REVIEW: Winston and David | Maverick Theatre Company | Edinburgh Fringe

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Festival, Reviews, Theatre

22-29 Aug | 13.25 | Underbelly @ Bristo Square | Get Tickets

 

On their own, Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George are two of the most prolific politicians of the 20th Century. Stick them together and BOOM! You’ve got a fantastic fringe show.

Peter Swales is the perfect young Churchill with a performance which sits with enough stereotype that the character is instantly recognisable, but bringing in soft touches of sensitivity and realism which leaves you completely immersed in his story.

David Lloyd George is a naturally gentler character, the liberal, Welsh politician brought delicately to life by Geraint Rhys.

Together true political bromance is uncovered, the ups, the downs, the successes, the fails and the unyielding bond which kept these two connected for a lifetime.

But the most interesting aspect of this play is the integration of the great women behind these men, often unrepresented in the telling of history, but heavily responsible for the triumphs of these modern-day legends.

From Pussy, the mistress of DLG to Clemmie, the true tour-de-force of these men, Alexandra Donnachie, is the perfect multi-roleplayer. She perfectly portrays a woman’s innate ability to adeptly manipulate the actions of a man whilst they seemingly believe it was their idea all along.

All in all this was an entertaining interpretation of a relationship that spanned decades and had a prolific impact on society as we know it.

 

The Arts Business Top Tips:

  • Period Politics: Taking inspiration from period dramas like The Crown or political biographies, for example The Darkest Hour, you are bound to attract the upper, middle class crowd to your show which, if you happened to attend the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, is the predominant audience.
  • Versatile Set: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there is a lot you can achieve with IKEA furniture. Theatre is made to trigger the imagination and by keeping your set simple, not only do you keep your costs down, but you ignite the creative minds of your audience and can develop something pretty special.

REVIEW | Fat Chance | Rachel Stockdale | Edinburgh Fringe

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Festival, Reviews, Theatre

24-28 Aug | 10.30am | Pleasance Dome | JackDome | Get Tickets

 

The job of an actor always appears glamourous and cool to the outsider but there are few patrons of the industry who know the real story. The sad reality is that, even in these times of change driving towards equality, the mainstream arts industry in Britain is still orientated towards (for lack of a better description) white, thin, southern people.

And the truth is that this particular part of the theatre world is not well regulated, if regulated at all. Agents can pick and choose their clients based on race, gender and aesthetics and don’t have to justify their choices or diversify their books.

This is what lead Rachel Stockdale to being told:

“You’re Northern, you’re fat and you’re a woman. You can only be two out of three to make it in this industry.”

Fat Chance is her story of fighting to be an actor whilst upholding who she truly is, a plus-sized, northern woman.

And she does this brilliantly weaving in storytelling with statistics and facts to emphasis the prominence of fatphobia in our society.

Did you know, for example, that measuring your BMI is based off a singular study which was designed for Caucasian men and not only does it not take women or race into account but has never been queried since it’s discovery in the 1800s and introduction into mainstream medicine in the 1980s. Makes you think doesn’t it?

The action centres around Rachel’s living room, taking us on a guided tour of the intimate details of her life, both the professional and personal aspects. By cleverly intertwining AV, physical comedy and moment of unabashed realness she really hammers some home truths into the audience.

A remarkable first production. I have no doubt she will move onto great things,

 

The Arts Business Top Tips:

  • Biography: Who’s story do you know more intimately than your own? For Rachel’s first full length show she bravely explores of her own experiences in the creative industries. Not only is it the perfect topic for you debut as you always have the greatest amount of knowledge on your own life (if anything you know it the best 😉), but it illustrates the dark side of the arts sector in a story which needs to be told.
  • Social Phobias: We all have natural prejudices which throughout our lifetime seem to be inconspicuously woven into the fabric of our personalities as we grow, whether that’s racism, an aversion to the LGBT community or conceptions of body image, to note but a few. If we’re not forced to question these preconceptions, we can’t make a positive change. This is what Rachel is doing with this show. I could see this becoming a great community driven project or piece of TIE and think the show could cleverly evolve to become a teaching tool for the next generation.

REVIEW: The Little Glass Slipper as Performed by the Queen of France and Her Friends | The Miles Sisters | Edinburgh Fringe Online

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Festival, Reviews, Theatre

Watch onDemand (available from 5 August) | Fringe Online | Get Tickets

Want the Fringe Experience but can’t make it to Edinburgh? Well, following with the program of 2020 and 2021 the Edinburgh Fringe has continued with its online shows… enter The Miles Sisters.

It’s the eve of the French revolution and Marie Antoinette has trapped herself in her dressing room, not because of the riots, but because she is nervous for the opening night of her show The Little Glass Slipper. Follow the story as the courtiers struggle with the ultimate decision, to remain and support their Queen or to flee and save themselves.

