September 2, 2005
Entertainees,
Yesterday a high
school teacher from South Carolina ordered my CD online and included this note:
"Please rush shipment. Will pay extra for faster delivery. Students
hating tales, need rap fast!!!! Please contact me via email." It's nice to feel needed.
On Monday I
performed my twenty-seventh and last show of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, at
least for this year. Last week
Erik was back on his roller blades in hot pants on the Royal Mile, flyering
startled old ladies and anyone else who paused to look twice at his
thighs. This increased ticket
sales and the all-round entertainment value of the trip considerably. Also
having him back on his feet meant we could have some proper nights out.
All of the elements of last year's fringe were in play: flyering, cabaret cameos, dance clubs, theatre shows, meeting people, networking events, chasing up leads, fish and chips, pints, late nights and general mayhem, oh yes, and performing The Rap Canterbury Tales every afternoon at five. At the same time I became more aware this year of how much of a downer the festival can be for a lot of performers. Partially this is because of bad reviews (deserved or undeserved), and partially there are simply so many productions (about 1700) that many of them are certain to fail financially, critically, artistically, or all three. For those with sponsorship this is not the concern of the performers, but others stake their lives on the dream of a hit fringe show and get laid low. This is precisely what Erik and I did, but we are still standing.
It didn't feel
like the blow-out success that last-year was for us though. We hovered around fifty or so people in
each show for most of the festival, or about half-full houses. Ironically we actually sold over a
thousand tickets and did better overall than last year, but the bigger venue definitely
took the edge off. Also we didn't
get as much critical attention this year since it was a repeat show. My eyes began shifting from the prize of
success on the fringe to the prize of transcending the fringe and getting the
show booked for a fee at proper theatres and festivals next year.
Tuesday I got on
a train at seven in the morning and made my way North to Aberdeen to perform in
a high school, the result of a delightful teacher from the school catching my
show. I performed for seventy
teenagers and gave a workshop on writing hiphop lyrics, then went for lunch
with the teacher and her even more delightful five-year-old son before catching
the train back to Edinburgh to pack my things. Driving the point home, I actually earned more from that
little excursion than from any single day on the fringe.
I don't want to
seem down on the experience, however; it was a month of varied adventures at
the largest arts festival in the world after all. My brother and I saw some great shows and met some great
people, and made a net profit on ticket sales for the second year in a
row. Still, I know I won't be back
in the same capacity again next year - maybe it's time for a new show.
Now I'm back in
London resting and regrouping for the next phase. In October I will be presenting at Writers Festivals in
Calgary, Banff, Edmonton, and Vancouver.
Writers Festivals? Indeed,
I am in negotiations with two different publishers, one here in England and one
in Vancouver, who are interested in printing "The Rap Canterbury
Tales" as a book. The details
are yet to be determined, but I am certain my attention will soon have to shift
from world traveling to word processing.
I also have a
dozen or so songs in the works with UK hiphop artists, most of which I'm hoping
to complete over the next week before I fly home. I will make some of this new music available on my website
if all goes well. For now it's
time to take a breather and look to the future, which is bright as usual for
this upbeat entertainer. London is
sunny and beautiful; elsewhere in the world, chaos reigns. Take care,
baba