BACKGROUND

What is the Melbourne Fringe Festival

The Melbourne Fringe Festival is an annual arts festival that runs off an open program model. It has been going for 25 years and is a very respected festival with an annual turnover of over a million dollars - much of this from various tiers of government funding and corporate sponsorship.

Anyone can put an event on in the festival, it is not curated. Artists pay the festival $270 for inclusion in the program, everything else involved in the artists work is up to the artists. The festival prides itself on the independance of the artists involved and the 'edgy' nature of the festival. To clarify - artists pay the Fringe to be part of the fringe, this does not pay for anything else apart from inclusion in the program, artists organise and pay for every aspect of their productions - the venues, the crew, marketing et cetera.

The Fringe maintains it's own venues in the Festival Hub at North Melbourne Town Hall - artists must apply well in advance to secure one of these venues and if successful (yes, this can be seen as a type of curating) pay the Melbourne Fringe venue hire costs. It is rare for shows outside of the Festival Hub to do well with audience numbers.

Ticket prices to shows average around $16, this might seem expensive but is understandable once the costs are taken into account and the $3 the fringe takes if tickets are sold through their system is factored in.

The Melbourne Fringe also produces it's own events - these are often large scale free public events.

The festival comprises of a board and an office of arts administrators, I think five fulltime year round employees with many additional staff around the time of the festival.

Advantages for artists to be in the Melbourne Fringe Festival are that hopefully being under the umbrella of Fringe and it's marketing gives them wider exposure and the potential to garner reviews and awards helps establish artistic careers. It is unlikely for the unknown less popular productions to make any money.

These are the reasons I decided to be part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, along with the discipline of having to scale my show up to a higher standard. I was aware of the inherent problems of being part of this festival, however, I was not ready for the active attack from it's staff.

BACKGROUND - THE SHOW

The show is a solo effort, no producers, managers, directors, publicists et cetera and certainly no funding. It has a very low profile and I am relatively unknown. The show has been developed full time over the last six years at enormous personal cost, entirely self funded and produced. It's a bit of weird show that doesn't fit neatly into any category. An earlier and much inferior iteration of the show appeared and won an award in the 2002 Melbourne Fringe Festival.

The 2007 Melbourne Fringe season of the show was a ramping up of the act, incorporating a second person to perform/operate the visuals, Lucy. We were at District Town Hall - a $300/show venue, I did a deal with them - I would supply the PA system in exchange for the rental fee. It was my mistake by going for this - the space was inappropriate and I foolishly agreed to the 11pm timeslot I was offered. Due to my financial situation this seemed like the only way I could get the show up.

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