Chipping Off Little Pieces of My Soul – A Fringe Diary

Fuck you, Edinburgh Fringe Festival. If I knew it was going to be this shit, and cost this much, I would’ve gone to a tropical island for a month and drunk myself stupid. At least then, I’d have a tan. Instead, every day of August the Edinburgh Fringe has chipped off more pieces of my soul. Flyering on the Royal Mile, I was subjected to this conversation on endless repeat: "Is it free? Why would I pay for your show, when I can see someone else I’ve never heard of for free?"

People told me that they’d heard my show was good, that it sounded interesting. They liked the name, ‘Binge Thinking’ and thought it was cool that I’d printed beermats instead of flyers. I resorted to handing out free tickets to every show, just to get an audience. After every performance, people told me how much they enjoyed it, and promised to tell friends. One woman even pressed her spare change into my hand. When I refused it, she left it on a table. "That was such a great show. You’ve got to make a living," she said.

She’s right, but her one pound in change wasn’t going to make much difference. Overall, I’ve lost thousands. So why not perform in a free venue? I’m an artist, not a beggar, and at least with a paid venue, at the start of the month there was a sliver of hope that I’d break even. A week in, that hope had been crushed to dust. People keep telling me that just getting an audience to every show was a huge achievement. That it’s wonderful that I didn’t have to cancel a show, and the experience is invaluable. That the large majority of artists who come to Edinburgh lose money.

So Edinburgh is an arts festival where everyone makes money except the artists? The people who actually create the art? Which is supposed to be okay? Think about it for a second. It’s really fucking stupid. It’s like a farmer paying a butcher to sell his meat. As an artist, I’m not doing it to make a fortune. I’m doing it to make art, and make a living, so I can keep making art. Not to make a huge loss, so I have to go back to being a wage slave. Which is now looking very likely.

Free venues emerged because ticket prices and venue hire rates have gotten out of control, but free performances undervalue the artist. What’s needed is a venue that is zero risk for the performers, which works with them and audiences to provide lower rents and ticket prices, at the same time as offering a quality product. Share the risk, share the profits, and maybe one day we might have an arts festival that’s for everyone, including the artists.