I’m frequently asked what it was like to take a show to Edinburgh this summer. Now that it’s almost two months since the Festival ended, I feel I can begin to parse out my feelings about my experiences. People began asking if I had recovered from it a week after I returned. Because I had to jump back into things with my Clark Kent job and my managing director duties for the League of Independent Theater, the answer is still “not yet.”

I’ve wanted to go to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for several years to become a better artist and producer. I also wanted to raise Elephant Run District’s profile. The Fringe is the Olympics of culture and I’ve wanted to experience what that was like. The piece we took over was a solo show called American Gun Show, a challenging and controversial piece. A thinking person’s comedy. How much thinking and how much laughing depended on each individual audience member. Some people hate that kind of thing. Others love it. The task is to find more of the latter and less of the former.

Our main goal was to carve a unique place in Edinburgh. We accomplished that well above our expectations. We hope over time to get our work to other places in Europe and the UK. (It would be so cool to perform in London, Germany, or parts of Ireland.) While nothing tangible happened with this piece on this go round to make those dreams happen, we expect that will change with future visits there.

You may have a great reputation where you live but you have to prove yourself in Edinburgh to separate yourself from the crowd. I was told by our press agent that the average audience size per performance for theater is 3.5 patrons. I’ve heard it is 6 patrons overall for the other categories, including comedy. You might ask, “How is that possible?” Well, in 2013 there were 2,871 productions, with 454,464 performances in 273 venues. There was an estimated 1,943,493 tickets sold by the final Monday of the three weeks with another day of sales to go. It is the largest arts festival in the world.

It can be overwhelming so it’s important to schedule time to walk up Arthur’s Seat.

Going with a show to Edinburgh was a very full experience. While it was close to what I expected, things played out in ways I could never have anticipated. The highs were much higher and the lows were much lower. The amount of both is greater than most of the projects I have done combined. Ed Fringe is like flying a plane. You can ride in a plane and you can take classes on flying, but until you have the controls in your hands you can never know what it is really like.

Lots of things can go right and many, many things can go wrong. Things you never would have thought about in a million years can suddenly become your main focus. You will more than likely spend way more money than you budgeted. You will not have enough time to see everything you will want to see.

The zeitgeist of the festival changes year to year so you can’t count on what worked in the past for someone else. This cannot be emphasized enough: what may or may not have worked for someone else may or may not work for you. You can gather information to make more informed decisions but you will make mistakes and feel like you are failing horribly along the way. In the end, though, this is the path to success.

The reactions to our show covered the gamut. We knew we were taking something that would push some buttons but also delight and surprise people so we were happy with this. Our attendance was very good for our first time there (we averaged between 15 and 20 patrons most of the time) and we had eight reviews, most of which were very positive. The thing that took adjusting for me was that the reviews there are based on the number of stars. While some reviewers do that for movies in America, few do that for theater in New York. Only Time Out New York started doing that six or so years ago and I really do not pay attention to their star ratings. I guess with so many show happening in Edinburgh, the stars are helpful to know quickly what is good or not. To me, it cuts out the critical thinking and the deeper thoughts about the work. But I am happy we received reviews with lots of stars. Unfortunately, those reviews came towards the end of the festival and didn’t help us as much as I would have liked.

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The lesson from this is that you really need to plan to go twice with a show. The first year is to build up a following and to rack up reviews. The second year is to reap what you have sown. (Again, results may vary.) They say it takes three visits to the festival for people to get to know you. To cash in on that “oh, I heard about that, I want to see that” momentum. This lesson seems to have worked well for Peter Michael Marino and his show Desperately Seeking the Exit. He had an uphill climb his first year but had people lining up for his show, with little effort his second year. I also heard stories of shows moving to more prominent venues to lesser reviews and fewer attendees. I also saw people who had received lots of acclaim and great audiences struggle with a different piece. It’s a risk each time.

In my experiences with past productions, I could count on responses happening within a certain range. If people are generally liking a show, an off night won’t seem so bad. Maybe you miss a laugh here or there. Maybe there’s a little more fidgeting. Or if they don’t care for it too much in general (a real stinker), you will experience that through most of the run and are pleasantly surprised when an audience connects. Going to the theater each night, you have some idea of what you’ll get give or take 5 to 10%.

