life on the Fringe

well its all over! my first edinburgh fringe festival has come to a close and i have to say, it could actually send a person quite crazy.

here's the lowdown on how i spent most of my time...

so I worked as the venue manager of Assembly @ St George’s West, which is a satellite venue of Assembly Theatre, one of the biggest Fringe organisations in Edinburgh. here's the view from the front..



St George’s West is actually an operational church which is hired by Assembly for the fringe season and converted into a theatre venue. For the first time we had 2 theatres in our venue – the biggest was The Sanctuary, built into the church itself (the stage is built over the pulpit and the organ!). It seats about 470 people.

this is the stage being built in the Sanctuary during bump-in



here's a couple of shots of during performance





For any of you technical types, the rig in the Sanctuary was hung from 9 points in the ceiling of the church, through the holes made for the lights. Heres the riggers Colin and Harpo after coming down from the ceiling - we went to the pub straight afterwards!! (Colin is also the previous Production manager of St George's - an all-round legend and trouble maker!)



The other space was brand new this year, called Candlish Hall, a 100 seater theatre built from scratch in a completely bare room – complete with raked seating.

We had 11 companies performing in the whole venue, with all of them performing almost every day of the 25 day season. The shows were a crazy mix of theatre, music and comedy – including Russian clowns, American super-serious ac-torrrrs, English-hungarian fencers and a Dutch acapella man-band who performed one number in their show wearing skirts made of ties. Yes, it was a mad month.

check out the audiences waiting to come in - they had to queue out on the footpath!



We had a technical crew of about 10, front of house staff of 23 and a box office staff of 5...



here's the busy busy box office



Essentially my job was to make sure that everything was running well at St George’s, particularly the front of house, and to be a general problem-solver, back-slapper and occasional ass-kicker for the whole of the venue, staff and performing companies. It was pretty huge and pretty damn hectic, many loooooong days but lots of fun too. I worked with some great people and made some brilliant friends...



thats mike, lovely production manager and yank (but dont hold that against him) (heehee sorry mike)



On the left, Nora – Front of House Manager - totally gorgeous girl, so funny and completely mad and an actual Edinburgh local (they were rare on assembly staff) with a brialliant accent. Also has a knack at eating any food within reach, and does a mean impression of a yeti. Then Darren, Front of house staffer, an irish boy with the quickest wit this side of the black stump, regularly had me in tears of laughter. Then Andrew, our resident Press Officer and wicked gossip monger. Don’t let his sweet innocent face fool you! He cuts a mean figure on the dance floor and is totally addicted to crisps (or chips in oz language). Then James, classic London geezer, drinking partner and trouble maker, with a permanent seat in the Lane bar, Club bar and of course the Spiegeltent.

this was olivia's mini birthday party in the venue office



So there you have it - Edinburgh was certainly intense, lots of work, but lots of fun too...

L x