Rose Johnson has spent eight Augusts at the Edinburgh festival fringe, her first in 2008. As one-third of the sketch group Birthday Girls, the comedian and writer often shared accommodation with her fellow performers. When she could finally afford a room of her own, the move didn’t feel like progress. “It didn’t have a window or a door,” recalls Johnson. “The landlord had just put a bed in a cupboard.”
Her fellow comic Jack Evans tells a similar tale. “The first fringe I did,” he says, “I slept on the linoleum of a kitchen floor. Never again.” Others slept on sofas or shared beds. One comedian even survived the month living in a tent. Why do performers put up with such laughably bad conditions? The answer is that they couldn’t afford to do the fringe otherwise. And, as standups, the pressure to play the fringe is huge.
But all that is changing. This year, in a move that would have once seemed impossible, many comedians are saying that’s enough – and are opting out. “Who is the fringe for?” says Evans. “It should be for artists, but it feels like it’s for landlords.” Johnson agrees: “Someone is making loads of money off the fringe, but it’s not the performers. It feels transgressive to say this. It’s such an established thing that rejecting it feels big.”
Celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, the fringe began as an accessible and affordable alternative to the international festival. Today, it still offers the chance to perform every day, to experiment and collaborate. But whereas once you could arrive in Edinburgh with big ideas and little else, many feel the festival now effectively runs a “pay to play” model.
While big-name comedians do perform, the “spirit of the fringe” is about undiscovered acts catching a break. As Jon Richardson told the Guardian in 2019: “I would rather people saw someone new than me doing a show I’ve already done on tour.” Performers attend in the hope of becoming the next Fleabag, Mighty Boosh or Garth Marenghi. But many comedians say the fringe has become more like a corporate festival for established TV names, rather than the showcase of hot new talent it once was.
Tensions peaked earlier this month when it was revealed that this year there would be no fringe app, which is seen as vital in generating on-the-day ticket sales. This prompted more than 1,500 people to sign the Live Comedy Association’s open letter to the Fringe Society, stating: “We feel little has been done to actively improve the fringe experience for participants – and now it’s becoming increasingly difficult to justify the expense of taking part.”
Doing the fringe in a sketch group allowed Johnson to split upfront costs, which she says were “somewhere in the region of £10,000, or cheaper on the free fringe”. She’s now developing a solo show and has savings from her work as a comedy writer and director, but questions whether Edinburgh is the right place to spend them. “It’s at the point where people from wealthy backgrounds can afford to do it,” she says. “But others can’t. I don’t want to participate in that model.”
“Performers are doing it out of love,” echoes Evans, “and maybe a deluded notion that this will be their big break. It feels like a machine designed to suck money and spirit from creative people.”
Donagh Horgan, from the University of Strathclyde, has been investigating the fringe as part of European Commission research into the impact of tourism on social exclusion. Researchers conducted focus groups with performers and hospitality workers. The results surprised Horgan: rather than benefit from the festival’s growth, he says, performers have become its main customers. “They are paying for themselves – and putting themselves in unsafe positions. The landlordism has got worse.”
Landlords, including the city’s universities, let out buildings for both performances and accommodation, but no one regulates costs or conditions. “A lot of infrastructure around the fringe,” says Horgan, “happens in the context of low accountability and profit-making.” A 2018 Fringe Society survey found many workers were paid below the minimum wage, while one firm, C Venues, was denied the right to run a university-owned venue in 2019 after allegations of exploitative working practices.
Claire Stone attended the fringe as a director in 2017. When the actor she was working with received rude responses after questioning venue fees, Stone started the Cost of Edinburgh project. “I set it up to ask, ‘What are people paying?’ No one could tell you whether there had been a year-on-year increase in venue fees. There is no oversight. That is problematic. Nobody really knows where the money is going. It’s not going to the performers: very few break even, even fewer will be a huge success.”
Stone conducted a survey of 368 artists in 2018. Nearly three-quarters described the costs of performing at the fringe as unfair. Accommodation and venue were the two biggest expenses, on average totalling over £4,000. Beyond ticket sales, self-funding was the most common way artists covered costs. Participants ended the month with an average £812 loss.
This, said 65%, had a negative impact on wellbeing. Two respondents reported feeling suicidal. “Ultimately,” says Stone, “only certain people can afford to take that risk. You’re not going to get working-class artists taking work to the fringe. Then, because so much work is programmed there, that’s going to have massive impact on industry diversity.”
