Fin Irwin

This is one for all you artists bringing a show to the first Plymouth Fringe Festival!  Whether you’re a season fringe veteran or a first-timer, a bit of advice is never a bad thing.  Over the next couple of weeks, we’ve got some Guest Blogs coming up from some of our wonderful partners on how to make the most of your experience at the festival.

First up, Fin Irwin, Programmer at The House, has some advice on how to have a good time…

 1.  Pack light – you only have a short get-in time and you’d probably like a couple of minutes to stop, breath and have a quick round of zip zap boing – so don’t waste it on props and set that you could probably do without.

 2.  Practice your set up – don’t leave it until your first show to realise that it takes 45 minutes to put up your set.  It will stress you and the venue managers out and the audience will get restless. So spend an afternoon practicing taking it down and putting it back up.

3.  Know where you are – when you’re getting to know the venue team, promoting your show on the streets and chatting to the audience after, make sure you know you’re in Plymouth and that you know a little about the city!  It seems basic, but people like to think that you’re excited to be there.  They’ve taken the effort to find out about your show and come to see it (or might do), you should take the effort to find out about their city.

4.  Be patient, be nice – you might be the one’s who have the super slick, 5 minute get-in but the company before you might have one thousand lego pieces to set up. Instead of tutting that they clearly haven’t read Point No.1, why not give them a hand. Ultimately, you’re all in this together, so help each other out and do it with a smile – it’ll make it a lot easier for all of us.

5.  Last but by no means least – enjoy! Take the opportunity to meet some new people and see some new work. Even if there’s one person in your audience, think about the amazing experience that lone punter will get. You never know, they might have 10k avid followers on Twitter, just waiting for a good recommendation…