Stephanie Tisdell , Image supplied
As the world’s largest arts festival, the Edinburgh Fringe has long been a mecca for fledgling performers hoping to woo international audiences.
In 2015, a staggering 3,000 shows will be competing for audiences. Among them, Australian comedians Joel Creasey, Tom Ballard and Stephanie Tisdell, who are all taking shows to Edinburgh for the first time this month.
With a swag of stand-up shows, TV appearances (including the inaugural Australian season of ‘I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here’) and a DVD under his belt, Joel Creasey is currently one of Australia’s hottest comedic commodities. The 24-year-old, who hosted this year’s Melbourne Comedy Gala, will make his Edinburgh Fringe debut with a 12 performances of ‘Hurricane’, a composition of anecdotes arising from his burgeoning stardom. Though this is Creasey’s seventh solo show, he admits that tackling the international circuit forces you back to the bottom of the food chain. A kind of character-building exercise, if you will.
‘It’s a total blow to your ego, but you’ve got to do it. It toughens you as a comic,’ he says.
‘Comedy is a sport. If you’re playing tennis and playing the same player all the time, you’re only going to get used to playing that person. So if you’re in Melbourne, and only playing the same venue, you kind of know that crowd. Taking your show overseas, performing overseas, really stretches you.’
Raw Comedy finalist and former Triple J breakfast host, Tom Ballard, agrees. Heading to Edinburgh ‘armed only with a suitcase, a heart full of dreams and a lot of dick jokes’, 25-year-old Ballard says he felt it was time to take the plunge into international waters, and is undertaking a gruelling 24-day run of his show ‘Taxis & Rainbows & Hatred’.
‘No matter what happens this Fringe, I know at the end of it I’ll be a better comedian. I can’t not be after doing an hour every night for a month in front of people who have literally thousands of other options and who don’t give a shit that I’ve been on Australian telly.’
‘Even if the UK industry takes a look at me and says, ‘No thanks’, I know I can head back to Australia and feel like I’m going to be a better stand up. For me, that alone makes it worthwhile,’ said Ballard.
As an open-access festival, registering a show at the Fringe is a relatively simple task, though securing a venue can be be a bit trickier, with fees ranging anywhere from $0 to $22,000 a week. Then there’s flights, accommodation and, of course, marketing.
‘Enlist a producer and ‘flyerers’ if you can. Yes, they can add to your total costs, but all your spending will be for nought if you can’t actually get folks in to see you,’ says Ballard, who adds that a ‘recon’ mission to scout out a big festival before you commit is also a good idea.
‘I spent eight days just wandering around the Fringe in 2009, so when I head over this year to actually do my show it won’t be such an intense shock,’ he says.
One option for cash-strapped artists is the Free Festival. Performers are not charged venue fees on the condition they don’t charge an entry fee into their shows, although audience members are often asked to make a donation. It’s through this arrangement that 22-year-old Stephanie Tisdell is able to present her first Fringe show, ‘Boob-a-rang’.
‘Performing in the Fringe, in whatever way that entailed, was on my bucket list,’ says Tisdell, winner of last year’s Deadly Funny, Australia’s premier Aboriginal comedy program.
‘I’m part of the Laughing Horse Free Festival. I put through an application and they’re in touch with you throughout the whole process. They actually make it really easy.’
No matter how you get there, Creasey says international exposure at festivals such as the Edinburgh Fringe is a crucial part of developing your career as an artist and definitely worth the extra effort and cost it entails.
‘Taking your show overseas is so hard and so expensive but it’s really important,’ he says.
‘I think a lot of young comics don’t view themselves as a business and they are. They sit back and want the work to come to them. That’s just not going to happen these days.’
Thinking of taking your show to the Edinburgh Fringe? Check out the Edinburgh Fringe online resources for performers.
Tom Ballard: Taxis & Rainbows & Hatred, August 5-30, Assembly George Square Studios
Joel Creasey: The Hurricane, August 18-29, Assembly Roxy
Stephanie Tisdell: Boob-a-rang, August 17 and 18, Laughing Horse @Espionage
