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.

Task for the weekend

I am officially nominating myself in the Worst Blogger of 2009 competition. In the "just plain lazy/crap" category. Not in the "inciting racial hatred" category or anything.

So quite a lot to talk about. I think I'm going to do this in chapters based on significant events of the past 2 1/2 months or so...

1) Edinburgh

2) Portugal

3) Birthday/Ben leaving (a bitter/sweet chapter)

4) New job (sweet!)

5) New housemate (you'll have to wait and see...)

6) My crap week last week (just plain bitter)

Think that's most of it. The list is more for me than for you (I don't know if anyone still bothers to read this, considering how inconsistent I am!) I'm going to try and write about all of the above over this weekend. In chronological order.

Ranting

Not much this week, mostly work stuff. Wed night Ben and I went to our nice local (one of the locals) The Approach for dinner. It's a really nice pub. I had actually been there before but that was when I first arrived, last Sept. Last night the DOP on Ben's New York Othello film came over for dinner, Zelmira. She's actually British although she lives in NYC and her husband is Swedish and she just got back from shooting a doco in Germany...!

Nought else really. I'm getting a bit frustrated about my lack of time to work on my own projects and write. Life just seems to get away from me all the time. I'm working part-time but then on my days off stuff just always comes up - such as today when there was a problem with my application for this video project that I submitted a few weeks ago, so I had to go into the office to fax it. Then from 5pm I'm working at the Barbican so that allows me 2-3 hours to do my own stuff, but then there are emails and dirty dishes... It's hard to make it a priority. Hopefully next week I'll get some of my own work done.

And can I just be very English for a moment and complain that the weather here has been rubbish for the past 2 weeks. Weird sun-rain-sun-rain weather - and the rain isn't even normal London rain, it pelts down and then suddenly the sun comes out and it's 23C. So odd. And annoying.

Barbed

Had the worst shift at the Barbican last night. 5 hours in the carpark supervising a photo/sound installation. About 30 people came in the whole time and there was this music on a loop, which, I kid you not, sounded exactly like the theme to psycho played at half speed. Did the artist think of the poor sod who had to work on his stoopid installation?? That music went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on...

In better news, Ben and I have booked a holiday to Portugal! After the Edinburgh trip, just before Ben will go back to Aus. 4 nights in a nice hotel on the beach... Yeah!

I gotta get out of the Barbican though. Driving me crazy. I applied for some funding last week for a video participation project with some refugees in Wimbledon, through iceandfire (partnering with FilmAid). So fingers crossed for that coz then I can ditch the Barb and do basically full-time hours for 3 months working on bleeding heart do-gooder projects!

Wired

I know that I'm just full of excuses for why I keep abandoning my blogging duties but this time it's a real good one.

I haven't had the internet.

It took more than a week to get the internet connected at our new flat (yes - new flat! I'll get to that in a moment). I don't know why but all the communications companies said it would take 5-10 business days! It's not like a person ever turned up, they just seemed to flick a switch, and we went from living in the Dark Ages to being in civilisation. They sent us a text message saying we were online and that was that. Why the 5 working days then??

Anyway, new flat. Hoorah! And living like a real, live married couple. In the same house, not just the same country! The apartment is great. Overlooking a canal and a park, with cafes and pubs all around. Nice open plan living/kitchen and good furniture. The only downside is that it's on quite a busy road, so if we have the windows open it can be noisy. But I used to live on the corner of Brunswick St and Johnston, so this is nothing! No trams or crap 80s music blaring from One Twenty Bar...

Had housewarming drinks on the weekend. Slightly disappointing turnout, I think a lot of people were away, but we met some of our neighbours which was nice. They brought us flowers! A lovely couple downstairs. There's another nice guy across the hall, who we're having a beer with tonight. I want to get to know the people on the ground floor who have an awesome terrace on the canal! Maybe they'll invite us over for a BBQ...

I'll put some photos up soon.

At iceandfire we're preparing for Edinburgh Fringe. It'll be the first time the company has gone and we're in a 350 seat venue! So the pressure is on! Thankfully we're in a few "Top Picks" lists, and we also got this Preview Article. Two reviewers have also confirmed they're coming on Opening Night, including one from the Scotsman, so that will hopefully bring some punters in. If you know anyone to Edinburgh, tell them to see Rendition Monologues!

Fliss went to Spain yesterday - I'll miss her! We seem to be more involved in each other's lives over here than we were in Melbourne, I guess because we're both away from home together. We've always been close but I think I see her twice as much living in London as I did before. Anyway, I suspect she is going to have an awesome time on her holiday. And she has already had some interest from potential employers for when she gets back, so fingers crossed there!

That's all from me at the moment. But now that we're all wired in Bethnal Green I promise to keep up the blog more!