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Adelaide Fringe Festival too big for local acts
ABC NEWS (Australia)
Follow
7/10/2024
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.
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00:00
For Kate Lawrence, circus has been her life.
00:05
The performer is still reeling from cancelling her Adelaide Fringe show due to poor ticket
00:10
sales for the second time.
00:12
If it's not financially viable for me to run a show and pay my cast, then the show doesn't
00:19
happen.
00:20
After 19 years, she's quitting the Fringe at a time when the event is booming.
00:25
It's sold more than a million tickets two years in a row, but some performers are asking
00:30
if the Fringe is too big now, leaving local shows lost in the crowd.
00:35
Whether it was just a matter of competition, there were too many shows to choose from and
00:41
I know that flicking through the Adelaide Fringe Guide or hitting that website, it's
00:45
a completely overwhelming experience.
00:47
The Fringe director knows it's a tough sell.
00:49
The cost of putting on shows is definitely going up and we saw that this year and last
00:54
year and we don't see any change on the horizon.
00:59
She says the Fringe does what it can to help artists sell tickets, but there are no guarantees.
01:05
There's always going to be shows that do really well and shows that don't do so well.
01:11
Shows that often do well are big name comedy acts.
01:14
They have access to the kind of marketing spend that me as an independent producer just
01:18
doesn't have.
01:19
But creating a separate comedy festival offering isn't a popular solution.
01:24
A lot of that comedy audience wouldn't come to Fringe and they'd just, I don't know, we're
01:30
certainly not in the mindset that we're about blocking genres.
01:35
And agent Andrew Taylor says there's no space on the comedy circuit.
01:39
All the comedy festivals in Australia now basically run back to back and it starts in
01:43
Perth in January and if we count in New Zealand, it finishes in New Zealand in May.
01:47
Instead, Kate Lawrence is heading to a new Fringe.
01:50
A lot of artists have started using festivals like Cabaret Fringe and Feast Festival.
01:57
New stages for seasoned performers.
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