Perth Fringe No More

Haven't been keeping up with WA news, I'm currently in Alice Springs, but I did know this was on the cards. (Glad to see current issues posted here for discussion, thanks!)


I've been lucky enough to have been involved in the Perth Festival 'proper' many times, and from that perspective it was hard enough to find time to see other shows, let alone have any involvement in a concurrent fringe. This past two years that I wasn't in a PIAF show, I got the chance to participate in 5 fringe productions plus one short film.
Also, although you could argue the two festivals target different audiences, I believe there was some competition for the audience dollar which probably hurt houses for Fringe shows. If your interested punter has allocated $80 bucks to see two Festival shows, they may be pushing it to see even one Fringe show. At a different time of year with more cashflow they'd be more likely to see around three or more Fringe events.
So personally I'm not too upset that they've decided not to run a concurrent Fringe.

Dave Ryding wrote:
>I think there is a room for theatre that doesn't work. There's got to be a risk of failure and we've all got to fail at times. Fringes should never be judged on creative success

But I do think that for there to be a sense of artistic risk taking, there needs to be an inherent sense of artistic merit to the projects. If a project of merit fails because it is taking a brave risk, then yes of course there is room and a Fringe is the perfect location. But 'freedom to fail' is not, by itself, a good justification for poor quality ideas. Too many of these and a festival is doomed.

"Filch" was a great example for Craig K Edwards to have brought up. I found there were parts I really DIDN'T like, but I LOVED what it was trying to do artistically. The award for 'best PLAY' may be debatable, but it certainly deserved an accolade for 'BEST risk', which in a Fringe scenario is possibly a more apt name for the top award.


Craig K Edwards wrote:
>why oh why our once supportive street press magazines have deserted independant theatre (or make restrictions such as only reviewing shows that buy paid advertisements) is beyond me.

I think X-Press's excuse was because they were a major sponsor of the entire event, they found it unethical to review any one show over another.
I would have thought the logical and only valid solution would be to review EVERYTHING...somehow the usual excuses of time and resources got in the way. I do think it was a BIG MISTAKE that XPress took this stance though; their readership is a huge potential Fringe audience, and a lack of reviews only gave the impression that not much was worth reporting.


>or the result of poor media publicity leading to inadequate audiences

not just poor media publicity...poor media, full stop. Thanks Dave, for summing up well some of the inadequacies of the 'Perth Theatre in Crisis' mentality, that frankly has been undermining the potential industry for well over a decade.

And hey, this change may very well be an example of the industry getting it's house in order...trying new solutions to a situation that wasn't totally satisfactory. But of course, the media always chooses to turn an event into 'news' by making it appear to be a 'crisis'. Do you think any part of Dave's paragraph describing the hive of current activity, newsworthy as it is, will ever be printed in a news article..?

This change has also been foreseen for some time - the Fringe only received funding, a few years ago, to exist as long as it did. More than it being a venue problem, it's a problem of Arts funding in this State being nowhere near the levels received by similar States elsewhere in the world.
My only problem with Dave's Ryding's thoughts is where he says on one hand "It all comes down to bucks. There isn't a great deal of money in theatre and festivals are resource sponges." and on the other hand "The fringe should never be about making money", condemning prices that are more than a movieticket. The problem is not that I don't agree with his two contradictions, it's that the shortfall is really only going to be made up by an increase in funding.

Again, speaking personally, the last Fringe may have been under-resourced and/or disorganised. There were major errors in our programme listing for 'The Stones' that resulted in people I know turning up at the wrong time and missing our show, or planning to attend a performance that we'd never scheduled in the first place.
Hopefully, consolidating Artrage into the 'official' Fringe (as it once used to be), biennial or not, will allow for more efficiency and productivity.

Independent 'fringe' theatre will continue to fill in the gaps as it always does, regardless of whether there is a current festival or not.


Cheers
crgwllms

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