Dear On the Mic diary,
This is what’s on my mind today…
I’m feeling a wee bit radge because my venue is showcasing the boxing instead of my show tonight, but, pick your target. It’s not the venue’s fault or the organisers fault or my fault.
It’s the fault of … late stage capitalism
AND WE NEED TO SAVE THE EDINBURGH FRINGE FROM ITS EXCESSES
SAVE THE EDINBURGH FRINGE FROM THE MUNCH, MUNCH, MUNCH OF THE MONEY MACHINE !!
The money machine!
It’s eats quality and shits out quantity and it’s making up for what it lost over lockdown
And now the money machine is very HANGRY!!
It is on a rampage and as a result the cultural ecosystem of the fringe is under threat.
An arts festival is an ecosystem like any other and the money machine has subjected this once beautiful and diverse environment to the same ceaseless ravages as the Serengeti or the Brazilian rainforest.
The biodiversity of the fringe is under attack!
Soon the only acts able to survive its inhospitable environs will be TV comics.
If the money machine continues its rampage rare and fascinating species of artists that have so long thrived here will become extinct and, as with any form of environmental desecration, only scavengers and pests and the most unremarkable creatures will be able to thrive in the barren and inhospitable wasteland left in its wake.
Now I’m not saying the festival is a godforsaken cultural waste ground purely inhabited by pests and the pestilential… but that’s kinda going that way.
Rare breeds that once thrived here are being driven to the edge of extinction!
Quirky spoken word artists, experimental clown troupes. That random guy that rides down The Royal Mile on a Segway wearing a suit covered in Ferraro Roche….
All these artists will become extinct if we don’t act now
Arts funding is slashed, university education smashed, free spaces destroyed and that’s before you even get to the fringe.
Real artists are being priced out of
accommodation, venues and most importantly from taking risks which is where all true art is born.
In the cauldron of the uncommercial.
But the money machine doesn’t care for that
If this slide into a dystopian, totalitarian monoculture continues, there will be no more ‘fringe’ festival. Just a corporate trade fair where TV execs come to hand-pick the next set of pretty young things to be fodder for the military industrial entertainment complex.
And once selected, they will perform for your ‘viewing pleasure’ across a series of increasingly tedious television formats. Formats that are as bland as they are boring, as the extinction of the artist means the people making the programmes have less and less capacity for creative thought and less and less places to nick any ideas from if they really can’t think of any original idea themselves.
Authentic artists, The biodiversity of the fringe and culture in general is under threat!
But you can make a difference.
For just £5….
You can help save the fringe and increase its biodiversity by joining the fringe society
And save endangered artists!
For £5 you can join the fringe society and attend the AGM next week and tell them what you think of them.
Save the Edinburgh fringe!
Save endangered artists!
Sign up. It costs a £5 and
It’s on zoom, so you don’t even have to go anywhere. Just turn up, tune in and switch on from the safety of your living room.
Virtual pitchforks and flaming brands are optional.
Just turn up and do you, babe.