But each performance in Edinburgh was wildly different for American Gun Show, depending on who attended. We had an amazing twentieth show. Our final show two nights later was a tough haul. I thought it would get easier and build through the festival but it was always random play. The vibe of our performances was vastly different when we had Americans or people who spent time in the United States in the audience. They got what we were doing and we could ride their energy. The UK audiences tended to laugh on the inside and quietly say, “That was quite good” after the show. Many U.S. performers I met experienced this. On the plus side, you can cut minutes off of your show. I talked with a Brit there and mentioned how American audiences laugh and react more audibly. He didn’t believe me. A few days later he told me how he was at a late-night comedy show with a famous performer and thought, “This is very, very funny but I’m not laughing aloud.”

We also had a couple walk out and shout throughout the lobby that I was a “gun-hating liberal.” We had people in tears and trembling after my show because they were so moved. We had people yell at us for calling the show a comedy and others say that was a brilliant choice because it surprised them in a good way. We had people talk to us for hours after the show trying to grapple on their feelings about the issue of gun violence.

We worked with Gryphon Venues. They are located on Bread Street not far from the Traverse and are in the Point Hotel. (Note: This might go through a name change as the Doubletree is taking over.)  I met the Artistic Director Kekoa Kaluhiokalani at the road show in New York. I liked the fact that Gryphon Venues are a nonprofit group and asked for a flat fee up front rather than a box office split with a guarantee because I knew what we would be spending. From my application through to my final pay-out with them, they were professional, kind, supportive, capable, and nice.

Their spaces are really some of the best in the Fringe. They feel like legitimate theater spaces, which is what we wanted for this show. Honestly, I liked the physical set-up of their spaces better than most of the spaces for the big four presenting organizations. They use a couple of the event rooms at the hotel and turn them into a nice proscenium and a charming black box. Their storage spaces are nice and their lobby is spacious. The lighting and sound were excellent. They give a full fifteen minutes to get in and get out. Overall, they gave me a feeling of confidence I don’t think I’d have a lot of other places. The only real downside is that they are a little isolated where they are so you don’t have as much foot traffic, but several shows frequently sold out there. I loved the folks at the Gryphon and can’t recommend them enough.

We spent a lot more money than expected but that is part of the education of going there the first time. The accommodations were very pricey—more than double my monthly rent in Manhattan!!—and we spent twice as much as expected on advertising. We hired a publicist; bought an ad in the Fringe guide; got a second ad in a magazine; and online ads on Fringe Guru, Broadway Baby, and the List’s websites. We paid for distribution of our posters and flyers before we arrived. We only saw a couple of our posters around town and didn’t see our flyers in enough places so we won’t do that again. We had to order another round of flyers and hired a person to flyer. He was excellent and we will use him again next time, if he’s available. From my talks with people after the show, most were drawn by our flyer, by our flyering guy, or by the listing in the main Fringe guide.

Our press agent did get me radio interviews on BBC Scotland and Fresh Air U.K. Both were incredible experiences.

You have to take care of yourself there or you will suffer or get sick. I had a flu through most of the festival.  I was staying a block from my venue so I found it nice to go to FYUL and Espresso Mondo to have an Americano and read the papers. I had given up coffee ten months prior to going to Edinburgh but had to have a bit of caffeine to make it through the festival. I’m an aggressive performer but an introvert by nature so it is necessary for me to unwind and have time to myself. New Yorkers tend to steer clear of Times Square and other congested areas so I did the same when I was in Edinburgh. After a couple of days, I found the back roads to the main areas.

I went to the Royal Mile a few times but was rather unhappy there. I found back ways to get to Fringe Central and spent a lot of time on Lothian Road and areas north of Princess Street. I wanted to forget the festival was happening at times. It is a long three (plus) weeks. I got to my first day off, which happened about ten days into the festival, and thought, “Whew, I’m glad that’s done.” Then I realized I had half the festival to go. I’ve done long runs of shows and I’ve done many festivals but most festivals only consist of 5 or 6 performances. The adrenaline going that long was new to me. It never really stopped. I had shiatsu a couple of times at the Healthy Life Centre.

Other random lessons:

The decision to do the Edinburgh Festival Fringe should be made no later than eight months out. I also recommend doing your show at a few different festivals in diverse places to get an assortment of reactions.

