The Free Fringe

Every performer dreams of spending August at the Edinburgh Festival – but a Fringe show costs more than the average actor or comedian can afford. Venue hire, accommodation, registration, travel, box office fees, promotional material, production costs and fast food between performances add up to thousands of pounds, which small companies have to find for themselves. The resulting high ticket prices mean that the cost of a trip to the festival is going up for audiences as well. Fosters Comedy Award winner Russell Kane charged a massive £17.50 for a one-hour show this year. Surely this isn’t the true spirit of the Fringe? Should artistic and cultural exchange cost so much? Isn’t there another way?

All these questions occurred to me as I stood on a rain-soaked Royal Mile, with only one solitary, foreign-looking fiver in my pocket, that would probably only buy me one drink in Edinburgh’s ridiculously-priced bars. Surely there must be a way to experience all the festival has to offer without maxing out my already-stretched budget? I stumbled down a side street, and discovered that the Fringe has sprouted another fringe of its own.

The Free Fringe began in 1996 on the principle that it would not charge performers to hire venue space, and the performers would not charge an entry fee (audiences are simply asked for donations at the end). This idea grew from the founding show, Peter Buckley Hill and Some Comedians, to this year’s 325 shows in 29 different venues. That’s not even counting the 340 shows at the rival Laughing Horse Free Festival, or the Forest Fringe, or countless other performances in off-the-radar venues. The simple concept of free venues and free entry has become a strong model for Edinburgh productions.

By reducing the costs of producing a show, performers are given the opportunity to experiment and develop, without getting into a debt that could drown their post-Edinburgh future. Free entry attracts audiences who have been priced out of the mainstream festival. More importantly, it encourages people to try something new, a show they perhaps wouldn’t have bought a ticket for. New, inexperienced, unknown or niche free performers rarely have an empty seat, while paid shows struggle to fill theirs.

And at the end of the night, my crumpled fiver ends up in the bucket of a free sketch show I genuinely enjoyed, going directly to the talented student cast, and then, I imagine, straight into the bar’s till in exchange for a well-deserved but over-priced pint.

(Originally published in Epigram, issue 240, 10/10/11)