Adelaide Fringe Festival too big for local acts

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The Adelaide Fringe proudly touts itself as the biggest arts festival in Australia, but one veteran performer says the festival's become too big, and she won't be back.

Transcript

00:00For Kate Lawrence, circus has been her life.

00:05The performer is still reeling from cancelling her Adelaide Fringe show due to poor ticket

00:10sales for the second time.

00:12If it's not financially viable for me to run a show and pay my cast, then the show doesn't

00:19happen.

00:20After 19 years, she's quitting the Fringe at a time when the event is booming.

00:25It's sold more than a million tickets two years in a row, but some performers are asking

00:30if the Fringe is too big now, leaving local shows lost in the crowd.

00:35Whether it was just a matter of competition, there were too many shows to choose from and

00:41I know that flicking through the Adelaide Fringe Guide or hitting that website, it's

00:45a completely overwhelming experience.

00:47The Fringe director knows it's a tough sell.

00:49The cost of putting on shows is definitely going up and we saw that this year and last

00:54year and we don't see any change on the horizon.

00:59She says the Fringe does what it can to help artists sell tickets, but there are no guarantees.

01:05There's always going to be shows that do really well and shows that don't do so well.

01:11Shows that often do well are big name comedy acts.

01:14They have access to the kind of marketing spend that me as an independent producer just

01:18doesn't have.

01:19But creating a separate comedy festival offering isn't a popular solution.

01:24A lot of that comedy audience wouldn't come to Fringe and they'd just, I don't know, we're

01:30certainly not in the mindset that we're about blocking genres.

01:35And agent Andrew Taylor says there's no space on the comedy circuit.

01:39All the comedy festivals in Australia now basically run back to back and it starts in

01:43Perth in January and if we count in New Zealand, it finishes in New Zealand in May.

01:47Instead, Kate Lawrence is heading to a new Fringe.

01:50A lot of artists have started using festivals like Cabaret Fringe and Feast Festival.

01:57New stages for seasoned performers.

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