I’m lucky
to have met Gary at my third gig and Kate not long after that and I can
honestly say they are my two BEST friends on the circuit, so when we got
annoyed with each other, which is inevitable as we were hanging out with each
other 24/7, it wasn’t a huge deal and we could laugh it off after brief periods
of sulkiness.
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| There was a lot of tom-foolery going on... |
During the day if I wasn’t
sleeping, flyering or otherwise chilling-out, I went to see as many shows as I
possibly could. I chose what I wanted to
see carefully and as luck would have it, I didn’t see a single bad show. Some were obviously better than others and my
personal highlights were Adam Riches, Randy the puppet, Josie Long, Imran Yusuf
and Nick Helm… all very different performers, all equally brilliant and
inspirational… food for thought as scores of ideas went through my head as to
what I’d want my solo show to look like.
Post-shows we normally hung
around the Three Sisters where we were usually met by other comics and then
we’d normally move onto the Library bar in the Gilded Balloon til the wee early
hours.
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| Three Sisters pub. We performed in the room just above the archway. Hence: A Room with a View |
Oh what I forgot to add was
that the Islamic holy month of Ramadhan this year was from the 1st-30th
August, which meant I was fasting the whole time I was doing the Fringe… That’s
right, no food or water for 18 hours a day!
Who’s the hero? This guy!
It is highly likely that I
won’t be doing the Fringe next year because of work reasons which would be a
darned shame… but my plan is to come back in 2013 with a two-hander and
possibly a sketch show with Chuckle Sandwich and then I’d like to bring my own
solo-show in 2014! The hard-work starts
in earnest…
- Tez
Look out for my next post (coming very soon) where I bring you my
highlights of my time at this years Fringe!
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