not-very-live fringe blog

[devi]

The actually live bit: I'm at my desk sending emails and making phonecalls, about to dash off on my bike for another day of frantic activity. But first I'm going to drop this chunk of diary on you. It's long, written in the slow quiet hours I spent minding the exhibition on Sunday, but I haven't got time to edit it.


Thursday 29th: Art hanging day at the Jacqueline du Pré. Sarah is suppsed to pick me and the paintings up and drive me down there for 10am. I've told the artists I'll be around to receive paintings from then on. I bring all the paintings down three flights of stairs to the main door and sit there waiting. When Sarah is an hour and a half late, I phone her and she's still at home in Abingdon. I call a cab.

Hang stuff for most of the afternoon. (Man, it's complicated deciding where and how stuff should hang. It's not just fitting shapes into a larger space. There's also the effect of the hanging system – this one is based on cords which dangle off screws in the wall, and it's hard to space things. Then there's not wanting to put all the landscapes together, or give in to the temptation to put all the ones you don't like down the far end…) Stow away all the art that's going to the bookshop tomorrow.

Spend rest of afternoon frantically doing admin and having a Skype lesson with Gloucester Girl. Spend remaining evening mailing all the artists, thanking them and inviting them to a drinks reception.

Friday 28th, the day before: Press release goes out about the art show. Spend first two hours of the day writing what feels like 37 million emails. Remember suddenly that barnacle's PA system, which I'm supposed to be using for the Port Mahon comedy night on Saturday, is still at hatmandu's house and he's going to Bruges later in the afternoon. Make hasty arrangement that he'll bring it into town when we all meet up to check out the Moser Theatre. Wonder how I'll get it home because also have to pick up new printer from Computer Assistance (it's just arrived, and I need it to make information labels for all the paintings in the exhibition). Have what I think is a brainwave. Ring the Port Mahon, ask them if there's somewhere safe I could leave the PA overnight. They assure me that there is. Say I'll bring it over later. If you have a sensation of foreboding at this point, you are absolutely right.

Go to JduP, pick up as many paintings as I can carry, go to bookshop, hang them. Go to Moser Theatre with Andrew, Heather, Sarah and our scarily clued-up crew person Claire. Go up and down in lifts and round and round a warren of backstage corridors, feeling like I'm in Spinal Tap, and discovering that if you're disabled and you go to the Moser and there's a fire, you have no way to get out and you will actually die. They also have a nasty habit of locking fire doors. OMG THE PLACE IS A DEATHTRAP but of course I still want you all to come to the shows there ahem.

Andrew gives me the PA. Heather has her car and asks if I want a lift anywhere. Hmmm, I think, and have her drive me to the JduP and then @183 and then the Port Mahon (I hand the PA in its box to Ali the manager in the venue upstairs) and then Computer Assistance and then home, which is probably more than she bargained for. Told Dan earlier that I'd probably be finished in the evening and able to relax. Instead, spend evening setting up printer and making gallery labels. Oops.



Day 1: Saturday 29th March

8am: Sarah is on BBC Radio Oxford promoting us. I am still fast asleep.

9.20 ish: The plan is to get up, have shower, get straight down to the gallery for 10, when the exhibition officially opens, and put all the little labels with the artists' details on the paintings. Reluctantly I peel myself off Dan. He says to let him know if I need any help to fetch, carry etc.

I pad to the kitchen, make coffee and try to marshal my thoughts. Today is complicated. I have to do the following:

- label up all the paintings at the JduP
- hang remaining paintings at @183 (one that's arriving there by special delivery this morning, one that needs a hook hammered in the wall, another that needs to have D-rings and picture wire attached to the back, and er, one of mine, because the bookshop is a bit sparse).
- oops: bring my painting to @183, because it's still sitting here looking at me.
- buy four cashboxes
- get to Borders for 1pm, to meet children's author Katherine Langrish who's doing a talk about Vikings and trolls, supervise her event, and also meet (erk) a TV crew from ITV Thames Valley
- give several cashboxes to Sarah
- get home to pick up other stuff: oxfordslacker's data projector, white sheet and gaffer tape (all this is for the VJs I've organised for regular gig night Gappy Tooth Industries, so they can project animations on the wall of the Wheatsheaf). Also folder of "show report" forms to collect opinions and numbers of audience at the comedy, because apparently having lots of records of how things went is helpful in persuading the Arts Council to give you loads of money
- eating at some point around now would be a good idea
- sound check at the Port Mahon
- visuals check at the Wheatsheaf with the artists, to test the projector with their laptop, find a sensible and safe place to put it during the show, and make sure everything works
- back to the Port Mahon to meet the comedians
- comedy starts at 8
- do the door at the PM for the first half of the comedy
- dash to the Wheatsheaf to oversee the animation stuff at Gappy Tooth, hoping desperately that the acts are running roughly on time
- when that's over, dismantle tech and head back to the PM to wrap things up
- collapse

That's how it's all supposed to go. I gape zombie-like at my computer screen, sleepily eating a bagel, trying to disentangle which of these things depend on other things.

