Lessons (re)learned

General Ramblings Comments

Doing a Fringe show with Two Shades of Blue is a wonderful luxury, in that we can assume as a baseline things which many other companies struggle to get right. We have an experienced and competent production staff who know the Edinburgh ropes; we have a large company to hand out flyers (at which we’re far better than the average company); our scripts, though not to everyone’s taste, appeal to the majority and are actually funny; the cast can all act; in short, we can take as a given that the show will be better than at least 70% of the stuff out there, and can spend the performance week focusing on getting people to see it. And even there, things are a lot better than with many other companies – something’s gone seriously wrong if we’re late for a Royal Mile slot. Nonetheless, I’ve (re)learned a few lessons this year.

Marketing stuff

  • As usual, it’s all about the marketing. The Matrix: The Pantomime largely sold itself on the concept alone (though unlike, say, Bouncy Castle Macbeth, I think we did interesting things with the concept and weren’t just a cool idea), but Comedy and Cake was one more sketch show in a town full of sketch shows – we knew that it was a damn good one, but everyone says that about their show. Giving out free tea and cake is a handy Unique Selling Point, but to the cynical it doesn’t say much about the standard of the comedy. Speaking of which…
  • You’d be amazed by the number of people who’d turn down free cake. Not just free-with-a-ticket cake, cake that’s entirely free.
  • You’d be amazed at the number of people who haven’t seen The Matrix, too.
  • On the upside, giving out free tea and cake on a day like Saturday, when it was pouring down with rain, is a seriously good idea – I think we sold 97 tickets that day.
  • Doing two shows is exhausting for everyone. We’d start at 11.30 or whenever every day, flyer our hearts out for Comedy and Cake until 13.49, collapse somewhere for a couple of hours, then go out and flyer for the Matrix. Then perform the Matrix. It was getting us all down by Thursday.

Performance stuff

  • There’s an important reason why so many Edinburgh shows go for minimalism: because you’ve got a maximum of 15 minutes to get all your stuff into and out of the theatre on either side of your show. Keep the props and set down if at all possible.
  • In particular, edible props make stage managers sad.
  • You don’t have time to build set during a Fringe get-in.
  • Every year we over-run in rehearsals, say “Oh well, it’ll speed up in performance when we’ve got our adrenalin rushes”, then find that it doesn’t speed up enough and have to make cuts – and usually not enough cuts. Pace improves with performance nerves and practice, true – but audience laughter takes up time, and there are always screwups and ad-libs. The best guide to final running time still seems to be the length of the initial read-through.
  • Adding further to the running time, if you sell out a 100-seater theatre, it takes nearly ten minutes to get the audience in (OK, seven minutes, but you can’t ignore it).
  • Dame wigs, given the slightest chance, will tangle and fray in seconds. Apparently they need to be put in individual plastic bags.

Random stuff

  • Nepalese food (at least, that served by the Gurkha Spice) is so, so delicious, but so, so oily. Or, looked at another way, it’s so, so oily, but oh, so delicious. One to save as a rare treat, methinks. And isn’t it odd how many Nepalese restaurants Edinburgh has?
  • When jumping down to do press-ups, don’t be too enthusiastic, or you’ll hyperextend your back and cause yourself days of pain.
  • Serrated knives aren’t very good for cutting wood, and you’ll just get them blunt. And a saw that you’ve left back at the flat is precisely no good.
  • Sticking to a diet during the Fringe is hard, given the chaotic nature of your days and the nightly parties. Packed lunches (and possibly dinners?) help, and are anyway a very good idea.
  • Staying off the booze was much easier than anticipated. OK, so I had a pint after the first night, another after the last performance, and a half-dram of whisky with the Burns’ Supper, so I didn’t entirely abstain, but that’s still pretty limited consumption. This was in every respect a Good Idea: I slept better, spent less money, didn’t get hungover, and generally felt better than I would have done had I been drinking at usual Festival levels.

Any I’ve missed?

Miles