The real cost of taking a show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
I did my first summer at the Edinburgh Fringe when I was 18, volunteering as front-of-house-box-office-bar-person-including-building-the-bar-and-the-box-office-which-is-a-shed. Nothing could have prepared me for the experience and like a magnet, the Edinburgh Fringe has found a way to draw me back in pretty much every summer since.
It’s a really easy festival to romanticise. It’s literally the biggest arts festival in the world - if you are into arts, it is the place to be every August because it’s where everyone else is. The city is beautiful, and it’s transformed into every artist's stagey dream. Where else can you just stop a stranger in the street to talk to them about the arts?!
Growing up, I thought I was going to be an actor. I wasn’t amazing at acting but I was better at that than anything else and I didn’t know there were other jobs in the arts. I went to a local drama club with my brother (mostly for childcare) where I was supported by our brilliant teacher to do my first few auditions. I went to college at age 16 to study musical theatre and from there I did a degree in Acting. While doing my degree, I discovered ‘producing’, which to me has always felt more like ‘reactive and adaptive organising’, and found that not only was I actually good at it but I also really enjoyed it.
This summer I’m lead producing a brilliant play called Chatham House Rules, written and performed by the obscenely talented Louis Rembges and directed by Mitchell Polonsky. I was also supposed to be producing another show that I’d worked on previously this year, Rapture, which is written and directed by Sophie Leydon. Unfortunately, Sophie had to make the tough choice to cancel the run of Rapture at the Fringe (see statement here for more). I know from being involved in those conversations that it wasn’t a decision made lightly.
We talk a lot about transparency in the arts and how important that is, so I felt this would be a good opportunity to break down the real cost of the Edinburgh Fringe in this current landscape. All of this is based on my own experience - others may feel differently, or have budgets that look wildly different to ours and that’s fine. I think what we’ll find - or at least, what I’d be very surprised if we didn’t find - is that this current landscape is unsustainable. Let's get into it.
To explain the costs related to taking a show to the Edinburgh Fringe, we’re going to use the Chatham House Rules budget. Our team is VERY small - a producer, director, writer/performer and CSM.
Critically, NONE of our team are being paid - which fucking sucks. It is a passion project for all of us. We did a version of the budget which included creative team fees, but that was over half of what we would need to do the show. We are all very lucky to financially be in a position to give up our time for free, on the proviso that all future iterations of the production must be paid.
This isn’t unusual with Edinburgh, with many projects being run on a profit-share or on very low fees, if any at all. It isn’t right and I don’t advocate for it at all.
INCOME
Our largest source of income for Edinburgh came from the crowdfunding campaign we ran for 6 weeks. From this we raised £3,145 (thank you to everyone who donated!).
We are doing 2 preview performances at Omnibus Theatre in London - tickets are £9/7 and we’re on a 60/40 box office split in our favour with no upfront costs (thank you, Omnibus!).
We were runners up of the Sit Up Awards and they gave us £1000 towards audience engagement costs.
We will then have our Edinburgh box office settlement, which will come at the end of the festival. This can be tedious to calculate as ticket prices change per performance (plus special offers and 2-for-1 shows), plus anything contra’d (which means extra costs you agree to take off the box office at the end, like technical hire) and then trying to predict sales.
After our crowdfunder closed, we ran a private fundraising campaign which was successful in the sense it generated a lot of interest in the show from future investors, but did not secure us any cash for this iteration. We instead decided to set up a Ko-fi page which is a really cool platform with no fees where you are encouraged to donate the price of your medium-latte-with-oat-milk-and-a-pump-of-vanilla-please to a project. In fact, if you’re reading this and have learnt something from it I would love you to consider donating to our CHR Ko-fi page (link at the bottom of page).
Rapture applied for a project grant from Arts Council England which included the month long Edinburgh Fringe run amongst organisational development and a strategic tour of the South West. ACE will only fund projects that include Edinburgh Fringe if that engagement is less than 12% of the overall touring dates. The current turnaround time for an ACE bid is 9 weeks, with it being noted anecdotally that most projects need to apply at least twice to be successful. So while in theory it is possible to be supported by ACE, in practice it is very, very difficult and involves a significant amount of unpaid labour on the planning of a larger project - which in itself comes with more risk, which can go against your application.
EXPENDITURE
Venue marketing contribution - £600
Fringe registration fee - £295
Venue guarantee - £480
PRS (using music in show) - £50
Public liability insurance - £86
Set - design, building, materials, fireproofing, etc - £2100
Transport of set from studio to Omnibus and then to Edinburgh - £350
Tech hires - £274
Costume - £50
Rehearsal room hire - £950
PR - CNC Emerging Edinburgh Roster - £1200
Print materials (posters and flyers) - £200
Large printed posters in Edinburgh - £150
Train travel for company - £500
Accommodation - £4000
= £11,285
(You may be reading this screaming at your screen because I’ve forgotten something really obvious which is somewhat likely. Please tell me. I may have just forgotten to include it in my summary costings or have genuinely totally forgotten it, in which case help a gal out)
Wait, so how is this possible?!
Well…exactly. It kinda isn’t. We’re only able to make it work because we've been able to split payments or come to agreements about payment dates which allow us to use our Edinburgh box office settlement. This adds extra pressure during the run to keep sales up (PLEASE BUY TICKETS!) so we’re able to cover these. We ran a successful crowdfunding campaign and are able to continue to crowdfund through our Ko-fi page, which gives us some cashflow to use for upfront costs. A generous box office deal with venues also helps, and is appreciated (especially when we know venues also have costs they need to meet to be able to stay open).
The final thing I wanted to add is there is a culture of work around the Edinburgh Fringe that leads to burnout, which is already prevalent in our industry. Artists are expected to do everything and for no money, with impossibly high expectations. The sense of community the festival brings is astounding and is by far my favourite thing about it. But if that community is overwhelmingly tired, jaded and fed-up, then we need to start looking at the bigger picture.
When you look at it like this, it’s amazing we aren’t seeing MORE shows cancel Edinburgh Fringe runs. It’s valid for artists and organisations to be questioning if going to Edinburgh is really a good economic prospect anymore, especially considering costs are not only rising for ‘performers’ but audiences as well. If people can’t afford the travel and accommodation to visit the Fringe, then who are we even doing this for?
I hope this transparency is useful or at the very least, refreshing. This is my first ‘blog’ post but I want to do more, including asking other producers how they got into producing and interviewing others about their Edinburgh Fringe experiences, so if you’d be interested in that do subscribe or whatever this platform asks you to do.
ACTION POINTS -
If you liked this, do give me a follow on socials at @ellencharlarson. I’m most active on Twitter but I’m trying to get into Threads.
I’d love if you considered donating to our CHR Ko-fi page -
https://ko-fi.com/chathamhouserules
I’d also extra love if you considered buying a ticket to see the show in London or Edinburgh -
Omnibus Theatre - Friday 21st + Saturday 22nd July
https://www.omnibus-clapham.org/chatham-house-rules/
Edinburgh Fringe Festival - Pleasance Courtyard Bunker 1, 13:00, 2nd-28th August (not 14th)
https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/chatham-house-rules
I’m running an online workshop in August called The Lowdown on Approaching a Producer on Wednesday 23rd August - check out the details here.
For any business enquiries, do email ellencharlottelarson@yahoo.com.