Ten Years of Spontaneity: The Budgeting and Brilliance of The Improv Musical

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Returning for its 10th year at the Edinburgh Fringe, smash-hit production The Improv Musical has once again travelled up from the University of Warwick set to take the festival by storm. Known for its completely improvised, never-before-seen musicals—shaped entirely by audience suggestions—the show has become a firm Fringe favourite. Each performance invites the crowd to dream up the setting, characters and title, before the cast, crew and live band transform those ideas into a whirlwind of spontaneous songs, scenes and laughter.

Yet while the magic on stage looks effortless, making a production like this happen at the Fringe comes with no small amount of planning—and cost. I spoke with the show’s producer whilst on The Royal Mile flyering, to uncover the real story behind the curtain: the challenges of budgeting for a full-scale improvised musical, the difficulties that come with navigating the festival, and why, despite everything, she believes it remains one of the most rewarding experiences a creative team can take on.

TRANSCRIPT

(0:00 - 0:18)

Hello, we are here on the Mile with the wonderful producer of the Improv Musical and we're here to ask a few questions. So starting off as briefly as possible, can you tell us about your show? We are a wonderful improvised musical. You choose the character, setting and title and they create it on the spot with a live band every day.

(0:18 - 0:39)

Amazing, and how's the response been so far? Yeah, it's been good, we've got loads of families in, it's lots of fun, it's enjoyable and yeah, we've been having a great time. Awesome, why did you decide to come to Fringe? Obviously you've historically come a lot before. Yeah, we come every year and it's a great way to keep our society running, we earn a lot of money so it's great to put on bigger shows when we're back at uni and it's such a great experience for people coming to Warwick.

(0:40 - 3:06)

And you've come from Warwick, right, or Leamington? Yeah, Leamington Spa, Coventry area, that area. I'd actually, this is totally off topic, I'll cut this out, my band practises in Leamington so I'm there like once a week, it's lovely. And you are students? Yes.

What range of degrees have we got going on when you accompany them? We've got, I do theatre, a lot of us do theatre, then we've got accounting and finance, maths, physics and engineering. Amazing, and how do you fund or budget for your show? We get a lot of funding from our uni and putting a lot of money that we've earned across the whole year doing other shows at Warwick and putting it into this. We also hope that some of the students, like it's such a great experience so we're hoping that some of the students can put some money towards it because it's great to get out here.

Awesome, how many are in your team? So we have 38 in total and it rotates every, so we have six in the cast, one host, three band members and prod team and then it rotates throughout the whole month so it's about 40 in total. How much is your accommodation for 40 people? A lot, it's 16 and a half grand. Oh my goodness, where are you staying? We're staying in like by Lothian Road, around there, so it's only about a 20 minute walk.

What's your budget overall for the show? So I think it's about 20 grand overall, so we've got to try and earn that back. You've been going to the Guilded for a while now haven't you? So do they do you some special deals? They don't do any special deals but we have a good rapport with them and like as soon as we apply for them they're really happy to have us back which is great so we want to keep up good relations with them. Excellent, they're lovely.

What's the hardest part of preparing for a Fringe show? I think just how intense it is, getting ready and getting everyone prepared and keeping up, especially with improv, the show that we're doing the shows could go badly and they become sticky so it's really hard to keep morale up, keep pushing, keep getting out flyering and things like that so I think that's probably the hardest part. Nice, what's your daily schedule like during the Fringe? So we come out here before the show from about half 10 until like 12 o'clock then we go to the show, we go do the whole show, then we come back here until about four o'clock and then we have the rest of the day to see shows. How do you handle the marketing, flyering, social media, PR, all of that jazz? It's difficult, we have three marketing people that are... Oh we've got a tall green! Show me to the other side.

(3:07 - 4:37)

Of course, thank you. Right this way, this way. Okay, I'll carry it.

What did I just ask you? There we go. How do you handle flyering, social media, PR? We have three marketing managers and they're always in contact with us and then they come up during the Fringe when they're free and the marketing's been great, we've been flyering mainly, we've done loads of posters in Gilded Balloon, we have quite a good Instagram account we hope, so we post all the shows that we do and post them every day so people can see what's been going on. Great, do you have any tips for managing exhaustion or burnout during the Fringe? Wow, take some time.

Edinburgh is a lovely place that has nothing to do with the Fringe so I like to see other things, see the castle, go to Arthur's Seat, there's a lot more stuff to do and just seeing other places that isn't just solely consumed by the Fringe. Absolutely. What do you wish you'd known before doing the Fringe? Have you come a couple of times now? I've been last year and then I had never been here before.

I think the thing I would have liked to know is just how intense it is in terms of like there's so many people and book shows before you come because then you know what you're going to see and you don't have to look in that whole massive flyer thing. Absolutely. What would you say to first-timers before coming? I would say see as much as you can, it's a crazy thing that is very niche to hear and it's so big and there's so much to see so see as much as you can.

(4:37 - 4:53)

Can you sum up your Fringe experience in one sentence? The best, most intense time. Nice. And where can audiences find your show and keep in touch with you? At Gilded Balloon and Instagram at improv underscore musical.