A-Z of the Fringe: L (also Biopic update)

In their latest A-Z of the Fringe, the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre manage to include their interview with The Scotsman, which you can read here.



By the way here are their reviews so far from Broadway Baby (5 stars), National Student (4 stars) and Edinburgh Spotlight (4 stars).

Every night as part of the show, the Socks improvise the biopic of a celebrity suggested by the audience. Here are the ones they've done so far:

BIOPICS
Weds - David Hasselhof
Thurs - Michael Jackson
Fri - Tom Baker
Sat - Wayne Rooney
Sun - Gary Glitter
Mon - Osama Bin Laden
Tues - Cliff Richard
Weds - The Stig
Thurs - Nat King Cole
Fri - Princess Di
Sat - Rod Hull
Sun - Anthea Turner

THE SCOTTISH FALSETTO SOCK PUPPET THEATRE
Edinburgh Fringe 2010: 9.15pm 4-29 August, Gilded Balloon

A-Z of the Fringe, H is for Holyrood

New from the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre's A-Z of the Edinburgh Fringe



The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre In Space, 10.15pm July 31st - Aug 25th at The Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh Fringe 2013.

Losing money at the Fringe

I'm intrigued by something Chris Addison said on The One Show last night, about how in a usual year at the Edinburgh Fringe, even if he sold out every seat, he'd end up owing £8000.

Now I've been putting on shows at the Fringe since 2001, and I thought I'd pretty well worked out the maths of this thing and, to me, that sounds like bollocks. So I twittered to that effect, and I had another fellow comic, Gary Delaney, replying that his losses were even greater than that. I remain puzzled as to how that could be.

Our show, the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, started off in a 55 seater venue for two years, moved up to an 80 seater last year, and this year is in a 90 seater. We have been very lucky to be building up a following which means we sellout quite often. With a push and a following wind we can sell out 80% of our seats (fingers crossed, we've already had 6 sellouts out of 9 nights, with more to come). I would expect Gary and especially Chris to be doing the same.

It costs me around £4500, or 40% of my door takings (whichever is the greater) to hire my venue, with an extra £500 to be in the Edinburgh Comedy Festival programme, £1500 to rent a flat for the month, and between £500 and £1000 to print flyers and posters. Let's say I don't get much change from 8 grand, and then I have my living costs (and have you seen the price of a pint at the Loft Bar? I ask you)

My tickets cost 9 or 10 quid each, with some going for as little as 4 quid on a preview or 2-for-1 day. Say they average 8 quid a ticket over the month, and I only sell 65% of my seats, and I'm only in last year's 80 seater. That's 25 nights times 52 seats times 8 quid, equals £10,400. So take away 40% of that (or £4500 whichever is the greater) and that's paid off the venue hire and I'm left with £5900. Taking the other costs out of that I'm still in profit. So how do the Addisons of this world manage to blow an additional ten thousand pounds?

Yours, puzzled of Lothian Road

A-Z of the Fringe, B is for Bad Publicity

The latest offering from the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre looks at ways of publicising your show at the Edinburgh Fringe. The punchline of this video earned me a drink in the Loft Bar last night from a promoter who found it particularly amusing.



THE SCOTTISH FALSETTO SOCK PUPPET THEATRE
Edinburgh Fringe 2010: 9.15pm 4-29 August, Gilded Balloon

A-Z of the Fringe, F & Q

The Socks are having a go at the A-Z of the Fringe, though we can't promise to cover the entire alphabet. Here are F & Q





THE SCOTTISH FALSETTO SOCK PUPPET THEATRE
Edinburgh Fringe 2010: 9.15pm 4-29 August, Gilded Balloon

***** 5 stars, Broadway Baby

5 star review from Broadway Baby

Broadway Baby Review
Sock it to me baby

Rating: 5.0

Kathryn Mack Reviewed by Kathryn Mack
August 10, 2010

How can a full house of adults be entertained for an hour by a couple of grey socks in a tartan Punch & Judy tent? Ask Kev Sutherland, the writer and performer, who returns for forth year with the bug eyed characters.

There’s something so simple, so endearing and yet so funny about taking innocent sock puppets and creating an adult world for them. This year, once again, the socks are seeking fame and a tv show, which leads them to explore different tv genres in an attempt to sell their talents to any programme commissioners who may be in the audience. One sock takes this task very seriously, while the other undermines him with wilful misunderstandings and a series of terrible puns on the theme of tv show titles.

Sutherland gives convincing life to the socks and I am captivated for the full hour. Gags come at you thick and fast, and the show never lets up pace, with costume changes and audience interaction. They manage to pull off a parody of a BBC costume drama (think about it – socks, costume drama, how can that work?), explore society’s obsession with paedophilia, and punctuate the whole show with songs from the guitar playing sock. It is during one of these songs (a short, but brilliant take on a Lou Reed track) that, for the first time this Fringe, I experienced streaming tears of laughter and almost fell off my chair clutching my aching sides. This experience is repeated when the socks get their tv genres mixed up and present a cooking-gardening-superman show.

The audience – about half of whom have seen the socks in previous years - clearly adored ‘On the Telly’. The sheer silliness may not be for everyone, but if you are looking for an hour of joyful exuberance, go see.

Edinburgh Comedy Festival is evil, discuss

News story on Chortle today: Comedy Festival unity slips: Venue chief admits doubts

This is an interesting one to discuss. So interesting, indeed, that I bet I'm the only person who bothers discussing it.

The Edinburgh Comedy Festival, which has existed for 4 years, previously existed as the GASP brochure, a programme separate from the Fringe prog which contained only the shows from the then Big Three venues (Gilded Balloon, Assembly, Pleasance). This riled venues that weren't included in it, and boosted the visibility of those acts and shows who were. It also, significantly, attracted sponsorship from, among others, a cigarette company. Ah, innocent times.

The newer EdComFest programme still includes the theatre offering from the, now, Big Five venues (printing them upside down at the back of the programme) but concentrates on the overwhelming number of comedy shows. This is its first big difference from before. Its second big difference is that, coinciding as it did with the recession, the ECF has not attracted a sponsor.

So we have a spin-off Comedy Festival, which now attracts attention away from Theatre as well as away from smaller venues - and which doesn't include the highly significant Free Fringe and Free Festivals, who have expanded exponentially in the 4 years the ECF has existed. The list of people the ECF now pisses off is therefore greater than ever, and growing.

So it must benefit somebody? Well, speaking as a show that is included in the ECF programme, it benefits me by having me included in another programme as well as the Fringe programme. However this year the Fringe programme has started including a photo of every act with every listing, which was a unique selling point of the ECF programme up till now, and until the start of the festival 90% of my sales were coming through the Edfringe box office (ie via official programme) and only 10% through the EdComFest box office, so that's hardly a ringing endorsement for it.

Added to this, I have to pay an extra £500 to be in the ECF programme, as does every other show in it, which is more than I've spent on my posters and flyers, which I know are the most valuable tool in my marketing arsenal.

So, if it were put to the vote this morning, I would vote for abandoning the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, and simply acknowledging that the Edinburgh Fringe Festival includes a lot of comedy, and that a lot of it is in the big five venues, but a lot of it isn't, so let the best shows promote themselves (as they already do) and win.

(Now don't get me started on Avalon's "Comedy" mini brochure which, every year, passes itself off as a mini copy of the Fringe programme, or a bit I just spotted in Fest magazine which tells you to turn to an "official" Fringe map, and then turns out to be a map only showing Pleasance venues. It's as if some people aren't in this business to make friends.)

Kev F
Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre