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Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2008
Dominic Everett-Riley
I received a grant from the Parents’ Association to help cover the costs of accommodation and expenses for my trip to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer to perform with the Yvonne Arnaud Youth Theatre in a new adaptation of ‘Clay’ based on the novel by David Almond. This presentation is a short summary of my experience and how I have benefited from it.
Preparation for the trip started in July, when we began a series of intensive rehearsals, culminating in a sell-out pre-Fringe run of three performances at the Mill Studio in Guildford.
Our venue in Edinburgh was Augustine’s, a church which, in the spirit of the festival, had been converted into a theatre for the duration, and had a very different atmosphere to that of the RGS Auditorium.
After a 7am plane flight into Edinburgh and a trek to the accommodation and back, we had just three hours of technical rehearsal, during which we walked around the set to adjust the lighting for our show, worked out how to store our set and props in our allocated space, practiced setting it up in the new venue and finally went over changes in the script, cutting a number of lines to ensure we didn’t overrun. We also had to get used to the damp changing room floors, the steep flight of stairs to our store room and the toilet cubicles which wouldn’t lock properly.
I found that the toughest element of performing at the Fringe was persuading people to come and see our production. Initially we spent two hours a day doing street theatre on the Royal Mile to promote our show, having rehearsed a routine back in Guildford, making the most of the physical nature of our play. Our silent, moving images were certainly a hit with the tourists, Fringe photographers, and the children who tried to outstare us (unsuccessfully, I might add). We certainly shifted a lot of flyers.
However, we found that only a very small percentage of people who took our flyers actually came to the show, and it became clear from a very early stage in the run that we were not going to achieve anywhere near the break-even target of 35 paying audience members per performance.
Statistically, the average audience for a Fringe Performance is five, and I am afraid to say that we had an average audience on a couple of days. It is a disconcerting experience having more performers than audience members, and certainly not one I’d like to repeat. Desperate times require desperate measures, and the desperation certainly kicked in around half way through the run, when we began individually flyering the public between street theatre and performances, using two-for one vouchers to try and lure passers-by into Augustine’s to see the show.
We also had our successes, in the form of a couple of audiences in excess of fifty and some encouraging reviews, most notably from Broadwaybaby.com, whose glowing review ended with the Holy Grail of Fringe productions- five stars. The bitter irony is that it was published just two hours before our final performance. However, the best moment of the Fringe for me was the visit of David Almond, the author of the novel on which our adaptation was based, who came on the day of one of our best performances and remarked afterwards that although he had had anticipated an excellent show, our production was “streets ahead” of his expectations.
The opportunity to participate in taking ‘David Almond’s Clay’ to the Edinburgh Fringe has been invaluable to me in several ways. I gained good professional production experience, including being reviewed by the national press, coping with the disappointment of small audiences and finding the stamina to perform consistently throughout a run of fifteen performances- five times the length of any run I had done at the RGS.
I learnt what is required to take a production to the Edinburgh Fringe and the meticulous organisation needed to make it happen. I also gained an appreciation of the amount of effort required to promote a production at the Fringe (especially from the hours spent handing out flyers in the pouring rain).
Finally, the grant enabled me to take the opportunity while in Edinburgh to see a lot of other cutting edge drama productions at the Fringe, including OG Simon Bird’s acclaimed new comedy ‘The Meeting’. This has broadened my experience of theatre, which I have found invaluable, given I want to be a writer.
I am very grateful to the RGS Parents’ Association for the grant which made all of this possible for me. Thank you.
THE PLAYERS
Sponsorship & Grants ›› Edinburgh 2008