CapFringe Report

[thehefner]

Not a bad weekend of performances for THE HEFNER MONOLOGUES: HOW HEFNERIAN. Small houses, just fifteen people out of fifty, but that's pretty much the bare minimum I'd want, so I'm content. Tonight's crowd was the first one where I didn't know anybody in the audience, that these were all people who came because they were interested. That was really nice.

All in all, it's been a very odd Fringe experience. At Orlando, I learned that you have to personally pimp your show, that you need to be out there on the streets, passing out postcards. But Orlando was a centralized festival, a virtually street of Calcutta where people were constantly bustling from show to show, or standing in line waiting to get in, where it's eas(ier)y to pimp and spiel your wares.

But in DC, where the shows are all spread out, it's harder to track down the similar shows to pimp to audiences. What's more, no one else seems to be pimping their shows, nor anyone else's. At Orlando, artists would constantly see each other's shows, and most would finish by name-dropping the shows they recommend or letting any Fringe artists in the crowd stand and give their own shout-out. There's none of that in DC. I haven't seen a single show where anyone's done that, any of those pimpings, and that makes me all the more reluctant and self-conscious to do it myself.

More and more, I keep wishing I'd have gotten the e-mail where I could have put an ad in the Fringe program guide. I need to do that with every festival. I can't shake the idea that that's where my ad money should go, more than in any newspapers or magazines. Eh, it's all learning experience, and CapFringe has been far from a loss. I've had good houses, six performances of a show of which I've rather proud, and I'll come away with all this with a tidy sum.

Still. It's been strange.

Thursday's my last performance. If you haven't seen it/me yet, I very much hope you can make it out. Let's actually sell out the final show, eh?

Comments

Very Happy to Have Seen It!

[american-arcane.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear the attendance has been good. That means lots of people are seeing a damn fine show. (I know I pimped it to a few people I know after I saw Saturday's performance.)

If I didn't already have commitments Thursday, I'd actually consider seeing it again.

Good job, dude. :)

Re: Very Happy to Have Seen It!

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Now that's a hell of a compliment! Thanks so much, pally!

[gore-whore-5.livejournal.com]

I think it's all the more reason why you should pimp other shows at the end of your own. I liked that. It was very gentlemanly and respectful, especially when you asked the audience if there were any other people with fringe shows themselves. Set the example and make it happen in DC.

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

Seconded. Just because DC doesn't happen to have this in its culture (yet), it _should_.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I learned about it last Fringe from a couple out of town Fringe vets, and thought it was great. Quite right, I'll keep at it!

[findingjuliet.livejournal.com]

The Rodstar and I have two tickets to your show on Thursday and I pimped your show at the box office this past weekend to some random strangers who asked, "What's good ..."

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Hey, awesome, thankya!

I'll be at one of your last shows, forget which one off-hand, but I'll totally be there!

[ortugatay.livejournal.com]

I felt too sick to go out on Sunday, so Boothe and I will be at your Thursday performance instead. :-)

And yeah, this Fringe environment is waaaay different from Edinburgh's, wherein you're competing with over three THOUSAND other shows and have to be out on the streets shoving your postcards at people and making as many artist friends as you can. It's a much more challenging environment, and we never sold out our house, due in part to our dinner hour performance time and to our complete unpreparedness to sell ourselves. If you want to learn how to pimp yourself, do a show there for sure. Here, it seems like all we have to do is hand out some postcards, and anything else would be out of character for the festival. Yet, we're still getting great audience sizes.

Funny how that works.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

I believe it, how different this is from Edinburgh. One thing I'd heard from a Fringe vet in Orlando (a guy who's literally done 73 festivals over the past eleven years!) is that every festival is radically different. Funny how that works indeed. We should just be taking notes so we can compare, contrast, and be prepared should we ever return to any of these festivals.