No, not entries for the Band Name Competition (though I suppose they might be...), but my sad reflections on my prospects for entertainment during the festival season here in Edinburgh.
I'm sure it's less than a decade ago that most shows in the Fringe were only £2 or £3; and even within the last five years or so, surely most shows were still only about a fiver? This year I am shocked to discover that even the cheapest shows are mostly £11 or £12. The 'good old days' when I could see 20 or 30 shows in a week and still come out of it with change from £100 are no more. £10, for me, is a daunting psychological threshold. I'm sure on my last few trips up here, I must have paid £10 for a show now and again, and £7, £8, or £9 on quite a few occasions; but a price of more than £10 per ticket strikes fear and resentment into my soul, provokes a profound resistance to pay. I fear I may have to ration myself to a single show per day. Oh, woe, woe.
Now, friends up here in Edinburgh have been encouraging me to believe that I can score lots of freebie tickets. This is quite common sport amongst the local people at this time of year, I gather. They suggest such sneaky tactics as wheedling the poor students desperately touting their shows on the Royal Mile to give you free tickets instead of just flyers; or "befriending" the most disconsolate-looking group of young people in a bar and offering to be a rent-a-crowd for their audienceless show (the ideal outcome being that you will get some free drinks out of them as well as free tickets; and maybe even a chance to sleep with the lead actress); or just hanging around outside shows that have very short (or no) queues, and trying to blag your way in at the last minute. Another variation on these approaches is to scour the comedy blurbs to identify the most painfully unfunny novice comedians (you can usually tell) and then seek them out and offer them your services as a laughter-catalyst ("Oh yes, my guffaw is utterly infectious. Even my smirks and chortles spread like wildfire, but the full laugh will reduce your punters to hysterics in an instant."). Then, of course, the really unscrupulous just try to pass themselves off as reviewers. My host has suggested, as a grander version of this, that I set up a website for a phoney Chinese theatre festival and introduce myself at the Fringe Office as the 'director' - looking for some shows to take back there next spring. Hmm, it's crazy - but it might just work....
The problem with all of these ruses (aside from the ethical considerations, that is) is that they're all tending to make you an uncritical bottom-feeder. Any shows for which you can get free tickets in this way (well, other than by impersonating a journalist or a theatre director, anyway) are likely to be pretty piss-poor; nearly all the good stuff - even the more low-key, 'unregarded' gems - gets the word-of-mouth going for it and is soon pretty near to sold-out.
Also, I do feel rather bad about exploiting people's vulnerability in the ways suggested above. I like to support and encourage performers, and I feel I ought to pay them something for their efforts (I just can't afford to pay £10+ !!). I don't think I'll be trying out any of these subterfuges for myself over the next few days.
However, I am not above accepting free tickets if offered to me..... And my buddy The Arts Entrepreneur (arriving tonight), in addition to usually having at least one or two shows of his own on in The Fringe (mostly as a producer, occasionally as writer/director), is pretty well-connected in the scene here and often manages to score us some invitations to various friends-of-friends' shows.
There also seems to be more and more completely free stuff going on in recent years - not just the street performances on the Mile and in Princes Gardens, but numerous bars and restaurants providing comedy and live music offerings. In the past I've always been a bit suspicious of any show that was FREE (apart from the rollicking jazz and folk mini-festivals staged at The Guildford Arms every year: a regular stop-off of mine for the past decade or more): if it's not worth paying for, it's not worth seeing, I used to think. And that perverse prejudice had been rather confirmed by a number of truly dire shows I'd caught under the umbrella of 'Fringe For Free', a promotion of the past few years. This year, though, I think I shall be forced to set these misgivings aside. I have barely enough money left to pay for beer, so - it's FREE or NOTHING for my theatre-going this week.
No comments:
Post a Comment