9.50: Shit! I am still not dressed and also I need to blow-dry my hair because I might be on TV later. Shit! And find my makeup bag.

10.15: Ineptly apply hairspray. Ready to leave the house. Oh well, who's likely to go to an art exhibition on the dot of 10 on a Saturday morning anyway? So long as no one's signed the comments book saying "Who are these artists? No info!!! Very unprofessional!!!!", I might get away with it. I should be down there on my bike in no time, though. Hang on. Bike? I have to transport a painting. And it's raining. But I can't take the bus, I need the bike for all the shuttling around I have to do later. This takes a bit of thinking. No one will have been there yet, though, surely?

10.20: Sarah rings me. She and her daughter are at the gallery, wondering where I am. She also quite rightly points out that I have not provided a pen for the comments book. Whoops! Snared.

10.25: Cycle furiously towards gallery, in drizzle, hood of Oxfringe hoodie up, bubblewrapped painting balanced on the handlebars, with a sensation of having failed already and the Fringe only a few hours old.

In my bag: hammer, screwdriver, picture wire, three kinds of picture hook, nails, hundreds of flyers and brochures, half a dozen posters, chocolate (emergency caffeine and blood sugar), markers, Blu-tack, Stanley knife, gallery info labels, ibuprofen…

10.30: Survive journey. Drop off my painting at @183. Race on down the road. Get to exhibition, where Sarah and her daughter have signed the comments book, but there's no sign of actual punters. Label everything up. Dash back to @183. Special Delivery painting has arrived (from libellum). The colours are so rich I almost eat it. Spend next hour or so banging nails into walls, sticking more labels next to things, screwing D-rings on to the backs of paintings, etc. Gosh, though, it's a bit dark in here and the red walls don't help. Bookshop owner inexplicably calm about me whacking at said walls with a hammer. He says he likes mine. Still feel ambivalent about putting one of my own in each venue. Cronyism FTW.

12.30: Head into town centre on bike (it's still raining). Search for parking space. Go to Ryman's, buy cashboxes, while texting Gloucester Student about her coursework, to make sure she doesn't explode while I'm busy elsewhere.

1.00: Get to Borders. Over at the Oxfringe display, one of the posters is hanging off by a corner. Sidle in beside it and try to stick it back up. The whole display bends, splits in the middle and starts to come down. I try to hold it together. It sways back and forth with me dangling off one corner for a minute or so till a Borders guy comes by and gives me a hand to steady it. Good thing I'm wearing the branded hoodie or I'd probably be slung out of the shop as a vandal. (A hoodie that makes you look more respectable. Odd.) Rachel, the events manager, arrives. "Don't worry," she says, "I did that to it yesterday."

Rachel is very cool. She has awesome boots and when we first met we ended up trading festival war stories. "This author who's coming in," she asks. "Can you point her out to me?" "Er… I don't know what she looks like." Sarah comes in from flyering on the street. I go to the loo and hastily apply makeup. Oh God, this new powder stuff makes me look orange. I don't want to be one of those orange women. But it still beats being my usual bright pink.

1.30: No TV crew. Apparently they frequently don't show, though Sarah is convinced they will. More worryingly, no author. Sarah is fretting that she's not here yet. We realise no one has her number.

1.38: Sarah in a panic. "What will we do if she doesn't show? Why haven't we made sure to have everyone's phone number? It's nearly two!" I point out that it's not even twenty to.

1.45: Now Rachel is a bit worried. She can't start announcing the event over the PA system if the author's not in the building. I agonise a bit and then text hatmandu in Bruges to ask if he has her number. He hasn't.