“Suicide Wednesday” happens in the middle of Week One. There’s Week Zero. That’s the week when most people tech their shows and give away a lot of tickets. Then on the Monday and Tuesday of Week One nearly everyone does 2-for-1 tickets. The day after that is when no one goes to see anything. That’s the day my press agent came to my show. She was one of four people in that audience. It was weird. I wanted to slit my wrists. Hence the name of that day.

It cost much less to withdraw money from an ATM than exchanging it before going over. I belong to Actors’ Federal Credit Union and the fee for each withdrawal was only 75 cents. I learned to not bring back pound or Euro coins. You can’t exchange coins, only paper money. So now I’m forced to go back to Edinburgh to use up this little bag of coins.

The town was easy to navigate once you learn a few misleading things such as George Square vs. George Street and Assembly Hall vs. Assembly Rooms.

I became a vegetarian this year so the amount of bacon and pork product in everything stood out to me.

I could not wrap my head (or mouth) around mayonnaise on pizza. Chips n’ cheese is amazing. It’s French fries, with garlic mayo and melted cheese. If you drink too many whiskeys (don’t call it Scotch there), chips n’ cheese will fix you right up.

Vegetarian haggis is surprisingly good. And even better in a burrito.

If I could afford it, I’d buy a place there. It’s a beautiful city.

Had a really great run of the show at 59 East 59 Theaters. The staff was top notch and the audiences were very kind. I feel like the show is in a good place but I know it will take a few runs to find my stride over there. The little differences will be interesting to note.

We’ve got our bags packed. Aimee and I are heading out on the LIRR to the Air Train to JFK where we’ll meet Heather to fly to Dublin and then go to Edinburgh. We’ll then find our leasing agent for our apartment. We’ll tech the show from 4 to 5:30pm. Then I’m doing a preview performance at the Scottish Arts Club tomorrow night.

Wanted to give a big thanks to Ethan Angelica for pulling together this promo video for American Gun Show and posting it on the Guardian’s site. I think it came together very well and I hate looking at pictures of myself. Must give a thumbs down to Aer Lingus for not refunding my $20 upgrade for the premium chicken dinner because I suddenly went vegetarian a month after the reservation. Seems like a decent airline otherwise. I’m stoked to spend a moment in Ireland. A first for me. I won’t see anything outside the airport.

Gryphon Venues is housed in the swanky Point Hotel. It has 2 bars-the Monboddo Bar and the Sky Bar. The latter has a view of the castle from the roof. That will only be open tomorrow night and for special events.

Okay I’m off to try to make myself sleep.

In prepping for hosting Stampede Labs earlier this year, I read Christopher Olsen’s Off-Off Broadway The Second Wave: 1968-1980. Lots of great anecdotes and things I didn’t really know about the movement. One thing that stood out for me was where the money came from to fund the work of the companies working at that time. Back then, it was fairly common for a good company to get 60% from grants and 40% from ticket sales.

Nowadays, the grant pool is tightening. So crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo, Kickstarter and more than 100 others have flooded the web to help projects. This has been a blessing and the source of some backlash.

My indie theater and film company Elephant Run District is in the final days of our first Indiegogo campaign. I’ve learned a few things I felt would be good to share. First is that I have money issues. What’s so special about that? Absolutely nothing. Everyone has money issues. But my biggest issue is that I don’t want to ask people for money. It’s so unseemly. It shows I’m weak and unable to do something on my own. It says I haven’t gotten it all figured out. Or I fear people will think the work isn’t good enough to have financial angels drop wads of cash from their large condos into our coffers.

I really really really don’t like asking for money. I’m afraid of losing friendships or having people turn on me. I’m worried we’ll be mocked.  Just before we began our campaign, someone posted on Facebook that he had received 70 requests to help fund projects in the 2 weeks prior to his post. Having been on the receiving end of a similar flood of requests, I know what a bind it can put you in— “I can’t give to everyone. I don’t want to play favorites.” So my compromise was to forgo using my Equity card to get into shows for free and to pay full price for tickets for Aimee and me. (We take turns.) I felt it was making both a show of support physically and by putting money down. The problem is there is only one of me and hundreds of shows happening at once. With work, running ERD, doing work for LIT and trying to be an artist, it’s hard to get to everything. But I get to a lot. Here is my stack of programs for roughly the last 2 years. I don’t have a count.

