The night before Marty and I left for Edinburgh, two of our close friends were leaving Berlin for good. These leaving drinks in typical Berlin fashion stretched much later than planned. Until Marty and I were left to scramble to our flats and finish packing before taking a cab to the airport in a sleepy panic.
Only we needn't of panicked. On arriving at the airport we realise we've arrived four hours before our flight. The lack of sleep leads us further and further into delierium. After failed attempts at conversation on the plane we pass out.
Suddenly we've arrived. After briefly meeting our wonderful host Emma in the town center, we get set off exhausted in the late afternoon in Leith, taking a nap that ends up wasting most of the day. By the time we get up its fifteen minutes until that evening's Utter spoken word programme. In our haste to get dressed and ready, we jump in a cab, only to realise en route we've left the flat with no flyers... Not a good start. But at least we could check out the venue, and collect a stack of utter flyers and free fringe programmes. Utter-Covers is good fun. Afterwards we get to meet a few other performers, and see another show before deciding we'd best get to bed early so we can start early the following day.
Day two. Its time to get flyering. We kick off by half price fringe box office, but as we have arrived at peak time, about two pm or so, the area is so clogged with people we can barely find a place to stand , let alone convince people to come to our show.Everyone around us appears to either be flyering, or desperately fleeing those who are flyering. We decide to switch locations. Martin had never been to the fringe. I had tried to describe to him the madness of the royal mile and promoting there, but I don't think he got it until we arrived. Within seconds we were nearly knocked over by a group of people dressed up like doctors, then got out of the way to stumble over a mermaid.
We tried to find the spot on the mile where people wouldn't rush past us, and had no luck. No one wanted to pause for a moment, especially to take a flyer. And then somehow by accident we stumbled on an idea. I had my camera with me. At the very least we thought if no one was going to take our flyers, we could document the act of how hard it was to flyer on the royal mile.As soon as I had the camera out and rolling, Marty called out "Free Fringe Festival Programme" and suddenly everyone wanted the programme, our flyer, and to know who we were and why we were filming. However from what we could tell, and we spent a good few hours up and down the royal mile. NONE of these people, came to our show....
Day three, also time to move house. We leave lovely Leith to just below the royal mile, as Emma's boyfriend George kindly rents his flat to us for the last days.Our new "back garden" has hills as far as the eyes can see. Before setting off for more flyering and then our shows, we rehearse the show. more or less while we go about the flat and get ready and make tea and such.
And as for the shows, including our preview at Utter, They were all great fun! , and we made some new friends from our audiences. I think our favourite after show comment was
"I just wish I'd been stoned for that"
Cheers James Mckay... :-)
For our second and last show, we wrote on the back of flyers that we would buy a jaeger shot for everyone who came, with a flyer. This did mean that all the money we made from that show bought the round. But it was really nice to have a little after party with our crowd in the bar. Although the bartender did look at me like i was crazy when i ordered all those shots...
What have we learned? From speaking to other performers and hearing how their runs went compared with ours, it seems like it would be helpful to be in town for longer and to have a longer run, maybe four or five days. With everything going on and
so much to see, it can take time to see even the shows you're keen to see.
For example, we saw a comedian guest in a show we stumble upon on sunday. We thought he was hilarious and were committed to making it to his show.
When we got back to the flat we saw we had his flyer already, it was in the saturday pile.. The flyer hadn't made an impression. And Even with us both keen to check out his show, it wasn't until the last day that we did (and we were late... oops)
Audience. Why do people come to one show rather than another? We thought about the shows we were convinced to go to. Most of all the key thing is a personal connection. Either you know someone, or that stranger engages with you in a way that makes you feel like you know them, or would like to. After we left Peter Bearder wrote a really helpful email giving us advice flyering. he said the the one line sell doesn't work. You have to get into conversation with people. We agree. You have to use your charisma and energy and make friends, But those new friends may not come the first day you meet them, which is why it helps to have a longer run. Guest slots also seem to make a difference in promoting . We would have liked to do some guest slots (other than Utter) before our shows. Guest slots are really helpful in making contacts, and in turn building audiences for your own show.
Probably the last thing we learned was about flyer design. We realised our flyer made a brilliant poster, but was far too busy for an a6 format. We needed one strong image, one catchy line and maybe buzzwords like "Free" "Berlin" "Cabaret" . The problem with our flyer is visually it said too much, but verbally it wasn't direct enough. Now having seeing more flyers then we ever want to see again until next year, We've learned that our flyer was not the kind we would pick up from a pile of others, or that would be memorable after taking. Now we know.
It was a brilliant experience to take a show to edinburgh, to be part of the free fringe and to be supported by the tireless and courageous efforts of Richard Tyrone Jones. It feels very special to be part of the first dedicated spoken word venue. It definitely deserves a place in the fringe. We noticed that a lot of punters are scared of the phrase "spoken word" and we think that Utter is on its way to changing that. We're grateful to be part of the free fringe. Having to pay for our own expenses with the flights, accomodation and flyers there is no way we could afford to do the fringe in any other way. We've learned so much that it would be a waste to not come back stronger next year. We are definitely keen to come back and up our game.
P.s. to all our Berlin based performer friends. We also have been thinking it would be cool to get a collective together to hit the fringe en masse next year. Going as a group (we're looking at you comedians, slammers and burlesque artists) means cross promotion, and shared help for tech... With all the hype generated by our city at the moment, I can't think of a better place to trade off of it... I'm just saying
the film was one of those that always seemed to be playing on one channel or another when i was growing up. Its images are forever imprinted on my brain. As for the dialogue, Its arguably one of the most quoted films of its time,. (my personal favourite has generally been variations of " toto i don't think we're in kansas anymore" which is useful in all manner of social settings that a girl about town and club kid can often find herself in).