1.50: Katherine Langrish arrives. She apologises profusely. She is sophisticated and friendly-looking, white hair in a sharp bob, big blue glass beads and a fan of laugh lines by each eye. I want to be her in a couple of decades. (I'll probably still be late for everything then, too.) The TV crew arrive. Just as Katherine finishes up a story about a dog called Loki and started getting the children to do riddles, Sarah taps me on the shoulder: "They want to interview you upstairs."

Sarah and I offer to be interviewed together. TV crew woman says no, sorry, only one of you. There's a weird pregnant pause, a sort of stand-off. Sarah and I eye each other beadily. I consider saying no, you go on, then remember she was on the radio this morning, jump in and say "I'll do it."

I say some good stuff and also talk a bunch of arse and say "erm" a fair bit. But hey, that's what editing suites are for. Sarah is kind enough to say I was good.

3.20: Katherine finishes up. She got the tinies to act out a play in which they had to chop off each other's heads with a Viking axe. Most of them were enthralled, though as I bustle about getting people to write comments in the comments book I hear the TV crew lady ask a small boy if he'd liked it, camera in his face. "Not really," he says with a shrug. Dash off to the Wheatsheaf; I want to get a look at it before everyone arrives for the soundcheck later so I don't seem all flaily and ignorant.

3.40: The Wheatsheaf venue is locked but a bald man with a Queens of the Stone Age beard lets me in. Venues are so weird when they're empty and neon-lit and, weirdest of all, clean. "Make sure you don't stick gaffer tape to my new paintwork," he says. If we put the projector on this table here, and the backdrop here, maybe… then the power outlet would be… hmmm, need extension lead… but no, this would be a bad place for the projector, someone could spill a drink on it or knock the table over or… I stand there juggling variables with a sense of doom till the barman hustles me out and tells me to come back later.

3.50: Starving, steadily eating squares of chocolate. Maybe grab some food now – wait, text message. Bea titaniccapybara is in town to check out her art piece in situ, all the way from Bristol, and asks if I'll be at the exhibition at the JduP. What the hell, I can bike over there and say hello. It's raining harder now, trees threshing about. Alongside St Hilda's the river is full and high and there are big puddles in the meadows. I wonder if it'll flood.

I meet Bea at the exhibition and chat with her. It's nice, a moment to catch my breath, as the rain pours down the glass roof. Faff for a bit shutting the exhibition down for the day, then head over to set up the gear at the Port Mahon.

4.20: Hysterical, gaspy, panicky laughter. OMG WTF? You have to be kidding me. The Port Mahon staff have got the cardboard box of the PA system out of the staff lock-up for me, but the box is empty. No, check again: it really is empty. Why the fucking hell is it empty? Where is JP's PA?

Manager Ali shrugs dismissively. "Someone must have cleared it up after folk club," she says. "But you said you'd look after it," I splutter. It wasn't supposed to be anywhere near the folk club. She shrugs again. Tom the mohawked, sweet-faced barman looks pained and makes a phonecall. Somehow our PA has ended up in some band's practice space on Hollow Way. "He's getting in a taxi with it now," Tom says. What? Practice space? Hollow Way? What the fuck?

I phone Dan, expecting him to be shocked and sympathetic, but instead he gives me a stern telling-off for having dropped off the gear at the Port the night before. One must never leave important stuff in the hands of The Talent, he says; The Talent are rubbish and unreliable and probably on drugs, and I have Made An Error. I know he's right and I should have known better, but (on the defensive) I resent his implication that there is The Talent and then, entirely separate, there are People Like Us.

Dan reckons the PA has been deliberately nicked and now we have caught them in the act. Meanwhile Tom the barman keeps phoning the guy who has the PA, apologising profusely. He says Ali left the gear by the stage and didn't tell anyone it was mine. He sets me up for the comedy night with the Port's own gear and shows me how to work the sound desk. I don't want to think that Tom has been involved in thiefing my amp and mike. He seems lovely. But it's possible to be mostly lovely and also able to justify nicking a random amp if its owner isn't around and it seems like a victimless crime. I curse myself for being overly trusting.

I wait at the bar for the taxi. Meanwhile, some people at the bar ask Ali what's on tonight. "Some comedy thing," she says, "for the frinnnnge," curling her upper lip. I butt in and tell them about it in a rather more positive way. No taxi arrives. Phoning back, Dan spots my increasing panicky shrillness and commands me to eat something. I get a chicken burger and sit and wait and wait. The conversation of the people next to me watching the Boat Race is really, really irritating. I shovel carbs into my face in hopes of saving my mood.

