Another Edinburgh Festival Fringe comes to an end. There were more shows than ever, and most of the national media mainly reviewed shows at the half-dozen or so major venues, as per usual, leaving the small venues and companies struggling to get coverage. Sure, some of the digital and smaller publications, such as IT, concentrated on the less commercial side of the Fringe, but more support is needed from the national media if the real-fringe is to survive.
I’ve been participating and visiting the festival for the best part of 30 years, seeing many changes in that time. I ran venues myself in the 90’s and 2000’s in an attempt to challenge the growing commercial venues who gave companies little chance of breaking even, yet still managed to attract the media and audiences with their headliners and sponsored brand-style marketing. Over the years, these organisations have become evermore successful. With their own automated box offices, ever-expanding venues with multiple performance spaces in each, PR folk, bars and eateries, they’re mini festivals in themselves.
In my venue-running days, I did all I could to prevent companies from losing hard-earned cash by providing all encompassing insurance, marketing, leaflet and poster design and distribution, even offering small expenses, fees, and accommodation when possible. Whenever, I found a modicum of success, venue costs, accommodation, and more, would go up the next year. After ten years of battling the rising costs, and rising dominance of the all-powerful commercial sector, I threw in the towel. Although, I have continued to take a number of companies and shows up to the festival each year, trying out the Free Fringe, the Pay What You Want Fringe and, regretfully, a few brushes with the commercial fringe.
My regrettable brushes with the commercial fringe has taken its toll. Yes, it’s an open-access festival, yet some of these venues have extensive rulebooks of do’s and don’ts, fairly irrecoverable rental deals, overpriced recommended printers and video companies to film your show, and some charging a lanyard fee to enable you to see their other shows (Even the Festival Fringe lanyards are free). This year’s venue had no visible box office, no recycled paper printed programme, a PR team too small to cover the hundreds of shows they were presenting, and a website only updated a week before the festival. In short, such venues are protecting themselves against any possible financial loss, which is all well and good, but in the process providing a disservice to many participants. All this, together with exorbitant accommodation costs, crazy parking charges, marketing and publicity fees, and the general hike in all areas of hospitality and living costs during the festival, make the open-access Fringe a costly affair.
This is not to say that the Fringe is all bad, there are still some exciting new shows to be seen, and the street entertainment is always a joy, but the biggest is not always the best. I truly feel if the festival scaled down and offered more opportunity to new producers and companies to succeed, a fresh real-fringe would emerge. The Fringe Society could activate new strategies to help this. They could limit the amount of venues and shows any one organisation could run, thereby preventing theatre monopoly, and giving new blood a chance. I’m sure the commercial cartel of venues began with the best intentions, but they have run their course and it’s time for change. Perhaps, a young group of revolutionists could invade the festival with a new radical alternative, recreating the zeitgeist of its 1947 beginnings, when just eight companies challenged the International Festival. Or, just as the film festival changed its dates, maybe the commercial cartel can do the same. Whatever the future, may the Edinburgh Fringe live on and on.
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Wait a minute, this was going to be my very last festival, but I’ve just had an idea….Watch this Space!