Advice for Those Who Fringe

I’m looking forward to the Boulder International Fringe Festival coming up in August. There will be a magician and a mentalist this year (but I will not be performing). It is one of Colorado’s true festival gems and is not to be missed. And although I won’t be participating in the Festival this year, many of my Fringe friends have been asking me for advice due to the tremendous success I had last year (4 of my 6 performances were sold out…). Here’s what I learned four-walling my magic show — though these ideas will apply to any type of show.

First, you need to spend a lot of time promoting your show. As artists, you may want to devote time to working on your performance, but it’s time to become a business person. My advice is that you finish working on your performance now. Set it aside, and begin focusing on marketing.

If the work is new you may have planned to premiere the work at the Fringe Festival. I recommend against this. Go ahead and schedule some performances now, in advance of the Fringe. Premieres are overrated. There are always problems with a new work that will be found after the first few performances. Fix them now and you’ll have a show that’s even more Fringe-worthy.

The other reason for debuting the show now (instead of at the Festival) is that you’re going to need to start selling the show now. And you can’t sell the show, if you don’t know what you’ve got. When you talk about your show with other people, they’ll want to know what the show is like. Is it funny? Is it thought-provoking? Is it gut-wrenching? If you’re not finished writing your show, if you have never performed it for anyone before, then you’re not going to be able to speak with any authority. And you need to be able to speak with authority if you want to convince people to come see your show. People can tell if you’re uncertain. And they won’t buy from you if you’re uncertain.

So get the show up and running in front of a live audience. Get some feedback; make some fixes. Then spend the next two months promoting your show.

More advice: Begin talking with people about your show now. Whenever someone asks you, “What’s new?” Be prepared to tell them that you’re excited to be in the Fringe Festival in August, tell them briefly about the show and then say, “I really hope you can make it. Will you be able to come?”

It is important that you remember to ask people to come! If you forget to ask them to come they might think, “Maybe the show isn’t something I’d enjoy. Maybe it’s too avant-garde for me.” People will think all sorts of crazy things if you don’t ask them to come. So make sure you ask. If they say yes, then thank them and tell them how much it will mean to you to have them in the audience.

As a side note, I am shocked at how many of my friends will say, “I wasn’t sure if I should come or not. I was afraid it would make you nervous if you saw me in the audience.”

The only explanation I can think of is that they went to see another friend in a performance, and after the show their friend said, “I saw your name on the reservation list tonight, and it made me so nervous that I could hardly concentrate on my performance.”

If you’ve ever said that to any of your friends, please STOP. You’re making it really difficult for the rest of us to sell tickets to our friends.

But back to the issue at hand. In truth, when you ask someone, for the first time, to come to your show, most people will not want to commit. Many people will begin to choke and stammer, and they’ll mutter something about needing to check their schedule. That’s OK. It is perfectly natural, after all, you’ve only spoken to them for 60 seconds about the show. They’re not ready to buy. Like the expert fisherman (or fisherwoman) that you are, you can practice “catch and release” and set them free unharmed. Just tell them that you understand and that you’ll be sure to give them more information when it’s closer to the event.

This is enough to get you started. Get your performance ready to go now. Get it to the stage now (rather than later) so you can polish the rough spots. And begin telling everyone you know that you expect them to come see you show. Remember, “catch and release.”

I’ll write more at a later date about how to follow up, but now I need to get ready for a performance this afternoon…