One thing I’ve learned is that some people give anonymously. They don’t want the world to know that they gave to one campaign over another. Also, some folks don’t want to blast how much they donated. They will send a note that says, “I have hundreds of people asking me for money. Please don’t let anyone know I gave to your campaign.” Who can blame them? Seems like a legit way to deal with things. This is something I’ll do when I can’t get to shows I want to support from now on. Ralph Lewis, a poetically blunt man and true person of the theatre, says we’re all passing around the same twenty dollars. There’s a lot of truth to that statement. If only that could fund everything people want to do.

Going into our campaign, we were advised by the producer/director/coach Andrew Frank that the majority of the money comes at the beginning and the end of the campaign. So you want the window of time in between to be as short as possible. With that in mind, we made our $10,000 campaign only 30 days long. Andrew said 90% of campaigns that get to 30% make it all the way. We hit that mark in about nine days. The second week was a lull. For three days of our third week, we had an anonymous donor who was matching $1 for every $2 we received. This helped us leap from 33% to 69% and was followed with a few more donations. So far, we’ve had 92 funders give to this campaign.

We were advised to go with Kickstarter as our funding platform. The deal is either you get to 100% or you get nothing. While that makes for more drama and raises the stakes, the thing that made me not want to use them is that they are affiliated with Amazon. I’m also glad we did not go with Kickstarter because you can’t contribute anonymously with them. No bueno.

With Indiegogo there’s a 7% fee (4% for FirstGiving’s payment platform and 3% for credit card fees) or 12% (7% + 5% of what I’ll call the Loser Fee) if you don’t reach your goal. For our campaign that’s a difference of up to $500. You can arrange for a “Fixed Funding” structure, which will work like Kickstarter where you don’t get any funds and the funders get refunded if you need that extra kick in the pants.

What we had going into our campaign was our Managing Director Ethan Angelica. He worked very hard to create new content in the form of videos and pictures to go out to the internet each day, with a detailed schedule. He also arranged the perk structure and all the details. It was like magic seeing all of it come together. He wanted to have our max be $7,500. I pushed for $10,000, saying it’s good to go beyond our comfort zone.

As I type three days away from the end of our campaign, we’re at $7,089.

$10,000 is a lot of money. For some people it’s not but I don’t know many for whom that’s true. Most of the work I’ve done has been solo shows on shoestrings. I tried a couple times to ask for donations but it felt too personal so I was unsuccessful. Having a company structure and our 501(c)3 has helped me get beyond those squeamish feelings. Half of me wants to call Ethan and tell him I’m sorry because he was right. Or that, at the very least, we’d almost be there by now. Half of me wants to push ahead.

But you must use caution in forging ahead. In an effort to drum up donations, you can’t blast too many emails, tweets or Facebook posts. I’m being especially cautious with ERD’s email. Our open rate is between 18% and 25% and we lose 1 to 5 people on each email we send. We’ve been steadily adding people as well so that number is fairly consistent. But you can turn people off on Facebook. We’ve tried really hard to not just email and post “give to our campaign” over and over again but to come up with amusing or earnest expressions of thanks to funders.  This was tricky during our dead week. I don’t have a lot of time for social media so I try to make it count. Aimee did things like post a video of a song on Facebook with a different theme each day and we noticed an uptick in donations. Ethan was good at evaluating when we were getting traffic and then helping us know when to post.

I’m astounded by the fact that we’ve had 92 funders give to our campaign. I’m genuinely grateful to all of our funders both on this campaign and at previous times. It’s been a real vote of confidence to see the numbers go up. We’ll be able to pay for some things on both productions we haven’t had previously and we’re trying to grow. We became a real-deal not-for-profit this year and are starting our free Brecht in the Park series. We’re sending our first show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Both seem to have people excited about our work.

We’re in the final days of the campaign. As I feel the pressure build, I’m trying to allow myself to let go and not make the world crazy with asks. Ethan crafted a direct ask email for part of our email list that did not open the last email. This will either help with donations and interest in our projects or result in more unsubscribes. I imagine it will do a bit of both. Either way, we’ve scored a victory on this campaign.

In figuring out what kind of company we were going to build with Elephant Run District, we wanted to give back and bolster the indie theater territory. I hope this gives an idea of what you are up against if you haven’t done a crowdfunding campaign and a bit of comfort for those who have.

And, you know, if you have an extra $5 or $10 there are worse places to put it than here.