The play combines a onstage and offstage conflict in an imaginatively filmed performance. While onstage the cast does what they can to continue driving the action of the Queen’s play forward, often to hilarious consequences. Backstage they are scared, frantically arguing about the rise of violence in Paris which is coming for them in Versailles.

The gaggle of ladies maids have a comedic vibe which harks to that of the three witches in Hocus Pocus levering comedy within a dark story as both relief for the audience and the character of Marie Antoinette. Clever writing from Carla Johnston portrays farcical moments from the companions distracting our heroine from the true problems at hand to allow her to continue with her retelling of Cinderella.

Marie Antoinette is poiniently portrayed growing from a naïve and selfish actor whose only worry is how the audience will enjoy their play to a willing victim climaxing with a brave and dignified self sacrifice for the good of the country.

Overall, a great offering to Fringe all of which can be witnessed from the comfort of your living room!

The Arts Business Top Tips:

  • A Unique Combo – By combining a reimagining of a classic Fairy-tale with an iconic moment in history, not only does it make your offering unique but it creates intrigue in potential audiences turning it from a maybe into a must see.
  • Using Dark Theatres – Remember theatres are predominantly only used during the evening, that means during the day, they can be up for grabs (assuming they don’t have some enormous set plonked on them.) Remember something like this can be a great opportunity for both your company or brand and your chosen theatre so work out something mutually beneficial to allow you to use the space outside of peak time.

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe IS BACK

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Festival

Just like Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe promised in 2020 that they’d be back…

And they are! HUZZAH!

Although things are gonna be a little different this year, with live online, on-demand and in-person shows taking place all over the city and beyond!

So, in honour of this, at The Arts Business, we are planning on giving you August with a twist!

Don’t worry, we’ll still be providing you with great content and articles, with case studies and positive reviews of different companies, artists and comedians who have battled through the storm of covid and made it to Scotland for the month of August… they’ll just be loads more of it!

We’ll be looking at:

  • How performers have adapted their shows, rehearsals, exhibitions and events to meet corona safety standards.
  • Any great marketing campaigns whether online or in print which should inspire your companies going forward.
  • Any great business ideas from creatives including any gaps in the industry that have been filled over the last few years and any new innovations and experimentation in events!
  • The future of the industry… is it going to change forever? Could this be the start of something new?
  • Promoting as many artists as possible throughout the month of August! Their bravery needs to be commended for participating in one of the biggest festivals in the world at a time of such great uncertainty.
  • And MUCH MUCH MORE!

So, stay tuned for what is always the best month of the year… I CAN’T WAIT!!!

Could this be you or your company!? Please get in touch! We would love to hear from you/talk to you/promote you/come and see your show! Just drop us a comment below, get in touch with us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or TikTok and let us know what makes you special or drop us an email at info@theartsbusiness.com.

Command Fringe Festival: Continuing through Coronavirus

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Business Skills, Festival, Start Ups

Usually this time of year I have packed up my life into a suitcase and I’m sitting on the floor in a friend’s living room surrounded by magazines, reviews and lists of everything I want to see at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

But thankfully in times of adversity and disappointment there is always one group of people who step up the plate: Students!

Unjaded and enthusiastic, a group of students from East 15 Acting School at the University of Essex launch what I hope will be a new yearly event: Command Fringe Festival. An all online, all experimental, all awesome internet theatre extravaganza!

The incredible array of ideas and variety of software used can give all arts organisations food for thought when navigating the storm that is this pandemic.

Here are my highlights from this ticketed event: an array of companies, training and professional and a myriad of ideas you can bring to your own company.

Rainbow Socks by Maryam Noorhimli

This Bunker Theatre Monologue was reinterpreted for a zoom screening showing a pre-recorded film edited like a YouTube influencer. The piece discussed what it means to be LGBTQ+ and Muslim with camera angles changed to reflect positives and negatives in an almost Golem and Smeagol way reminiscent of Lord of the Rings. Fundamentally it is about how it is ok to be an individual with your own views and your own story. It ended with Maryam dancing all over her apartment in her rainbow socks! Something I think we should all be doing more of during this pandemic!

Each arts business is ultimately about the people who built it so think about the short form content you could write and produce autobiographically and how it could appeal to your audiences using different camera angles, props and simple costume to explain the story.

MAN By George Hargreaves

Think Radio Play come dramatic podcast. A short monologue following a young man and his brush with drugs. Simple but effective, the great music choices and realistic sound effects (from playing Call of Duty on your games console to the soothing timbre of background birdsong) is what brought this piece to life, with excellent writing and performance pulling it all together

Creating drama through podcasts could be a cheap yet effective way of introducing new work during these bizarre times. There are loads of websites, like FreeSound, that offer free sound effects and royalty free music for you to use in your pieces or, if you’re feeling really adventurous, you could go out and record your own!

