Launching 'very splashy' show for a month in London cannot compete with the Fringe, producers say

Speaking at a ShedX talk at venue Shedinburgh, veteran producers of Fringe shows said the festival was the “only place” that new work can be seen by industry audiences on a major scale.

Chaired by Francesca Moody, who produced the original stage versions of Fleabag and Baby Reindeer, the panel discussion, titled From Script to Sold Out, How to Produce a Fringe Hit.

The panel, which also included Australian producer Linda Catalano and Laura Elmes from Wildpark Entertainment, discussed how shows can become a Fringe success which is picked up elsewhere. Fleabag and Baby Reindeer both became major television series after being picked up by television executives at the Fringe.

Owen Donovan, managing director of Burk’s Nest, who was behind Richard Gadd’s Monkey See, Monkey Do show in 2016, which won the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Show, said no London run could replicate the impact of performing a show at the Fringe.

He said: “It’s because the number of eyes on our shows in Edinburgh. We can’t replicate that anywhere and that helps us to take things nationally, internationally, to find partners for thing and for work to be seen on a scale that even if we opened for a very long, splashy, loud month in London, it wouldn’t be the same as this month here because of who is here.”

He said Burk’s Nest had started very much as a Fringe-only company, but expanded after the pandemic to create year-round performances.

He said: “We do a whole bunch of stuff, but still Fringe remains very much a tent pole in our year. It’s where we do the most work simultaneously and that’s because it’s really the only place that we can do that.

“It really is the launchpad - even though the amount of work we’re doing year-round is growing exponentially - most things we do start here in some form and really do think about it mostly as a 12 month cycle that is September to August [due to the Fringe]. We build up to this and then things travel on from there.”

Ms Elmes added: “The audience in Edinburgh is just perfect. You can create buzz around a show [elsewhere], but, audience wise and industry wise, Edinburgh is unlike anything else.”

Ms Moody, whose production company Francesca Moody Productions is this year behind already sold-out Fringe hit Roleplay, at Summerhall, said the Fringe is like a “trade show and a free marketplace.”

Performers have raised fears that the departure of the TV Festival from Edinburgh last year due to rising costs in the capital could mean fewer television executives would be in Edinburgh in August.

However, Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society chief executive Tony Lankester said last week the festivals planned to launch a rival event for the screen industry.

Shedinburgh, which began life as a virtual venue during the pandemic, became a physical venue for the first time last year. Ms Moody vowed to turn the traditional Fringe model “on its head” by paying artists for performing and for their accommodation in Edinburgh, rather than the other way around.