and others“Edinburgh Arts Festival is a hugely successful, global arts festival,” argues Anthony Alderson, the man behind the city’s annual Fringe festival. “The West End is the source of much of this fast-growing sector of the economy and is vital to the development of much talent.” Yet he feels that the UK does too little to support this annual, self-renewing arts engine, the driving force behind the country’s great entertainment industry.
Pleasance runs 28 venues in Edinburgh and three in the UK capital and celebrates its 40th anniversary this summer. For half of that time Alderson has been director of the theatre, where he has been both credited with and criticised for Fringe shows that he says exploit the dreams of their performers.
“This festival is absolutely the essence of new theatrical work – there’s no other place on earth that you can get that excited about,” he insisted, speaking inside the Pleasance Dome on Friday, just after a major power outage temporarily shut down central Edinburgh, cancelling hundreds of performances in just 40 minutes and causing tens of thousands of pounds of damage to the Fringe.
The Pleasance has been the proving ground for some of the biggest names in entertainment, from Graham Norton, who Alderson remembers setting up a seat for in the audience that first year, to Armando Iannucci, Steve Coogan, Omid Djalili, Stewart Lee, Miranda Hart, The League of Gentlemen and one of his favourites, Greg Davis. We are a clan“It’s still one of the funniest things I’ve seen in my life,” he said, even though it first opened in 2006. Groundbreaking ventriloquist Nina Conti is a sell-out regular at the Pleasance and returns this year. Each of them has gone on to shape British culture; directors and playwrights such as Patrick Marber and Jez Butterworth also got their start at the Pleasance. Indeed, Alderson rails against the false distinction between theatre and comedy as inspiring one another.
“This is a place where you’re judged alongside performers who already have big careers under their belts,” he says. The gloomy testimonials of young artists breaking their shoulders and breaking their bank accounts to perform at the Fringe highlight a real problem, but Alderson argues that’s only half the picture. He believes high risk is always a factor in performance, but successful venues should strive to level the playing field. “There’s this idea that we big venues are just landlords, but we understand the industry and we go and see productions throughout the year. We’re not just renting out rooms. It’s a shared risk. If the show fails, we fail.”
His job, he said, is to maintain a “fine balance” between performers’ fees and ticket prices. “If we don’t balance the books, everything falls apart. The cost of putting on a show has gone up dramatically, and so have the bureaucratic hurdles we have to jump through every year.”
“Last year our box office took in over £6 million, with a charitable surplus of £13,000, so Pleasance is indeed a ‘going concern’, but we only have 27 days a year to pay our bills, and of course we hope that the audience who come to our shows, who we might conceivably lose out on, will make us some money the rest of the year. This was always a hugely risky investment.”
For Alderson, cheaper accommodation is the answer to a fairer Fringe, and the Pleasance Theatre provides it, along with subsidised meals, to staff and the volunteers on whom venues are sometimes criticised for relying.
Alderson argues that charity status, established by the late Pleasance impresario Christopher Richardson, wasn’t just a tax advantage: “It was something we believed in.” The Pleasance Theatre Trust helps underprivileged artists, while a newer organisation, the Edinburgh Partnership, is a collaboration between nine theatre companies from across the UK aimed at promoting the touring model.
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Two years ago, Alderson’s theater was at the center of a Fringe scandal when veteran comedian Jerry Sadowitz’s second performance was canceled after he exposed his genitals to the audience. Pleasance said his material was “not in keeping with our values.” Such confrontational material may be uncomfortable for an organization that has also run children’s shows for 14 years. Alderson now says it should all be on the menu. “Trigger warnings are important. There is a tipping point and onstage nudity will continue because we are sensitive to these things. We can make mistakes, but I really believe that strong emotions evoked by art are good for us. We are much more fragile when we hide from them.”
One of Pleasance’s shows that has already garnered attention this year is a darkly comical stage production by American YouTube star Anna Akana. Get darkIn her controversial book, Richard Gadd Baby Reindeer Her own story may also be adapted into a movie, and she says meetings with rival streaming giants are planned.
Alderson believes the contrasting arts filling the city are part of the event’s purpose. This year’s Fringe will see comedians featured on OnlyFans, a website known for its adult content, competing with world-famous performers for a live audience at the Fringe’s wraparound international arts festival. This year’s theme is “Rituals that Unite Us,” an attempt to “bring artists and audiences closer than ever before,” according to festival director, virtuoso Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti. This weekend, her spectacular immersive light show, Where to starthas launched a programme to evoke the spirit of inspiration – “the spark in their eyes, the fire in their belly” – that, as the narrator explains, lights up Edinburgh every summer, even during power outages.
