Shouting at the Edinburgh Fringe Forum
for Allan Tall
I was looking for an excuse not to turn up this morning. I would prefer to feel that I am not really a part of Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival. I don’t especially like it. Yet during the past few years I have been involved on six or seven occasions. The first time was back in 1978 or ’79 when I was among a group of writers doing a reading at an art gallery run by a member of this panel.1 As I recall the event began about half past midnight and somebody’s auntie turned up to double the audience figures. But the point is that whether I like the Fringe or not is irrelevant, it does concern me. And what about its future? Can it all be solved by money?
All what solved by money?
The only excuse for not turning up that I could think of was to do with economics. But eventually I decided it was better to come here and discuss these same economics. It’s an opportunity not to miss, it isn’t often I get the chance.
Of course being here at 11 o’clock in the morning is not only inconvenient it is costing me money. There is no fee being paid, nor expenses. But okay, I shall put up with being exploited, I am a working artist – a full-time writer – so the two things I am well used to are not being paid a fee and not being offered expenses.
There don’t seem to be any other writers on the panel.
I referred to the inconvenience of turning up at 11 o’clock in the morning, it concerns the little theatre company of which I am a part. In order to be here I am having to exploit five professional actors, plus stage manager, who are performing my play In the Night. But they are used to being exploited. This production is what is known in the theatrical trade as ‘profitshare’. In practice what is shared is a variety of forms of deprivation, all of which stem from a dire lack of money, and material resources. Material resources are extremely important. Not as important as money but extremely important all the same. Artists who are ‘minimalists’ are not necessarily so by choice. When money and material resources are non-existent a greater imagination is required. You have to imagine your fucking sets and you have to imagine your fucking props.
This year our slot is 2.15 to 4.15 at a venue called the Fringe Fringe and it is costing us £400. Four hunner poun! For one week! So, needless to say, one week it is. To break even we needed forty paying people each of the six days, no mean figure as knowledgeable folk here will be aware, so we’ll take a loss of some sort. As well as having written the play, I directed it. I am also driver of the van, for which I thank the Post Office who loaned it to us (though we had to pay the £90 insurance ourselves). Also I am doorperson, interval tea-maker, stage manager’s assistant and so on. But things are running smoothly. We are not being bothered by audiences. On Monday three folk came to look. On Tuesday nobody at all.
Nobody at all!
Use your imagination on that yin. Nobody at all. This play I’ve slogged over, that the five actors, stage manager, musical director and administrator have slogged over . . . Nobody at all. Dear oh dear. One of the actors thought the show must go on! What a fucking stalwart. Myself and others felt differently and
since there wasn’t enough dough to get drunk, and it wasnay a bad day for Edinburgh, we just went aff for a Stoical stroll on mighty Arthur’s Seat, thinking wur ayn wee thoughts in wur ayn individual wee worlds.
But being the Fringe such happenings are far from un - common. The average audience is seven apparently, a figure that includes people who get paid to attend, e.g. art administrators, representatives of the media. Every theatre company knows the horrors of fighting for publicity, and the depressing fact that the only people guaranteed ‘to win’ mainstream media coverage are those performers who work in the mainstream media for the other forty-eight or fifty weeks of the fucking year. Dario Fo and people from foreign countries are always exceptions, especially if they do the English classics, productions of Alan Ayckbourn, student productions of Noël Coward, Gilbert and Sullivan, East European interpretations of Shakespeare.
We all hoped for much from the organisers of this here Fringe Forum, I speak of the Festival Times, newspaper to the Fringe. Last week they published a full-page interview with me which succeeded in leaving out entirely such total fucking inessentials as where and when the play was taking place. That was how we entered our first and only week. My goodness! Midway through, on Sunday last, we decided on a full-scale run-through of the play which we held up for half an hour till the Festival Times reviewer arrived. We thought it worthwhile because we heard from a secret source that the reviewer had enjoyed it. We still had about four days left to play, to try to recoup something of the outlay, I think our box office receipts were then amounting to £15, three oranges and a packet of Polo mints. Coincidentally the latest Festival Times where this review was to appear came out at 5 p.m. that same Tuesday me and the rest of the company came down from Arthur’s Seat, still in wur ayn wee individual worlds. We got a hold of a copy at once. Unfortunately there was no room for the review of our play. What was that? Unfortunately there was no room for the review of our play.
