Chapter 1: Edinburgh

iceandfire did the Edinburgh Fringe for the first time in August, taking our show Rendition Monologues for a one week run. I went up for 4 days.

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival was crazy. The festival itself was much as I expected - a similar vibe to the Adelaide Fringe (the 2nd biggest fringe in the world I believe) or the Melb Comedy Festival - but doing a show was exhausting. Constant promotion and plugging. You can't just build up to opening night and then relax once it's over. After opening night drinks you have to go back out there, with flyers, and hassle people to come to your show.

I think I found it especially hard because it's the first play that I've worked on (for more than one performance - iceandfire's outreach project usually only does one-off shows) where I wasn't creatively involved. So my job was to deal with the stress and promote the show but without getting any kind of adrenaline rush when the show went well. I wasn't onstage performing, or sitting in the audience enjoying a show that I directed and gauging the audience's reaction.

That said, the show did go pretty well. We got an average audience of 60 per show - compared with an average audience of about 6 for most shows - and we got a 5 star review from WhatsOnStage, plus a nice review in the Scotsman as well. Sadly the reviews came out the day before our last show, so not much time to bring in an audience! Oh well. That was part of the learning curve.

The other big lesson came from the rubbish PR company that we hired, who seemed to do absolutely nothing. Perhaps they did plenty, but they certainly didn't tell us about it. I sent them at least 6 emails asking them to be specific about who they had contacted with a press release and invited to opening night and they would always reply with vague responses like "We are talking to our contacts. Peace." I swear, he signed off every email with the word "peace". The company's only advice while we were actually there at the festival was to get the cast to go out to the cool bars and get photographed with celebrities! When I asked "why?" he said it was for the media. But why would the media care about a photo of 5 guys they don't know standing next to someone they maybe do?? Who is going to print that? These guys DIDN'T EVEN COME TO OUR OPENING NIGHT!! I was furious.

So we did get some OK media, but it all came from me. I didn't even know anyone in Edinburgh, that was why we hired a PR company. They got us one radio interview on local Edinburgh radio. We threatened to not pay the second half of their fee (not sure if Christine gave in eventually) but they STILL didn't produce any evidence that they had done anything. They said they had some but refused to hand it over. Wankers.

But next time we'll know better!

Email me if you want to know the name of the company so that you don't ever waste £1000.

Playhouse problems

Today iceandfire had our show Rendition Monologues at the Southwark Playhouse in London and Al Jazeera were coming to film it for a news broadcast. I said I would meet AJ at the rehearsal at 2:30pm and arrange an interview with Christine... but when I arrived at 2pm Christine and the cast were still waiting outside the venue because no-one from the theatre was there to let us in! They were supposed to open up at 12, Christine arrived at 1:30, and by the time AJ arrived we were still locked out! Quite embarrassing for us, our first big TV broadcast. EVENTUALLY someone turned up from the theatre, but only after Christine called the artistic director 6 times (she wasn't answering) who then gave her the tech manager's number, who also didn't answer his phone!

Anyway, we got in sometime after 3pm (after Christine had been calling and waiting for 1 1/2 hours) and Al Jazeera filmed for just over half an hour. Hopefully they'll put the story online and I can put a link here.

For anyone who hasn't seen it yet

Here is the video I made for iceandfire, about extraordinary rendition.

Please go to www.renditionmonologues.org for more information... and/or rate the video on Youtube!