The Many and Varied Lives of Rock by Sisu Theatre

A lovely concept, Sisu Theatre have created a modern-day epic poem following the story of a rock from it’s creation on earth and throughout history. Again, taking place as a live event on Zoom the story was passed between different voice actors with subtle filmed loops of different landscapes from flowing rivers to ebbing waves cleverly designed to universally resonate with the subject matter.

A continuing saga like this could easily be developed and marketed as something to dip in and out of, easy listening to do your work to or go for a run with. Each section could act as a mediation session, something becoming more and more popular in the current climate. It felt good taking some me time whilst listening to a tale about time.

Caged Bird Sings (an extract from The Dripping Mirror: A Burlesque Musical) by Runt Theatre

Runt Theatre are embarking on the epic task of devising a new musical during this pandemic! Set in the 1930s and combining live music, sketch comedy, dance and burlesque this production looks set to reimagine the boundaries of musical theatre. You can check out their awesome acapella music video on Facebook.

There are plenty of music groups, from Broadway to bands, choirs to orchestras, professional to amateur and everything in between, all over the world who have used this technique. They create video content using Zoom (or similar apps) for rehearsals, individually recording their parts, mixing them together and creating music videos in the comfort of their own home! So, get on it!

Good Day Gone Bad by Jonathan Bensusan Bash

A live zoom performance which is incredibly relatable in lockdown telling the story of a man struggling with anxiety and, let’s be honest, who isn’t struggling with mental health problems at the moment! Clearly filmed at home but with lovely thought to the LED lighting which changed colour and intensity dependent on the mood and location of the action.

This beautifully presented story, driven by individual experience and told through simple direction would be easy to replicate. With Amazon Prime to hand for your next day delivery LED strip lights and majority of houses painted magnolia you can achieve some great special effects creating a perfect environment for your performative content.

The Curse of Being a Pisces by Jean-Paul Mark Shlom

I’m a sucker for anything remotely sci-fi so I absolutely loved this interactive zoom performance. Set in a slightly alternative universe there were similarities to our world but lovely nods to differences told through the set and lighting alongside Athena, a more advanced and sassier Alexa. It also included chatting to audiences via Zoom having them shout out answers and choose the direction of the piece.

To make something like this work it would need to be performed to small groups but with a length of around twenty minutes, you could perform it multiple times a day to make it feasible. Kinda like a small-scale escape room business model. It is a really clever way to keep the live, interactive nature of theatre alive during this pandemic!

Aidy the Awesome by The Gramophones Theatre Company

The Gramophones Theatre Company is one to watch and, though nothing can replace the real deal, Aidy the Awesome reignited the spark of my love for Children’s Theatre. Through this YouTube Video Aidy the Awesome, with help of the Super Nana Network, sets out to defeat Ron De-Chocolate who has stolen stories from the world! It packs a punch of Girl Power with simple cartoon video effects, bright costumes and excellent multi-roleplaying this could have stepped straight of the CBBC channel.

If you are looking to create work the whole family can get involved in, then take notes from The Gramophones. With a fun, superhero warm up routine in the middle and a special mission for viewers to contribute their own stories they encourage online interaction and provides parents and grandparents with a great lock down activity to do! So, think about how you can improve online engagement and provide content suitable for the whole family to enjoy!

Thoughts of an Incoherent Mind by Puro Caos CT

This piece is European Fringe Theatre at its best cleverly reimagined for the online realm. This is what I had been missing and it felt like being back at Summerhall sipping Pickering’s sitting in Anatomy Lecture Theatre. Puro Caos cleverly entwined a plethora of multimedia on Zoom: some live elements, some pre-recorded, all feminist. They interwove multilingual performances, charcoal drawing, stop motion and live polls all tied together with matching lipstick.

This is a performance BE (Birmingham European) Festival should check out. Not only is it edgy, experimental and ever so slightly random but it perfectly demonstrates how work like this can be built for an online medium. Hopefully this will encourage you to try new things, mix together art forms, film them from different angles and get them on Zoom.

Global Enhancers by Global Enhancers

A masterclass in how to interweave different online platforms and media to create a performance. Global Enhancers began with a Facebook live countdown to a product launch of the ‘Global Enhancer’, a product which records and archives your memories. The website launched (built with Wix) and included videos, images and text content beautifully formatted and presented. This had an ‘advert’ to the anti-business website with even more content and concluded with a live Zoom, which was hacked into by a previous employee, who asked you to turn on your cameras to stand up to the revolution.

I felt like a treasure hunter as I explored the websites! The videos were brilliant parodies of News Reports, Documentary, CCTV Footage, Online influencers, Brand Ambassadors and Staff Interviews with excellent attention to detail. I especially loved Teenie and her Pops, a social media influencer offering 20% off your purchase with the code TEENIE20.

