So I'm saying yes to Free Festival, don't see why I shouldn't. The Free Festival has become the fringe to the Fringe. I am looking forward to the experience. I have done the BIG venues for years and although I love my boys at the Underbelly and all the gang at Pleasance and Gilded etc... I am looking forward to striking out. There is a snobbery about the Free Festival with suggestions that it is there for 'people who cant get into the big professional venues'. Well I prove that isn't true, as did Louisa Omelian and many others last year.
And when you pay to be part of these big venues and watch promoters stand outside the big rooms giving away free tickets to a show that isn't selling well.... what the fuck is a paid show then? That undercuts us all yet that exists. And then the 2 for 1 tickets the big venues uses... let's just cut to the chase and do it in a free venue.
We want something different. We want a better cut of the money we generate. I will hire two people who are living in Edinburgh at the Fringe to do my door every night (get in touch - good living wage offered) and will collect my own money in a bucket at the end of the show, cutting out the middle man but not the tax man (I pay all my taxes). I will rent a flat and rent a flyer team so I will generate some small employment in the city.
We want to control our own shows. I don't hate the big venues, but times change and I can change with it. Thanks Alex Petty* for all the support. LETS DO THIS.
Janey Godley will be performing at the Counting House Ballroom in Edinburgh this summer. Before then she is doing her new show Honest To Godley with her daughter Ashley Storrie on 27th & 28th March at Oran Mor in Glasgow as part of the Glasgow Comedy Festival. Tickets here or phone 0844 873 7353.
*Alex Petty runs Edinburgh's Free Festival.
