It is upon us! The annual call to celebrate all things fringe has begun. Edinburgh Fringe began as an extension of the international festival that embraced alternative and new ideas in theatre and the arts. It is celebrated as the home of inventive performance, exciting ideas and the place to spot the next ‘big thing’. But now, with comedy acts such as Ruby Wax and Sarah Millican being one of the main draws to the largest arts festival in Europe, fringe festivals around the UK are being created without anything to be on the fringes of. With an average audience size of two in Edinburgh, we want to know if the origins of the fringe festival have been lost. What can the fringe offer young companies, and do these festivals actually contribute to furthering the smaller companies in the arts world?

Festivals are not the cheap alternative that they once could be. Rentals on performance spaces are sky high as the fame of the fringe festival entices theatre companies to come and get a slice of the action, enabling venues to capitalise on their highly desired spaces. There’s extra costs on top of that – the registration fees alone are intimidating. These costs, combined with having to market your event alongside thousands of others who are aggressively flyering on the street, can be quite off-putting and alienating to fledgling companies. In fact, this is exactly what happened to us. Our three-year plan looked very different when we factored in the sort of fund-raising that would be required if we wanted to do just a couple of the big fringe festivals each year. As a small company you can easily feel like you’re being priced out of the market, and unfortunately in an arena as competitive as Edinburgh, money matters!

There are also the pressures of the shared use of space and rigging that can be one of the most stressful aspects of performing at fringe festivals. Basic lighting in the form of general washes and minimal tech time can produce some interesting results, particularly when dealing with projected images moving around the space – which is one of our main practices at Filskit.

Yet thousands of companies try their luck in this heightened and competitive world every year. Why? For us, we want to share our work with fellow enthusiasts and be part of the bigger theatre scene. This year we take on Camden Fringe Festival at The Shaw Theatre. This is the opportunity for us to perform in a venue that we would probably struggle to get programmed at. The Shaw is supporting us to live stream our work online – something that we could not afford to do by ourselves.

We feel that the Camden Fringe will give us the chance to be a part of a wider experience, as a multitude of events will be taking place throughout the whole borough, from Highgate to Bloomsbury. Although the dressing rooms are often crowded, and the get-in and turnaround times require Olympian effort, we love the collaborative atmosphere with other companies performing different work, each with different challenges. This may hark back to our days at drama school but we find all this variety very exciting and we want our piece of the pie.

There is also the kudos that is associated with performing at the fringe festivals, especially in Edinburgh. It is often one of the first questions that people ask us as they see it as almost a mark of success and professionalism, particularly if the work is considered to be experimental or somewhat avant garde.  It becomes a challenge, to put yourself into a competitive and daunting environment at the risk of losing quite badly. Indeed, that is part of what must be taken into consideration. A successful run at Edinburgh merely breaks even. This is not the forum through which to make your fortune. However, for your reputation, it can be invaluable. Awards from Total Theatre and Fringe First can propel small- and medium-sized companies into fully booked tours, and attract additional sources of funding and assistance. These are the success stories you buy into when you pack your bags and hop on the train up to Scotland (again, not necessarily the cheapest mode of transport – Mega Bus anyone?).

Whilst Edinburgh is most certainly the mother of all fringe festivals, and something that we aspire to say we’ve taken part in, it is worth noting that there are plenty of other options for companies and audiences seeking their theatre fix elsewhere. Bristol, Brighton, Camden and Norwich (to name but a few) have plenty on offer. The question we are asking ourselves on the approach to our run at the Camden Fringe is how can we compete with the mighty Edinburgh Fringe? Our shows coincide with the last week of Edinburgh and already we have noticed invitations being graciously declined as what seems like half the theatre community is migrating up north.  We’ve overheard many a theatre buff stating that Edinburgh really is the only place to be in August, but we disagree.

Edinburgh may be the big one, but what can these smaller (and often more affordable) festivals offer new companies? One of our first festivals was at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, entitled the Hot August Fringe. At RVT, we were given the chance to try out ideas in a fairly restrictive cabaret style space and in exchange, the venue was able to dip its toe into a more theatre-based world with little risk. In fact, we enjoyed our time so much we went back the following January. From this we learnt many lessons, from technical set-up to generating our first review. This was a great introduction and we have since gone on to many other festivals, from Scenepool to Sprint. With each one we have gained experience, both in terms of the development of our work and with a producer’s mindset of developing the company and its direction.

So it is fair to say that every festival has its place in marking the development of a company and a production. We have often thought that if and when we go to Edinburgh fringe we want to tackle it head on. So it will be this summer that we decide whether to make 2012 the year we take it on. It is only with a great amount of military planning, publicity and dedication that a run in Edinburgh pays off. So if we do take that step then we want to make it worth it.

Meanwhile it is only a couple of weeks until we perform at The Shaw as part of the Camden Fringe. The press releases have been sent out, flyers printed and distributed and the nerves are building steadily. So for us it’s Camden, then Edinburgh, then the World!