steve greer

change of address

2008-02-20T03:36:00.000-08:00

This blog now lives at http://www.readwriteplay.co.uk - I'd head over there right now if I were you. GO NOW!

Fringe 2007

2007-10-08T08:14:00.000-07:00

A few overdue thoughts, post-Fringe 2007:

1. The narrative in the media that there was "too much comedy" at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival was both strange and unexamined. In actuality, theatre and comedy represent roughly equal proportions of the Fringe - theatre has slightly more shows, in fact.

It's never been clear why comedy should have to represent a smaller proportion of the total shows; if the argument is that they take a larger proportion of ticket shares and that this impacts directly on theatre sales.. well, we're just admitting that the public doesn't actually want to cram into converted cupboards to watch theatre. Comedy? Maybe it doesn't matter what the venue is like if the bar is open. I've certainly yet to hear the complaint that there's not enough theatre.

There are, though, a couple of things to remember: comedy can be (and usually is at the Fringe) much, much cheaper to produce, with consequently less risk. Smaller casts, smaller production budgets and a larger potential audience can be a powerful combination. Theatre at the fringe can be world-class, but there are a different set of pressures at work.

Similarly, the claim made by certain reviewers that the Fringe is "killing" the art of comedy through an over-reliance on giant shows by established acts is headline grabbing but not persuasive. The vast majority of shows which enjoyed great word-of-mouth this year were Fringe first-timers or those yet to make the big-time - a good example here are the if.comeddie nominated Pappy's Fun Club.

If someone is prepared to drop £40 to see Ricky Gervais - who sold out thousands of seats at the Edinburgh Castle Esplanade - they're probably going to be prepared to spend another £5 and take a risk on an unknown. In any case, I've yet to meet someone who thought they were competing with Gervais for audience share, whose show arguably drew on an entirely different (TV oriented) market.

2. The related complaints - made primarily by the directors of the larger, older venues - that the Fringe has grown too large and that "the competition for audiences is too tough" rarely recognise the multiple sources of the problem.

It's slightly odd to have William Burdett Coutts complaining about low audiences, while admitting that "I'm as guilty as anyone else. There is a limited local audience. We have expanded our shows." With 700,000 tickets to sell, it's perhaps not that suprising that the Assembly Rooms - tickets priced towards the upper end of the market - had trouble filling seats. It's also not realistic to judge the success of the Fringe on the basis of the success of the Assembly Rooms - plenty of smaller (let's even say younger) venues have had a great year.

The tentative proposal to create another Fringe - to split from the (fringe) festival which split from the (international) festival - is not a solution; it's a re-branding exercise. The "free festival" is a nice idea, and a good way to offer venues to acts who couldn't otherwise afford the festival - but the vast majority of people working in the arts are also hoping to pay their rent. The number of professionals prepared to give up a month to live in one of the most expensive cities in the UK for no money at all is quite small. (A fairly large number end up doing that inadvertently, but they didn't actively plan it.)

3. There is also - and it's an unpopular thing to say - a parasitic relationship between some comedy agencies and the acts that they promote at the festival: I've learnt first hand of the (not uncommon) terms on offer, terms which guarantee a loss even if the entire run sells out.

While you could fairly criticise companies for offering such terms - or acts for being desperate enough to sign in the hope of longer term fame - you start to understand where all the money is going, why ticket prices creep so quickly and why it's good business sense for promoters and venues to take large numbers of acts. Contracts set up to primarily protect the profitability of venues and promoters is good business sense, but it's not necessarily the best environment to grow new acts.

Standardised disclaimer: having worked on both the promoter and venue sides, I'll say that the majority aren't trying to screw you. They are, however, trying to compete with certain companies who are dropping huge amounts of money on the fringe and EXPECTING their clients to make a loss.

October Update

2007-10-08T07:08:00.000-07:00

I'm down in London over the weekend of the 27th October for the first recording of the Penny Dreadfuls' new BBC radio series. If you're free on the Friday night - or the following Wednesday - free tickets for the recording are available here.

C.J. Jarvis and C. Cooke - Edinburgh artists now based in London - are in the final weeks of their show at the Madder 139 gallery. I've worked with them on various projects over the last few years and hope to collaborate again in the future: there's a mix of high-level art theory and humour that really appeals.