Each of the company took a turn of searching every nook and cranny of that fucking organ of fucking critical fucking
sigh
We phoned the office and they advised us an editorial decision had been taken, and we were just on the wrong end of that. But they were a bit shamefaced, and of course when it comes to exploitation, they all work for nothing anyway. The reviewers of the Festival Times are students, it’s a learning experience during their summer break from uni. Yeah, the usual.
But once one read the damn thing! Needless to say much of the space on that edition of the Festival Times was given over, as per bastarn usual, to all these Wonderful and Exciting TV Personalities, particularly all these millions of so-called Radical Comedians who earn their living from the BBC, ITV and other mainstream media organs man they are so fucking radical! Christ! Also there was Mr Edinburgh Fringe Festival himself, John Godber, god love him, three of whose plays were reviewed in this here edition of the then current Festival Times.
Turning up for eleven o’clock this morning meant assembling the company in Glasgow and Paisley three hours earlier than usual. Those who preferred not to arrive at such an unearthly hour had the freedom of choice to pay their own way by bus, taxi, rail or fucking aeroplane. Of course they were all hard done by, having already chipped in dough to pay for the fuel and van insurance, so here they were with the choice of finding other transport and having to pay travel costs twice. (A peculiar question: how many artists do you know who can drive?) Like the other 90 per cent of the acting profession these five actors are registered unemployed and in receipt of DSS supplementary benefit. People in receipt of DSS supplementary benefit are already well below the official poverty level of this country, as members of the panel and audience will be only too aware.
I must say here and now that I am not making any complaints about the side jobs involved with being part of professional theatre here in Greater England – sorry I mean Great Britain – as a whole. I regard it as an essential aspect of being a Great British author and playright. It connects with what the Great British Government calls the World of Art Standing on Its Own Two Feet.
And note, of course, that when I speak of the present Government I speak of the present Government, not just its Tory Administration, I include Her Majesty’s Most Loyal and Trusted Opposition: the Great British Labour Party, the Liberal/SDP Alliance, Plaid Cymru, the Scottish National Party, and so on, they’re all fucking in it together.
An aside: there don’t seem to be any musicians on this panel.
Peculiar comments, peculiar views of the world, artists often ask peculiar questions. Here’s another, it’s directed towards certain members of the audience and panel here this morning: given that you are not yourself an artist, how much do you earn a year from art?
The company producing my play is Roughcast Music Theatre and it receives no funding of any sort, nor material resources. For your information I received a fee of £500 for my trans - lation of Enzo Cormann’s The Prowler, commissioned by The Traverse (Arts Council-supported) and playing there just now. Roughcast is a company of people whose desire is to create theatre. The musical director is Allan Tall whose involvement on the Fringe reaches back to 1969. He has composed, arranged, played and recorded the soundtrack to In the Night. At present, even as we speak, he is negotiating the sale of his PA system, plus one of his better musical instruments, in order to ward off a Warrant Sale of the entire contents of his household – not only his household but that of his partner, Lillian Cattigan. She is one of the five actors. But like myself they are not complaining, glad to do their bit for Great British art, making themselves pay for it in the marketplace. Very soon Allan Tall will be ‘imagining’ the music he could create.
He is also an actor though not in this production. Elsewhere on the Fringe he is acting, or should I say performing, or is it – well, I’m not quite sure how to describe it – reading aloud perhaps. Like many another actor on this year’s Fringe he is involved in a Play-Reading.
