THE STORY OF A FRINGE FESTIVAL AND THE ARTISTS THEREIN - PART 1

Two days before our show opens we lost our stage manager/guest artist due to work commitments. Our sound tech was four hours late to the tech run and incompetent to the point of being unable to plug in our rudimentary sound system. When asked for an explanation he sacked himself. By our third show it was just me and Lucy and an 11pm time slot with a 15min turnaround, a one and half k sound system with no operator and our biggest audience was eight people - most were fringe judges/reviewers. We couldn't even give away tickets. With a missing crew there was no way we could meet the venue deadlines of turnaround and had no money to hire crew.

Yes things were dire so we had a brainwave - move to a smaller more friendly venue and busk the damn thing - at least we'll be doing the show to an audience! This brainwave occured 12pm on the Sunday night and we immediately went to the bar we had in mind and the manager was very keen!

I talked it over with the producer of our venue, Douglas Babcock, he was very supportive of the move and was in fact relieved because he could go home early.

John, the manager of the potentially new venue - Some Bar, sees our show at the Hall on Tuesday night, along with the owner. They love it. We are definately in. In terms of door sales we have to run it via donation since it is an already functioning bar with patrons in it.

Late Wednesday afternoon I email Margaret who is the ticketing person at the Melbourne Fringe to ask to be taken off their system for the rest of season due to the changes. I enquire how do we handle refunds as there are about 6 tickets already sold for the rest of the season.

This is where it gets weird. John at Some Bar then gets a phone call from the Melbourne Fringe informing him that our show CANNOT move to his venue, we later find out the call was from Hubert, the independant progam producer at the Melbourne Fringe.

John phones Lucy, the other artist in the show, to reluctantly tell her it is off (he later stated it was the hardest call he had to make). He tactfully says it was from the Fringe and due to a 'conflict of interest' and because there was something about something I said about the fringe.

Just before six pm I receive a phone call from Margaret, the ticketing manager, the above is yet to be known by me and I think everything is fine. Therefore my relaxed demeanour came as a shock to her. She states that we 'Cannot alter the price of the show' and 'we will not release you from the system' I enquire if this is because of technical reasons, she states 'no, it is because you have signed a contract with us stating that we have to charge the same amount througout the season'. She does say we CAN move venues but can't take donations. Margaret stated we were breaking the contract with the venue. No contract was signed and Douglas, the producer of our venue, was fully behind us shifting to save the show.

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