Steffan Alun has some tips for fellow comedians

Halfway though the Fringe, and we’re seeing some incredible shows in enormous rooms, filled to the brim with excited festival-goers. We’re seeing shows that sell every tickets days in advance. And we’re seeing … well, an awful lot of other shows.

For the fourth year in a row, I’m performing a show as part of the PBH Free Fringe – a 40-minute show, to avoid the risk of winning any awards. I’ve seen what happens to award-winners. Their audiences have expectations. I’m no mug.

So here I am, with a show in a free venue, which isn’t long enough to trouble the awards, and which doesn’t invite reviewers. And yet, so far, most days of the show have attracted full audiences.

As a result, I’m now inundated with messages from my fellow performers in the fringes-of-the-Fringe world of free venues. An awful lot of them are performing to low numbers, or even cancelling shows outright. ‘What am I doing wrong?’ they ask.

Well, there’s no single answer to that. I’ll tell you what. I know you’re having a hard time. So pull up a chair, and let me explain – with as much kindness and compassion as I have in my heart – why nobody’s coming to your Fringe show.

1. YOUR VENUE’S HORRIBLE

Many performers spend thousands and thousands of pounds to perform in incredible venues. Spaces that are normally used as lecture halls or theatre spaces, or even actual comedy clubs. Others spend hundreds and hundreds to be in a community centre or music gig venue, complete with door staff and techs.

But you didn’t. You rolled the dice on a free venue, or maybe chucked Free Festival a hundred quid to roll slightly different dice.

There are some amazing venues on the Free Fringe and its competitors. Yours isn’t one of them. Yours is the corner of a pub halfway to Leith, with nothing but a piece of cloth to keep out the drunken revelry. It smells of vomit and made the news in June after a corpse was found in the beer barrels (but you didn’t know that, because you don’t care about Edinburgh news outside of August).

2. YOUR FLYER’S APPALLING

The biggest names in the country are here this month, with posters and flyers by well-respected graphic designers, featuring the best photo selected from a photoshoot that took an hour and cost a bomb.

And then … there’s your flyer. Sure, it features a photo of your face – taken by a colleague at your retail job during your lunch break – but the lighting’s weird, and you look like the sort of person you’d avoid on public transport.

And then there’s the design – you believed the open mic comedian back home who said, 'All you need is Photoshop.’ And now you’re stuck with ugly colours, and text that is only a slightly different colour to the background. There are too many fonts, too many words, and you forgot to mention on the flyer that it’s a comedy show.

Oh, and the venue postcode’s wrong.

3. YOU’RE TERRIBLE AT FLYERING

The demand for flyerers is so high at Edinburgh that many people take the month off work to spend it in this city, distributing promotional materials for some of the world’s finest comedians.

Take a walk through Bristo Square, and you’ll be inundated with offers from some of the festival’s most talented, charming, charismatic or attractive advert-distributors, capable of delivering flyers into countless hands – despite the understandable reluctance of most to take too many.

Thing is, though, they’ve all been snapped up. And you couldn’t afford them even if they hadn’t.

So you’re doing your best to distribute your own flyers. You want to strike the right balance between polite and pushy, but this makes you too meek to make a good impression on passers-by.

It could be worse. At least you’re not obnoxious – unlike your rival from the open mic scene, deliberately getting in the way of people until they take a flyer.

And you’re doing better than that guy you met on the first night, who seemed so excited at the time. By now, he’s not so much a flyerer as he is a sad man holding pictures of his own face.

4. YOUR STAND-UP’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH

Everyone’s terrible when they start, we all know that. And we know that we all get better with time, patience, and hard work.

But right now? You’re okay. You’re fine. Decent, even. With the wind behind you, you can have some great gigs.

In the future, you might be one of the best. But right now, you’re nothing special.

So when you perform on a mixed bill or showcase … you just don’t stand out. Even if people enjoy you for ten minutes, they’re not inspired to seek you out for a longer performance. Especially since ten minutes of that performance will probably be the same stuff they’ve already seen.

Guest spots are great training, and one of the best things about Edinburgh is that you can easily clock up a ton of stage time. But look around you. Behold your competition. Yes, that Belgian couple really loved you – but they’re only here for one night, and they already have tickets to see Alice Fraser.

5. YOU HAVEN’T BEEN HERE LONG ENOUGH

And here we have the fundamental truth at the heart of this festival.

It’s a cumulative, incremental game. Every year you’re here, your reputation grows. You get better, you perform new work, you impress more and more people.

Right now, you’re still new to the game. Nobody knows who you are.

But they might do in the future. If you stick at it, improve, work hard. Learn to write better material. Learn to perform your material better. Learn better social skills, to make you better company for your fellow performers. Learn to flyer.

Learn what questions to ask, next time you apply to come to the festival.

Questions like:

‘Should I be performing full solo shows?’

‘Is it worth paying to be in the main brochure?’

‘Where exactly is this venue I’ve been offered?’

Talk to more experienced acts. The ones you trust. The ones who’ll help.

There’s so, so much to learn. And you’ve only just started.

That’s why nobody’s coming to your fringe show.

Steffan Alun: Free Standup Will Never Die is on at The Three Broomsticks at 4.30pm daily..

Published: 15 Aug 2018