I'm also in the process of putting together the first issue of a new quarterly online publication - (which, right now, mainly involves calling a large number of friends and contacts working in theatre and the arts to see if they have time to spare). I'll post something more here when I have firmer details - and when I start the open submission process - but am aiming for a winter edition at the end of the year.

play as rehearsal for living

2007-06-30T10:21:00.001-07:00

I'm currently working on a paper that covers a few of my research interests: improvisation, activism and interactive theatre. To be more specific, I've been looking at World Without Oil - a collective imagining of an real world oil-shock led by Jane McGonigal and Ken Eklund - and trying to tease out the relationship to the methods in other communal, activist performances.

The most productive link I've found so far has been to the communal forum theatre form pioneered by Augusto Boal, which shares the same intention to use play as rehearsal for living.

I'm also working with material from a paper I gave at the Improvisation Continuums conference a few months back - there's a definite sense that the kinds of creativity available are determined by structure. Put simply, we accept limitations or borders in order to make our play more coherent and productive, a concept familiar to most if not all improvisers.

Finally, some (unrelated) pictures from a combination birthday and farewell party for some artists I've had great fun working with.

may update

2007-05-21T08:21:00.001-07:00

Even though it's only May, Idil and I have had to complete our first round of proofing for August - the Fringe programme entry, our ads in the Fringe programme and the Underbelly programme, as well as the first press release. Idil is still finalising the design work, but it's looking beautiful so far.

Work is also progressing on the new Penny Dreadfuls website. It's a taken a suprisingly short time to rewire the Wordpress plug-ins and widgets that I need - mainly because the template I'm customising, Mandingo, is so flexible. One of the features that is now up and running is a feed from the existing site, which will continue as a more informal production blog - a feat achieved with relatively little swearing.

big shed scotland

2007-05-21T08:08:00.000-07:00

I've been working with a friend, Clemmie, on a clean and simple website using blogger for an art exhibition she's curating in July. It's a showcase for the work of six young Edinburgh-based artists who are exhibiting south of the border for the first time.

The site is pretty spartan right now, but it's shaping up to be a nice demonstration of how a little willingness to tamper with template code means that blogger can be used for more than blogs.

redevelopment

2007-05-02T05:17:00.000-07:00

With a couple of hundred miles separating the production team for The Penny Dreadfuls, Idil and I have to be a little creative to get work done. I'm based in Edinburgh and Idil's currently in London - with Neil working around the UK when he's not in New York with Kandinsky. *ahem* Not that I'm jealous, oh no.

Email and phone contact only take you so far, so we're trying a few new things until we're sharing an office again. Toy of the moment is Google Documents, which lets us share and edit drafts of documents online: it's currently home to the Mother of All To-Do Lists, which has rapidly become the Things We Want From Our New Website List.

We're taking the plunge and redeveloping the Penny Dreadful site, currently based on the "old Blogger" engine and soon to have WordPress at its whirring, steam-powered heart. The original blog will remain as a production diary, with the new site giving us a new professional face. Work starts this weekend - check back in the future for a sneaky update on our progress.

current projects

2007-04-28T06:56:00.000-07:00

So here's a brief introduction to a few of the projects I'm currently working on in 2007.

The Penny Dreadfuls are a Victorian sketch comedy group who've been touring around the UK since the 2006 Fringe Festival where they appeared to rave reviews. They've also recently appeared as part of the BBC's sketch show, Comedy Shuffle.

I joined the production team last July and have working as a producer and online manager for them since. I'd previously met the cast of the Dreadfuls through the Edinburgh comedy scene - and performed with them all at different times when a member of improvisational group, The Improverts during my student days.

Along with the rest of the production team - designer/producer Idil Sukan and technical director Neil Hobbs - we're preparing for the 2007 Fringe, where we'll be appearing in the Smirnoff Underbelly. You can follow the production diary over at the Dreadful's main site here: www.pennydreadfuls.co.uk.

The Mantilla Foundation are an entirely different kind of project. The short version is that the Foundation is a non-profit, independent group that offers a unique service to frustrated artists.

The shorter version is this: they cremate unwanted art.

For the last six months they've been travelling across Europe and to the United States, appearing at art events such as the Arco, Madrid, the London Art Fair and the Armory Show, New York. You might also have seen their ads in the arts journal Frieze. I was approached to work for them as a fixer and designer in November of 2006 and I've been with them ever since.

For further details - and to download an application form - please visit their website here: www.mantillafoundation.com.

welcome

2007-04-24T15:24:00.000-07:00

Hi there

My name's Steve: I'm a researcher and producer living and working in Edinburgh, UK. Amongst other things, I have a phd in political theatre and queer theory, and a performance background in improvisation. This blog is a repository for my current and past projects.

It's brand new right now, though, so I'd check back later.