A love letter to Brighton Fringe

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. If only we knew it at the time. One year ago, we received an offer from Underbelly to put Make-up on at the 2020 Fringe. Coming ten years after NoLogoProductions made its Ed Fringe debut with a free show at The Counting House, we’d finally made it into the big four. The date the deal was sealed?  Not April 1st. Instead, it was a few weeks earlier, on the far more ominous Friday 13th. 

Less than three weeks later, one day before the first day of April, as if to avoid the possibility that anyone could think they weren’t being serious, an email arrived that began with the words ‘It is with great sadness that I am writing to inform you that the Fringe Society have made the decision to suspend planning and operations for the Fringe 2020 in line with other summer festivals.’

The last part of that sentence is worth noting - ‘Other summer festivals’. Make-up was due to be on at Brighton Fringe, Greater Manchester Fringe and Buxton Fringe, all before arriving in Edinburgh. It had also been selected for the Supported Programme of the Highlands and Islands Touring Network, which was going to see us perform a little bit of the play on the Isle of Skye at the end of April in the hope of attracting other promoters to book us in for an autumn tour. It all had the feeling of being the big one, the play that would be the one that got us noticed.

One by one, the house of cards came tumbling down. The Edinburgh cancellation came three hours after Greater Manchester fell. Brighton and Skye had been called off within a day of each other just five days after we’d got the Edinburgh offer. Only Buxton remained, hanging on proudly and defiantly, in the hope that they would be able to provide something to lift people’s spirits in July. Emails flew around about different options for getting shows on, including streaming performances, in the mistaken hope that even if we couldn’t travel, we might still be able to get into an empty theatre somewhere. It was the beginning of June when all hope was officially abandoned as an email confirmed that our registration and venue fee was back in the PayPal account it came from.

The reaction of other performers to the cancellation of Edinburgh was interesting. For weeks, there’d been calls, and indeed demands, on forums for the Fringe to be cancelled. One performer continually posted a letter he had sent to the Fringe Society insisting they acted quickly. For him, and many others, a continued refusal to cancel was creating a state of limbo, with large rental deposits having to be paid along with Fringe registration fees. This at the same time as their income was disappearing, with self-employed, freelancer and zero-hours contract staff becoming bywords for not working. 

For me, as someone based in Edinburgh, I’d have been happy to have been kept dangling on a string for as long as possible, if there was even the remotest chance that we could have the play on in front of a live audience sometime in August. 

It wasn’t that I was facing some sort of existential dilemma - If a tree falls in a forest and no-one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound? If a playwright writes a play and nobody sees it, is he a playwright? – and while I did feel a bit like some sort of vindictive God had set out the finest and largest meal I could imagine just to grab the plate away as I was about to tuck in, I got over that and told myself that anything that was meant to happen in 2020 could happen in 2021 (or maybe 2022 if I had really been blessed with the gift of hindsight). 

So why was I so keen to get the show on? It was more about what it would mean. That life was getting to back to normal, that the virus was being defeated and that people could go out and immerse themselves in culture, sport, beer, food or whatever else took their fancy.

Of course, Edinburgh didn’t happen. The closest the city came to it was a stand-up show in the courtyard of The Three Sisters courtesy of Nathan Cassidy. It was good, but not quite enough to make up for what had been lost.

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​Instead it was October, when a brief window opened and a drastically reduced boutique version of Brighton Fringe took place. We were proud and delighted to be one of the companies that performed there and for Make-up to have its official premiere there on October 7, 2020 (its unofficial premiere was a few days earlier with a preview show at the cornerHOUSE in Surbiton, where a show intended for performance in a small intimate space was put on in a large hall with cabaret tables in a style that eerily mirrored one of the lines in the play).

With 10pm curfews having been announced a couple of weeks earlier, and a second English lockdown just around the corner, every night felt like it was a bonus and also felt like it might turn out to be the last one. As it was we made it through the four days, and the fringe made it to the end of the month. All of this was down to people like JD and Sarah at Sweet Venues and all of the Brighton Fringe team, people for whom giving up and admitting defeat didn’t seem to be an option because they were  blessed with the sheer determination and bloody mindedness needed to get at least some venues open and some people back into the theatre.

Thanks to them, Brighton Fringe took place last year and will forever hold a special place in our hearts. It was great to be getting the show in front of a crowd and it was great to be working with such wonderful people.
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With Brighton Fringe 2021 now confirmed, and with Make-up scheduled to be on at The Rialto, we’re looking forward to coming back in June. We hope to see lots of people at the show, not just because it will mean that they want to see it, but because it will mean that they can. As for Edinburgh, Buxton, Manchester and the Highlands and Islands, we’re keeping our fingers crossed…

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