We see inspired Sci-Fi like this all-over streaming sites from Mr Robot and Upload on Prime Video and all over Doctor Who. But this piece was special, complete genius, and amazing inspiration to people looking to create work online by utilising a multitude of platforms and content to create a performance. If this is the future of site-specific work, then it is bloody exciting!

Crap Art Club by ShowUp Productions

A prerecord online readthrough which, with a little adjustment, could easily be a lockdown story. Broaching themes of religion and mental health the overall message I took from the piece is: It’s ok to be happy when you’re happy and it’s ok to be sad when you’re sad. We all have a huge amount of pressure put on us to achieve our dreams but what it we’re just happy with a normal life?

This performance had been rehearsed and recorded on Zoom then edited for YouTube. ShowUp Productions have created a full-length online play, showing that new work can still be put on during lock-down, just maybe not in the way it was originally intended. Are there new writings in the works for your company? Have a think about how these could be filmed responsibly under Covid-19 guidelines to enable an online performance.

Is this the future of the creative industries? Who knows. But if it is, it ain’t looking so bad!

Have you been inspired to create online performances or exhibits? Let us know in the comments below.

Check In With Your Mental Health

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Festival, Health

With the first week of the Fringe drawing to a close it’s important to remember to look after yourself.

 

Like many creatives I have had my fair share of struggles with mental health problems and I know the stresses both emotional and physical that the festival can put on you.  I once ran away from the venue I was production managing and hid behind a tree so that I could no longer see it just to get a break.

 

In recent years people are talking more openly about mental health both in their shows and in content they put out to the public.  This means slowly the walls that create the stigma around mental health are tumbling down.

 

So, before a complete mental breakdown ensues here are some things that have helped me cope over the years:

 

  • Take some time just for you – you want something that is going to switch your brain off, stop those millions of thoughts from rushing round your head, quit working through those to do lists.  Whether its for 10 minutes or a few hours just take some time out.  Here are some suggestions:

o   Take a bath or shower

o   Just sit still with a cup of tea or coffee

o   Watch some Netflix or catch up telly

o   Listen to a podcast

o   Do some mindfulness activities

o   Mediate or sit and do some deep breathing

o   Take yourself for a meal

o   Read a book

o   Play a game

o   See a show that your interested in

 

  • Self care – it can be easy to neglect yourself over the fringe and like the queer eye boys say this is the most important thing you can do!  If you can’t care for yourself then you can’t be 100% in your arts business

o   Clean your digs or do some laundry

o   Get some sleep

o   Do some exercise – Have a walk, do some yoga, go for a run, something you enjoy

o   Detox for a day – cut out the alcohol, cigarettes and caffeine for a day.  Even consider culling your social media time, even if it’s just for an hour.

o   Healthy eating – so much easier said than done especially when you’re surrounded by millions of amazing food stands.  My aim is generally just to go for one healthy-ish meal a day and it makes me feel like I’m trying.

o   Attempt to keep some vague sense of a routine – it can be easy to want to burn the candle at both ends all day everyday because of FOMO but it’s almost impossible to maintain for an entire month so see if you can spend a few days going to bed and getting up at a similar time.

 

  • Talk it out if your feeling low

o   Text your friends

o   Call your family

o   Chat to a trained professional. Whether this is through an app online or asking advise at the Fringe society talking to someone detached from your situation is one of the most constructive things I’ve done.

o   Another company – someone who is in the same boat, coping with the same things as you who will understand your gripes!

 

  • Some other things to try:

o   Write it down – something that helps me to make my thoughts a little clearer which helps me to articulate them a little better when I talk to people about it

o   Make lists and work your way through small achievable tasks, after all, there is nothing better than crossing something you’ve completed off a list!

o   Take some perspective – you are at the Fringe Festival working on something you love, you’ve already done something amazing so don’t get down on yourself, try challenging those negative thoughts and be proud of the small achievements

o   Do something scary – face your fear, whether it’s going in a lift, climbing to the top of Arthur’s seat, taking yourself to dinner alone, try pushing yourself to doing something which makes you feel anxious.  You may just realise it wasn’t so bad after all.

o   Don’t be afraid to try medication, get an appointment from a drop-in service and see what your options are.  Take it from someone who has tried every kind of medication under the sun – you will find one that suits you

o   Herbal remedies – it is amazing how soothing a camomile tea can be

o   Try something new – axe throwing, rage room, escape room, site specific show, there is no better place to try something new than at the Edinburgh Fringe

o   Try to find a way to have fun – see a movie, meet up with friends, make plans and stick to them even if you don’t really feel like it, it may just cheer you up

o   Learn more about mental health problems

 

There’s no quick fix but if one thing on this list helps even one person this festival then I’ve done something to help!

 

Don’t just run yourself to empty, try to find a balance this Fringe.