Festivals diary: Baby Reindeer producer on why performers should put on shows in the smallest venue possible

Chaired by Baby Reindeer and Fleabag producer Francesca Moody, the panel also included Raw Materials co-founder Gillian Garrity, Australian producer Linda Catalano and James Seabright of Seabright Live.

It was one of those industry events not specifically aimed at media (don’t worry, they knew I was there, I wasn’t in disguise) and it almost felt intrusive, listening to the veterans share a brutally honest account of their early experiences with the room of mainly young performers and producers.

Ms Catalano admitted she had had to take out a mortgage on her house to pay for certain Fringe shows which had not performed as well as she had hoped, while Ms Moody also said she had borrowed cash from her siblings in the early days, which she had had to pay back over two years.

Billed as “How to Make a Fringe Hit”, the panellists discussed pros and cons of marketing, flyering and the “gut feeling” when choosing a new show to bring to the Fringe.

One tip stood out: “Put your show on in the smallest venue you can afford to put it on in,” said Mr Seabright, with Ms Moody stepping in to explain that a “sell-out show”, no matter how small the venue, attracts attention.

“Selling out your show is probably the best way of making people come to your show,” she said. “People are obsessed with coming to see anything that is on the sell-out board”.

Modestly, Ms Catalano did not comment on this one, having, perhaps inevitably, experienced a sell-out for one of her shows, on at the Traverse, called I’m Ready to Talk Now - which has only one audience member in each performance.

Perhaps the sweetest thing to come out of the event, however, was Ms Catalano’s admission that the entire cast and crew of another of her shows, Little Squirt, get together for a Sunday roast together every week on their day off.

“We choose a different pub each week,” she explained. “Each team needs something different. Some teams need there to be a day in the week where they don’t see each other at all. This one needs a Sunday roast.”

Pickled Republic

Moldovan-born-now-based-in-Glasgow theatre maker Ruxy Cantir’s show, Pickled Republic, has also been a sell out in her first ever run at the Fringe. I managed to scrounge a last minute ticket, pleading my love for anything Romanian and Moldovan - they essentially speak the same language, I could elaborate further if anyone was interested - and pickles.

The show, part of the Made in Scotland showcase, saw Ruxy play a cabaret singing potato, a mime artist gherkin, a socially anxious onion who wanted to be a performance poet and a loving mother breastfeeding her carrot son.

“You’ve been fully Fringed,” said a friend when I described what I’d been to see.

But my favourite bit was when Ruxy addressed the audience at the end, pointing to the dozen or so tomatoes she had squashed onto a table cloth in one of the final segments.

“Look at our TikTok to see what we do with the tomatoes after the show,” she told everyone. “We make them into soup!”

The most wonderfully Moldovan thing I have ever heard.

Other festivals are available

The Fringe is so all-encompassing, it is sometimes easy to forget that there are other festivals going on around the city.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival kicks off on Thursday, while the Edinburgh International Book Festival is now in full swing, with queues out the door of the signing tent for Chinese writer Liu Zhenyun when I popped by on Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s done surprisingly well,” said one member of staff.