Tom keeps phoning that guy and getting no answer. I wonder, if it was cleared up innocently, why did they take it out of its box? Then again, if you were going to steal something which is much more easily carried in a box, why would you leave the box behind, why not just yoink the whole thing? At some point I realise I won't have time to get home for the data projector, backdrop etc etc. I phone Dan and attempt to bat my eyelashes over the phone. He says he'll come down with the stuff. Bless him. When the PA still fails to turn up, he offers to wait at the Port Mahon for it while I go over to do the sound-and-vision check at the Wheatsheaf. Tom gives me the guy's number. He's called Beast. Dan splutters at that. But roadies and stage crew always have silly nicknames! That's not dodgy, it's just normal!

6.00: Cycle over to the Wheatsheaf, where The Mile High Young Team are sound-checking for their gig later. I am in the depths of glum. I am an idiot and am creating chaos around me, presuming on people's good nature and putting their valuable tech in danger (will there even be a safe place to put the projector?), and I should just hide under the furniture instead of trying to run a fringe.

Somehow my tale of woe gets out, as I explain to the Gappy Tooth guys that the amp going missing has made me paranoid and I need to make absolutely sure we can put the projector out of harm's way while the art stuff is happening. "Oh, Beast!" says Richard, the organiser. "He's all right. He's a bit rubbish, but he's all right."

The artists, Tom, Layla and Chris, show up. They are hybrids of skater and crusty and hipster, achingly cool yet modest. We figure out a way to put the projector on top of a stack of speakers and control it from a laptop at the table below. Their animations are amazing – drawings twisting and morphing on constantly changing backgrounds. Each key on the laptop's keyboard triggers off a different sequence so that they can shape the visuals to the music. But it keeps shining in the eyes of the MHYT's guitarist. He's suffering; his eyes are watering. I tell him not to worry, the projection stuff will be over by the time his band go on. The artists seem a little unsure. This isn't their usual sort of event. "We usually play at gabba and breakcore nights," Layla says, then hesitates. "You know gabba?" I scramble to make it clear that, yes, I do know what gabba is. The music here tonight is indie-folk and "smut funk" and (I have been told) a "local acoustic act", and to be honest I don't know if it'll fit at all. If it works it'll be a weird, distinctive blending of things that don't usually mix, but the whole thing might turn into a farce. That is, if they even get as far as the music and visuals. When the night kicks off with the protest poet I've given them, Danny Chivers, the audience might riot and lynch him. Oh God.

7.10: Right, it'll have to do. I cycle back to the Port, after a phonecall with Dan (he says there's no sign of Beast, but Iszi, the compere, has arrived and is rearranging the chairs). Iszi is tall and striking and wearing an owl T-shirt and David Bowie hair. She is frighteningly professional. She has me get more chairs and instructs me in the running of comedy nights. Sassy Clyde and Alex Hodgson, two of the acts, show up and we all sit about chatting. It feels like the uncomfortable wait before people arrive at your party. I try not to think about the possibility that no one will come.

No sign of George Chopping. We chase him on Iszi's phone. He finally answers, discombobulated and running late. Iszi tells him sternly to get his arse over here. We officially start at 8. "People probably won't start arriving till 8.30," says Iszi.

7.50: People start arriving. Two of them at first. Then four. Then three more. Then all of Sassy Clyde's friends and relations. Then more people. I take money and draw stars on people's hands and oh my god, by 8.10 the room is nearly full and the cashbox feels heavy, and that's not even counting the people who bought tickets online. "You're going to have to start turning people away soon," says Iszi. "Just saying." I have not even considered that possibility. Alex says, "This has already exceeded my estimate of audience size by a factor of three."

8.15: We break even.

8.20: We kick off.

And – who knew? - all the comedians are funny, and people are laughing, and the room is pretty much full. There are perhaps two seats left. Dan and I sit at the table on the door and take more money and marvel at it all. This is the point when the lumbering thing that is the Fringe seems to retract its spikes and snags into itself and start moving forward smoothly, and instead of pushing and shoving and swearing at it from behind, I am riding along with it, coasting.

Iszi announces that it's the first ever Oxford Fringe comedy gig. Minty Fresh indeed, and an auspicious way to begin.