Play-Readings are on the increase. Have you noticed? It is a brilliant idea. What is a Play-Reading? It is a thing that is not a play but you are to imagine that it is. When you go to one you are to imagine that a play is being performed. It has the great advantage of costing very little to produce. Theatre managements love the concept. The actors can be paid almost nothing, never mind the Equity minimum which is around £200 a week. Allan Tall and his actor colleagues will be working for £50 expenses. And this is happening at one of Edinburgh’s major theatres, yes, go along to the Lyceum Studio, you’ll pay to see actors who are not being paid a wage. Good business though, nice to see those in authority within Scottish Theatre conforming so readily to the wishes of the Great British Government. No worries about wage bills, proper rehearsals, sets, design, and so on and so forth, you can see the advantages. Not only is the Arts Council not condemning these Play-Readings, they are supportive, and actually helping to subsidise such ventures.
It is interesting how the Arts Council have managed to shift away from the old bottom line of a fair wage for artists. Younger folk in the audience I address you! I can remember when an Arts Council-supported event meant you could rely on being paid a fee or minimum wage. This was the primary factor about the Arts Council, it existed to support the creators of art. What a strange idea, eh!
At this year’s Fringe I am involved on three fronts: 1) my own play In the Night; 2) my translation of Enzo Cormann’s play; and 3) giving a reading of my own work at the Arts Council-supported Book Fair in Charlotte Square. The organizers initially offered me a fee of £30 for said reading. I pointed out this must be a misprint since the Arts Council’s own minimum fee was £50 and they surely couldn’t be offering only slightly more than half the stipulated minimum. I was not the only Scottish writer who pointed this out to the organizers and eventually they agreed to correct the misprint or oversight which everybody agrees it must have been. But me with the fish and chips on my shoulder, the sour grapes on my breath, I’m still wondering if the international giants of literature, Keith Waterhouse, Melvyn Bragg, P.D. James, David Steel, Shirley Goode and so on were being offered that same thirty quid. Probably they were working for nothing, new books on release, etc.
Questions relating to artistic merit, aesthetic value, economic value and so on hardly bear scrutiny at the Fringe. As some of you will know, one of the truly great writers of the century, Somhairle MacGill-Eain (Sorley Maclean), appeared at Scotland’s foremost Book Fair the other night, squeezed into a programme that included five other Scottish writers and ‘an embellishment of saxophone music’, all to take place within seventy-five minutes. In the name of fuck! I’m not sure what each of the six Scottish writers got that evening; maybe they got the same offer of thirty quid as I did, maybe they received nothing at all. Aye, and their reading event, plus the ‘embellishment of saxophone music’, scheduled for an entire fucking one and a quarter hours was precisely the same time the organisers allotted to actor and television personality John Cairney who was treading the boards impersonating Robert Burns.
The sad truth is that it is better not to examine the Book Fair magazine of events too closely from the standpoint of literary merit. But cash, it is good to discuss cash, good for my soul to discuss cash. Last year I earned £3,335. Under normal circumstances I don’t do any readings or engagements for no fee and no expenses, not unless it’s for a worthwhile cause, a political cause. People who don’t have to worry about money regard my decision not to work for nothing as perverse. Some sensitive creatures actually get hurt when I say no to their invitation to come and read for no fee and no expenses. Others get annoyed and wonder who the fuck I think I am, refusing their kind offer, little shits like me should feel privileged to have been asked.
