If the beginning of September still makes me think I need a new notebook and pencil case, the beginning of August makes me think I should be feeling sick with nerves and probably a hangover. It is now 17 years since I took a show to the Edinburgh fringe, but scars run deep. Don’t get me wrong: I loved and still love the city, and I loved performing at the festivals, but it was an almost uniquely stressful experience for a young comedian.
First, there’s the money. Even when I was a fringe regular, it was quite common to sell out a month-long run and still sustain losses of £10,000. I’m told by the current generation that things have got worse. People outside the fringe ecosystem can rarely believe it, but if your venue only seats 60 people, you literally cannot make back what it costs for you and the technical/backstage/box office staff to stay in an expensive city.
Punters complain (rightly) that ticket prices are exorbitant, but many performers are paying hundreds of pounds every night to go to work, and solo performers have no one to split the costs with. I was lucky enough to have a sponsor cover my losses in 2002-06, because otherwise I couldn’t have gone at all.
Marketing, posters, PR … The costs keep rising, but how else do you tell people that your show is on? If you cut costs, you fear playing to empty houses. The average audience for a fringe show used to be three; I’m told it might now be five. The actor Georgie Grier posted last week that she had found herself playing to just one person, incurring support from plenty of household names who had once experienced similar misery. Performing every night for a month makes you a better comedian, but that’s only true if the shows don’t cancel for lack of an audience.
The five years I spent doing standup in Edinburgh were financially and emotionally challenging because it’s a very public arena in which to rise or fall. Everyone knows which shows are selling out and which are papering (offering free tickets to try to get an audience in somehow). Comedians are used to being judged because audiences express that judgment in real time: they laugh, smile, heckle or sit with crossed arms looking bored. But only in Edinburgh are you surrounded by so many of your peers, all competing for the same audience, all so aware of who is failing and succeeding, and all knowing that you have to build your confidence back up before you perform tonight’s show.
In recent years, I’ve often found myself thinking how sad it is that social media seem to have helped so many more people to feel that same crushing anxiety that they aren’t good enough, and that everyone else is doing better. It was bad enough feeling like that for a month. So, while I can’t promise to make comedians, audiences, or anyone else feel better about themselves on a rainy August day, here’s what I learned that might – I hope – help a little.
First, you need to accept that sometimes it’s you, and sometimes it’s them. Sometimes your jokes don’t land because they aren’t good enough and need some urgent fixing, but sometimes you turned up and did your absolute best, and they just didn’t enjoy it very much. They were drunk (or not drunk enough), they were mean, or you just weren’t their kind of thing. They took a punt and it didn’t work out. If it happens once or twice in a month, it’s probably them. If it happens every day, it’s probably you (this also holds true for online dating).
Don’t read reviews until after the run is over, or ideally ever. People will tell you that you have to read anything anyone says about you, but you don’t. It’s like eavesdropping: you might hear crucial information that enables you to thwart a heist, but you’re statistically much more likely to hear someone slagging off your clothes and criticising your hair. I haven’t read a review of my work since 2002: the first time I see my book reviews is when my publisher sends me the cover for approval. Because of this, I blithely assume that everyone likes me, and it is much easier to go to work every day.
If you can’t help but read reviews, try to remember that they’re reviewing one show on one night. They aren’t reviewing your career, your talent, or your personality, even if they think they are. I say this as someone who worked as an arts reviewer for many years: I may be entitled to my informed opinion, but you are entitled to ignore it. Maybe I didn’t get the joke. Maybe it wasn’t the kind of comedy I like and my editor sent me to it because they secretly hate me. As with so many things in life, it feels like it’s all about you, but it may not be. And it is much easier to remember this when you aren’t necking a cocktail of adrenaline and performance anxiety seven days a week.
Everyone is missing a few layers of skin when they’re under stress, and they’re also not always thinking about your feelings. So don’t fall out with people you normally like because they said something hurtful. You have plenty of time to fall out with them in September if they do it again.
In the meantime, best of luck to everyone in Edinburgh: performers, technicians, punters, bar staff and year-round residents who endure the annual invasion with so much good humour. Oh, and my final tip? You don’t have malaria, it’s just 20C hotter inside than out.
Natalie Haynes is a writer, broadcaster and comedian. Her new book, Divine Might, is available to preorder
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