Cardiff-based comedian Leroy Brito illustrates this grim reality. “When I started standup 11 years ago, the perception was that you had to go. So I felt I was missing out. But then you see people playing to empty rooms and coming back in debt. It didn’t make sense.” There are other reasons why Brito and his fellow comedians find a festival run impractical. “I’ve got two young children,” he says, “and my wife works full-time, so it would be really selfish of me to disappear for a month.”
Siân Docksey has played the fringe four times. In 2019, noticing a lack of transparency around costs, she shared her budget online. “It’s harmful if we’re not talking about the costs. There’s so much pressure to go. If we’re forcing people when they can’t afford to, we have to address that. If you’re doing it out of obligation, it’s a scam.”
Jenan Younis, who started doing standup four years ago, thought comedians had to do the fringe to be taken seriously. “I’ve spoken to producers and commissioners, and without thinking twice they say, ‘You must do Edinburgh.’ When I ask why, they can’t give me a good reason.”
It was a daily slog to fill the room and, without industry connections, she felt “lonely” – something other comedians echoed, telling me that being working class, neurodivergent or a non-drinker can also hinder networking. “Long gone are the days where you can go up as a nobody and come out with contacts and opportunities,” says Younis. “There’s a myth around Edinburgh in comedy – that it’s necessary.”
Docksey says the fringe can trap performers in a “weird life cycle” of saving for, performing at, then recovering from the festival. “This year, I don’t have the resources. But also, I didn’t want my whole year to revolve around Edinburgh.” Evans says comedians with day jobs find themselves “saving money and days off for the fringe. The tendrils of Edinburgh go into the rest of your life.”
During the pandemic, comedians were forced to find new ways of reaching audiences and industry figures, with many realising that maybe they don’t need the fringe after all. This year, Evans will focus on his podcast, Mandatory Redistribution Party, and creating monthly live shows in Manchester with comedy duo Foxdog Studios. “We’re having fun on stage,” he says, “but we don’t have to sleep on a linoleum floor or plunge ourselves into debt.”
Brito, who has built a local following in Cardiff, is one of many comics who have developed solo shows outside Edinburgh and invested in filming their work. His show was picked up for a BBC radio standup special. Younis, after a positive experience at Aberystwyth comedy festival, started a mini festival for Middle Eastern comedians, building on her comedy night Weapons of Mass Hilarity. “It felt good creating a community for our acts,” she says.
Johnson is developing her debut standup show in London and making the Birthday Girls House Party podcast. She still feels drawn to do her solo debut in Edinburgh, but says: “There are other ways of getting yourself noticed.” She has worked her way up through comedy writers’ rooms, which led to her first panel show appearance, while Liz Kingsman’s One-Woman Show indicated to her that success can come without a fringe launch.
The Fringe Society unveiled its development goals last month. Among these is the target to be an “equitable fringe”, meaning “who you are and where you are from is not a barrier to attending or performing”. Shona McCarthy, chief executive of the society, tells me: “I don’t disagree with any of the things the artists are saying. It is expensive to stay in Edinburgh. The fringe is a risk.” Making the festival more accessible will require “a massive collective effort”, she adds. The society has lobbied on such issues as exploitative working practices and accommodation costs, leading to some wins – including capping charges for 1,200 rooms for performers at £280 per week.
“The Fringe Society can only do so much,” adds McCarthy. “We’re a small charitable organisation ourselves. The collective Edinburgh festivals are a major global event and I still think that that’s not taken seriously enough.” Whereas the Olympics receive major public investment, that does not happen for the fringe. “People expect us to behave like we’re a curated arts festival with huge amounts of public funding. That’s not what the fringe is.”
Nevertheless, she believes performers can still get a lot out of a fringe run: “It’s still an extraordinary leveller. This is still a festival where people come to be discovered. The fringe does represent a place where people can express themselves freely, among a respectful community. There’s nothing else like it on the planet.” But performers need to understand the costs and risks. “People do have to come into it with eyes wide open and weigh up the risk, because it is not cost-neutral. It’s better for people to make an informed choice and say, ‘I’m not ready’ or ‘This isn’t right for me.’”
This year, some performers hope the act of opting out could prompt change. “I hoped Covid would kill the fringe as it exists,” says Evans. “I’m putting my efforts into something different this year. Maybe if more people do that, we can stop putting the fringe on a pedestal.”
