The rocky road to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Comedian Barry Ferns has performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe almost every year — coronavirus pandemic aside — since 1999. 

The very first year, his show played to sellout audiences, but he still walked away $6,500 in debt. 

The following year, he returned and ended up further in the red. Eight years after his first Fringe show, Ferns said, he was $45,000 in debt. By 2007, Ferns, who that year formally changed his name to Lionel Richie as a publicity stunt, was declared bankrupt.

“I had to put my hand on the Bible in the Royal Courts of Justice in London and say, I, Lionel Richie, do solemnly swear … Technically, I didn’t go bankrupt, Lionel Richie did,” he said.

Ferns added that he blames the festival for putting him in dire straits.  

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which runs through Aug. 26 this year, is the biggest performing arts festival in the world, and it has catapulted the work of some artists to the West End, Broadway and television. But the road to the festival is also littered with stories of career-ending performances, mental health distress and financial ruin.

Any artist can perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which is now in its 77th year, but they must cover their own accommodation costs and the price of hiring a venue. 

Hotel and Airbnb prices in Edinburgh soar during the month of August as thousands descend on the city for the festival, practically doubling the capital’s population. Many artists say the festival is becoming prohibitively expensive for both performers and audiences. 

Ferns, who later recovered from bankruptcy and cofounded his own comedy club in London, continues coming to the festival because he said it has long been seen as the only way for comedians to break through in the industry. But it’s never been profitable for him.

One year, he said, he worked as a cleaner at the Gilded Balloon, the same Edinburgh venue that he would perform in each night to try and make ends meet. 

“I’d be waking up at 6 in the morning and cleaning up vomit and emptying cigarette ashtrays, and then show up on stage at the same place later that day.” 

Comedians like Robin Williams, Stephen Fry and Bo Burnham are often said to have had their first big breaks at the Fringe. Others like Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby, one of the high-profile acts at this year’s event, have more traumatic memories of their early years in Edinburgh.

In 2006, Gadsby said they performed to fewer than 100 people during the entire festival run. 

“I lost an obscene amount of money and cried in public three times,” they said. 

Actor and writer Georgie Wyatt’s first show at the Edinburgh Fringe made it to London’s Soho Theatre, and she secured an agent as a result. 

But one good year is no guarantee of continued success. The following year, Wyatt returned to the festival with a new act, but in hindsight, she said she never should have gone. 

“It was a disaster, and I paid a big price for it financially and personally,” she reflected.

The festival can also be a lonely experience for comics. Most acts have to pay for their own publicity, often handing out flyers for their own shows. The Fringe is highly competitive, Wyatt said, so it falls on a performer’s shoulders if their show fails. 

“If you don’t have a hold of your mental health or you’re feeling a bit fragile, just don’t go there — it will destroy you,” she said. 

Especially if people don’t show up. In 2019, she performed to an audience of just three people. 

The whole experience can be demoralizing, Wyatt said.

Still, Wyatt said few festivals like Edinburgh’s allow artists to perfect their craft to such an extent that they can perform night after night for up to a month in front of a live audience. 

One theater company this year has devised an almost foolproof way to stage sellout shows: performing to an audience of just one. 

Taste in Your Mouth, an Irish theater group, stages the show “You’re Needy (Sounds Frustrating)” in the bathroom of a house the company has rented. 

The venue also serves as the accommodation for the cast and crew during the festival. The single audience member sits on a chair as lead actress Laoise Murray performs the play in the bathtub. 

Murray said she tries not to think about whether her audience will leave during the show, and if they do, she would probably tell herself it was because the content was too unsettling. 

William Dunleavy, the company’s co-founder, said the play is an examination of the wellness industry and how it tries to control women’s bodies through capitalism. 

There are few places where a show of this kind can work, the play’s director Grace Morgan said, and the Edinburgh Fringe has turned out to be the perfect stage. 

The Irish theater group received a grant from Culture Ireland to bring the show to the Fringe, a benefit few of its British counterparts will have received, Morgan said. 

Still, the trio said they do not expect to make any money out of their first Edinburgh Fringe experience.

Brian Logan, comedy reviewer with The Guardian, who is also artistic director of Glasgow theater group A Play, A Pie and A Pint, said he believes that the festival organizers and city government itself could do more to help the artists. 

A lot of money pours into Edinburgh each August between ticket sales, hotel prices and bar bills. 

“It feels to me that the city of Edinburgh needs to stop strangling its golden goose and say, you know, how can we stop taking this thing for granted? It may not be here forever if artists are increasingly alienated from it,” Logan said.

A spokesperson for the Fringe Society that organizes the festival said that “short-term accommodation costs have increased exponentially across the UK, and Edinburgh is no different.” 

The festival lobbies local government, universities and student accommodation providers to set aside affordable rooms for artists. The spokesperson said the festival has also created a fund that offers grants of $3,250 to 180 artists to make the festival experience feasible.  

But for all its troubles, Logan said, there is little that compares to the “carnival of creativity” at the Fringe. 

This year, there are over 3,600 shows, with thousands of artists coming from 58 countries. 

“Every year, there’s also at least a dozen new international acts that I’ll see that I haven’t seen or heard of before,” Logan said. “Yes, the festival has its problems — it’s also wonderful; both these things are true.” 

And, a number of Fringe shows through the years have gone on to be global hits on platforms such as Netflix — like “Baby Reindeer,” which originated as a one-man show at the festival in 2019.

“I’m a Fringe idealist for all its problems. And I do find it a tremendously inspiring place to be,” he said, with “art and performance from every corner of the world here.”  

Logan said he would like to bring his own show to the Fringe one day.