9.30: I head over to the Wheatsheaf to look after the art projection thing. The place is full. No one appears to be dead. Danny the poet apparently went down very well. And –

David K Frampton, whom the Chinese whispers have told me is a "local acoustic act", is not acoustic at all. He does banging, pummelling, shrieking techno. And the artists are delighted. This is their kind of thing. They project a high-speed storm of visuals on the screen behind him. "It's perfect," Layla says, grinning. They accompany the next band, Toupe, the "smut funk" group, with some very appropriate images of writhing naked cartoon people growing extra breasts and giving birth to other little naked people, and then I pack up the projector again, amazed that it seems to have worked. The artists think it worked. The audience seem to think it's worked. I have an excitable conversation with the artists about painting and clubbing and Frank Zappa's claymation film Baby Snakes. Richard the organiser tells me, as I leave, that tonight is exactly what he wants Gappy Tooth nights to be like: art and poetry and music all mixed up together.

10.30: Race back to the Port, bent into the wind that slams across Magdalen Bridge, trying to make it back before the end of the comedy. It's just ending as I arrive. People are leaving. They are not grumbling but smiling. George Chopping rocked the house, Dan tells me. I chat with Iszi, who seems pleased too and has exciting ideas for next year. I give oxfordslacker back his projector. I heft the cashbox in my hand. We've made a profit. One by one all the remaining loose ends tie up neatly (except that the PA is still missing, but we'll worry about that tomorrow) and I am – ahhhh – off duty for the night. I can come downstairs, collapse on the squashy sofas with Dan and Alex, and have a drink.

11.00: I am rumpled, with rain-matted hair and three different stamps on my left hand, suffused with the after-adrenalin glow. It all went off OK. I can't quite believe it. My euphoria increases all the more when Heather, my co-organiser, arrives and tells me about the night she's had. There were three plays on tonight at the Burton Taylor, Irene, Blue and Train of Thought. The first two sold out. Sold out! And even Train of Thought, a one-man show by a guy who'd just come down from Lancashire and hadn't had a chance to do any publicity, got 20 people. "I think we've got something here," says Heather.

Then one last rainy bike ride home, feeling victorious, and Adult Swim cartoons in bed, and sleep at last. Not bad for a first day.

Comments

[dr-f-dellamorte.livejournal.com]

~punches air in victorious stance~

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

It was a bit like that, yeah :)

Sorry I can't come down this weekend! It'll be like last weekend but worse :/ Have fun!

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

He's called Beast.

Brilliant! You couldn't make it up!

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Several others said the same thing... It did make the situation seem all the more farcical.

[ultraruby.livejournal.com]

YOU ARE FANTASTIC. xxx

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Aw, thanks. Sorry I didn't reply to your message, but I did appreciate getting it.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

David Bowie hair

You do mean Labyrinth hair, don't you? Please let it be Labyrinth hair!

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

It's just short of Labyrinth hair, sadly. Not quite long enough. But it does have that sort of vibe about it.

[hatmandu.livejournal.com]

I'm humbled, and there's nothing I can really say apart from: sorry I went to Bruges...

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Oh god, don't worry. I don't know if I'd have been able to delegate any of it anyway, and I'm glad you had fun.

[titaniccapybara.livejournal.com]

You are amazing. Thank you for making time to say hi - it was good to see you. Well done for all your hard work.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

*blush* Lovely to see you too, and thanks for coming.

Many many congratulations!

[jinty]

R & I saw the exhibitions in the bookshop and the JdP - particularly liked the space in the latter.

Am going to the Moser Theatre tonight and hoping to make it to a comedy bit on Friday.

Re: Many many congratulations!

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Thanks! How was the Moser? Heather and Sarah came over to the comedy after it was all over, looking a bit shellshocked...

Moser

[jinty]

The shows themselves were very good (I didn't see the third one of the evening, mind). Not huge numbers of audience folk, and you rather got the impression that quite a few were friends & family, so not sure what tonight & tomorrow may be like...

What were they shellshocked about? I thought the actual technical side went fine too.

Re: Moser

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Well, it turns out that - whisper it - no one at all came to the last show of the night :(

I'm hopeful that audiences will swell later in the week, though, as Saturday's shows sold well.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Sounds like fun!

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

It's a mixture of agony and exhilaration, so yeah, I guess so.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Aha, the being-catapulted-into-the-sky-in-a-transparent-sphere principle!

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Also similar in that it features lots of swearing.

[several-bees.livejournal.com]

Gosh. This was quite exhausting just to read; I'm not sure whether it makes me want to bounce up and down and organise more things, or just lie back and sleep, awed at the people who do.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Ditto, but in my case definitely tending towards the passive awe end. Glad you and your fellows exist bluedevi!