Yet others think that because my name is known to them as an author I must somehow be in receipt of a salary. Believe it or not that is a fucking common attitude man and most professional people (including arts administrators) seem to believe that being an author puts me on a par with them and usually anyone on a par with them is at the very least on a regular income, because that’s what they all have, regular incomes. I don’t know many artists on regular incomes. Maybe none at all. Maybe artists-in-residence who receive salaries for stipulated periods will be described as artists who get salaries but I’m not convinced this description is valid, having been an artist-in-residence myself for a couple of years and what I remember clearly is the difficulty in finding time for my own art, so that for whatever reason I was getting paid a salary it was certainly not to work on my own writing but on other projects. That is the more common experience for artists. It is a rule that people who create art don’t get paid a salary. The people who get paid salaries in connection with art are those involved in administration and also art criticism, among whom are included media reviewers, people employed in radio, television, museums, art galleries, schools, colleges, universities, publishing houses, bookshops, and so on.
I wonder even about the people in this room alone, who gets paid and who doesnay get paid, who’s an artist and who isnay. Aye, here we are at the annual forum of Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival, it would be interesting to list members of the panel and audience, the BBC film crew and so on. And of those directly engaged in the World of Art how many people who are artists and how many who urnay artists but administrators of art and critics of art, how many get paid and blah blah blah etcetera don’t get paid. And when it comes to material resources – and forget salaries here (just for a minute), only material resources – how many of those administrators and critics have to pay for material, paper and pencils, oils and A4 paper, photocopying, and so on? Eh, how many? Fucking not many, that’s for sure.
It is a weird thing to me that there are folk committed to the Fringe who maintain that the creation of art has nothing to do with cash and basic economics. It is hard to imagine an artist saying such a thing.
I wonder how many working artists are here this year, I mean overall, and how many of those are being paid to attend.
I think the ideal artist for the Fringe is somebody under the age of twenty-five years. It doesn’t matter their race, creed or colour or if they are seven foot or three foot tall, the only thing that matters is that they are somebody who still believes that working for nothing is a way to secure the future. A small proportion of the students appearing this year will move into paid employment as administrators or critics once they leave university, including a few of those working for the Festival Times. Being an actor or otherwise engaged in the practice of art is something one does in one’s youth, one grows out of it. Perhaps a couple will return as working adult artists and good luck to them. But it won’t matter how hard they work at their art for events like this where luck and compromise are integral, the one thing we can guarantee is exploitation.
Nobody exploits artists so greatly as those who earn their living from art but not its creation. Ironically it is the arts administrator who could alter things in a quite substantial manner, in a quite direct way. The phrase ‘a good festival’ occurs to me just now. This is a phrase I’ve heard a bit over the past few days by people mainly engaged in administration or criticism. It is said in a sense similar to how an officer core old boy uses the phrase ‘I had a good war’. Two high-ranking officials meet together and one believes it good, the other believes it bad, the one thing they take for granted is that it has no real impact on themselves; the officer-corps old boys who discuss good wars as opposed to bad wars have in common that certain fundamental factors remain constant either way. Similarly, for the high-up organisers who discuss good and bad festivals in this manner, a fundamental factor likewise exists whether festivals are good, bad or indifferent: one still receives one’s salary.
Everybody tries to get in on the racket. Here recording what they will is the BBC, taking notes about everything so it can be brought out and used in evidence at some later date. I didn’t know in advance they would be here. My only editorial control stems from my use of the words, fuck, cunt, shite, prick, bastard and so on. If I keep using them in an arbitrary fashion little of what I say will be fucking recorded for the fucking polis or whoever get their hands on the videos eventually. These fucking bastards on the fucking BBC hate paying any cunt, especially these stupid fucking pricks we call artists. A couple of weeks back the cunts asked me to appear on a fucking programme along with some fucking other writer bastards. The time and date were fucking not inconvenient so I asked the cunts about the proposed fee. No fucking fee, fuck all was being proposed at all. These bastards had the fucking downright fucking cheek to tell me I should be proud to get fucking invited because I was the fucking one and only Scottish writer they were fucking asking. All the other shites were international authors and none of them was asking for a fucking fee. Imagine that, not a solitary fucking international fucking megastar writer bastard was asking for a fee. The stupid pricks were doing it for fuck all bar the glory. So that was me, good old bonny Scotland. Where was
