Last week in Edinburgh

There's so much to write about and so little time to do it...yesterday we were invited to perform The Fragility of X at the META Theatre Festival in Delhi - we're all very excited by the offer and very happy to have been invited by the festival's creative director Ravi Dubey who came to see the show at the Underbelly this week. INDIA, none of us have visited India before so it's all very exciting indeed. Lots more to write but no time now...

Walking around Edinburgh in the rain handing out flyers....walking around Edinburgh in the sunshine handing out flyers....walking around Edinburgh in the rain handing out flyers....we are beginning to get the hang of this flyering business - sort of. It's really important to have a plan to get bums on seats in the first 5 to 7 days (we didn't). On our 2rd show we got ten comps at the last minute and went out onto the streets of Edinburgh to give away tickets to our show - the theory is, get people in to start with, any way you can and let word of mouth build up - but we couldn't get any takers!! Horrendous....we tried it again 2 days later when we had press in and this time it was more successful...now our first review is out and it's really good, four stars in the Scotsman, so hopefully it will pick up from there...however there has been a really good walk up audience everyday at the Underbelly so we've been consistantly about half full every day and getting a terrific response from audience members. Aside from performing the show and promoting it to audiences, we have another big job on our hands, The Fragility of X needs lots of technical care and we are sharing it between us, dragging a suitcase of soaking wet costumes and unravelled jumpers back to our flat for washing, drying and knitting back every night! To find out why, come and see the show ha ha!

Last week was a brilliant week re-rehearsing with our wonderful director John Wright, making The Fragility of X really alive again. It was so so busy though, rehearsing and finishing off all the preparations for our first Edinburgh festival trip and working out how to tech a really quite technical show in a new space in 4 hours....:-)
We arrived in Edinburgh on Tuesday evening (I think! it's hard to keep track of the days here) and on wednesday we had our tech at the Underbelly from 11pm - 3 am. The technicians had been working since 7am that morning, so under the circumstances, they were brilliant. Our first show was at 4.10pm on Thursday 5th August, and went surprisingly well, we were half full and very happy with the response. Afterwards we were invited to the List party though we had to leave in time to get back to the Underbelly for me to appear as the special guest in the Maydays impro show "Guest Who?" which was great fun. We are really enjoying being in Edinburgh so far but just beginning to realize that it really is going to be quite a lot of hard work to make the most of it, (as well as a lot of fun).

Edinburgh 2

How we got here....our Edinburgh journey so far....
First of all I went to last summer’s Edinburgh festival on a recce – highly recommended if you’ve never been to the Edinburgh Festival. It’s a wonderful experience going up as a punter, the atmosphere and the variety of shows on offer and as well as being a great opportunity to see some exciting shows (and a few not so exciting!). It also gives you a chance to take a peek at the various theatre spaces you might want to apply to. There are also loads of free events organised by the Fringe Society, which are designed to inform and equip you for the task of bringing a show to the festival. It’s in their interest to encourage and support you, there would be no festival without nutters like us, who decide that they will indeed join in the madness and take a show to the biggest arts festival in the world...and sink or swim! Most of these free events are a bit like the “Spotlight On” events that PANDA organizes. They have subjects like “How To Do A Show at the Fringe” or “How to Sell a Show at the Fringe”. They usually have a panel who are associated with the fringe, for example, a venue manager, an independent producer and a company member would be a typical line up. They are introduced by the host from the Fringe Society and then each panel member talks a little about the subject – marketing, producing etc – and then the audience can ask questions at the end. Some questions never get straight answers, like my question at all these events, “How much does it cost to take a show to the fringe.” This is because it really does depend how you approach it and where you perform and what kind of accommodation etc etc. There’s the free fringe, where you can put on your show, there are no fees for the venue and you take turns running the box office or tearing tickets for the other shows which are on at that venue. But even with the free fringe you still need somewhere to stay, to get flyers and posters printed, find an audience etc. So once you’ve gathered your information and decided to take a show up, the next step is to apply to the venues that you want to perform at. This is usually between January and March and the venue managers usually try to make the offers in good time for the early bird deadline to register your show with the Fringe Society, it’s about £100 cheaper if you register early, and this gets your show in the brochure and on the Fringe website.
The other thing that’s really useful is to get a copy of the fringe brochure, which lists all the shows in the festival. It’s really interesting to browse through it and notice what catches your attention, what invites you to buy tickets and what words/images etc put you off....all of which is very useful information for when it comes to putting together your own words and images to sell your own show.
My only previous experience of producing a show for a theatre festival, is when we did ‘Not With That Hand’ in the 2007 247 Theatre Festival in Manchester. This is a great training in the step by step approach, doing one thing after another and not panicking are the main (and important) lessons that I learnt from that experience.
So after looking at spaces and seeing some shows and attending the fringe events, I came back to Manchester and had a good think about whether we would go with The Fragility of X and if we did, - how would we do it?
My first choice of venue was Big Belly at Underbelly, I just felt that the whole vibe at Underbelly was right for Coal and that this particular performance space was right for The Fragility of X – only 60 seats, but a big, cavernous performance space, so when we were offered a good slot in the afternoon, in that particular venue, that helped to make the decision to go to Edinburgh and partake in the madness.
More soon....www.coal-theatre.co.uk
Post your comments to us or email us at info@coal-theatre.co.uk

Edinburgh

Coal is a theatre company based in Manchester North West England and we are taking our show The Fragility of X to The Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2010. The show was devised by the company and produced in association with Royal Exchange Theatre in March 2009 for four preview performances in The Studio Theatre. We had a terrific response and felt that it was important to take the show further afield. So, now we are Edinburgh bound and we are going to write about our experiences pre, during and post Edinburgh. None of the company has ever performed in Edinburgh before so it will be a new experience for all of us....

Here are the details of the show -

www.edfringe.com/whats-on/theatre/fragility-of-x

more soon....

Hello welcome to our first blog post...in this blog we are going to record the high and lows of taking our show The Fragility of X to Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I've just looked at the calender and counted six weeks until we hit Edinburgh...I feel sick!