I. Sour grapes, yes.
Two years ago this company I’m involved with here, Roughcast Music Theatre, produced my play The Busker. We were as unsubsidised then as we are now but we aimed high and went to the Assembly Rooms. For the 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. slot they asked us for £650 for the week. Eventually they knocked it down to £450 and I’m sure it helped that the play could come under the heading of New Scottish Writing. As I recall the one and only other Scottish item on the entire programme that year was a children’s puppet show. But once we saw the advertising we got for our show in relation to such mighty aesthetic larks as the Naked Radio Video Team! Fuck sake, I thought, here we go, television rules.
And it has to be said that one of the more depressing aspects of the Fringe is the arse-licking that goes on to the television companies. It is downright disgusting. As a working artist it concerns me what happens to other working artists, those who don’t work for television at all or those who do the barest minimum to ward off the Sheriff Officers. All these Wonderful Television Personalities don’t need any more free exposure here, they give plenty of it to each other in mainstream media outlets. Obviously those who should be supported are the artists, those engaged in the creation of art, those whose work is marginalized or exploited by television. Of course all the Wonderful Television Personalities are quite happy to come to bonny Scotland for a week or so and rough it in pursuit of art.
We know that serious dramatic art no longer exists within that medium, if it ever did, though some fantasise of a ‘golden age’ back in the 1960s. The medium was always corrupt. The first compromise demanded of the writer for television is selfregulation, i.e. self-censorship; dishonesty, a priori. There were places, situations, people and relationships that could not be written about. Don’t even consider it as a writer, not unless you accept that one demand, that there can be no linguistic freedom. Let television continue to be at the behest of those in political control, courtesy of its compromised artists. In fact to use the term ‘artist’ for those who earn their living from the medium is a debasement. But beyond that, why must people connected with festivals like this Edinburgh Fringe effort continue to act as though the pinnacle of achievement is to be involved with television, or invited to appear on it, or to be commissioned by it.
And see how it affects actors, musicians, dancers and people associated with the performing arts in general. I find it shameful to see some artists we know to be great agreeing to appear on television in watered-down versions of themselves. And they fail, of course, sometimes even allowing themselves to be ridiculed by their television hosts for that very aspect of their art that has led to their greatness (and to their exclusion from television). And incredible also to see these amazing young stand-up comedians all jumping about there with their radical trousers and political pullovers, you can tell how committed they are to revolutionary change, how truly extremist they are, by the fact they wear sandshoes (plimsolls) and jeans and buy their T-shirts from Asda. Do they ever wonder why they get invited on to television?
Just to finish up: my abiding impression of the Fringe is a host of very cheery and very confident young folk who in the main must be students, plus of course the usual vast majority of people who speak with the accent of the cultural élite of this country, the middle- to upper-middle-class RP voice, the voice of authority, the voice of power. As I’m from Glasgow, this festival isn’t my festival, although some folk argue that it belongs to the whole of the Scottish people. What a joke. It doesn’t even belong to the people here in Edinburgh. It isn’t a nationalist point I’m making, I’m a socialist, and I’m talking about class.
The Fringe Festival is bound to continue to exist as it does just as long as society exists as it does. It is a sham though, a humbug, a force for hypocritical cant, and it reflects the state of art in this country, itself a paradigm of the wider society, where the vast majority of the population are plundered in one way or another by those who administer state institutions on behalf of the financiers, getting their back slapped and picking up what crumbs they may for themselves and each other.
Anyway, just to wind up, mature artists and professional companies of actors are an embarrassment here. No one really wants serious art. They want revue and comedy and reworkings of classics done in idiosyncratic ways by energetic amateurs, preferably students or state-subsidised companies from overseas, preferably from non-English-language-based – preferably non-European – cultures. University students are the pinnacle of the Fringe experience. It is from such quarters that the future holders of Fringe office will emerge.
Forward pensioners!
View cart
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg)
