Pleasance at 30 Celebrating 30 years of the PleasanCe at the edinburgh festival fringe 1985 ------- 2014 Beat the queues with our new moBile site! Create an account and buy your tickets in five easy steps: 1 Visit pleasance.co.uk 2 Select the show you want to see 3 Choose the performance date and number of tickets 4 Checkout 5 Collect your tickets and have a Pleasance day! pleasance.co.uk MIranDa hart DavID MItchell Jack WhItehall In association with MIrIaM Margolyes anD More Contents Is It that tIme already? It really is remarkable to think the Pleasance has HOw iT all bEgan been entertaining audiences for 30 years. Only Christopher Richardson sets the scene 2 yesterday, or so it seems, I found myself at the THE uNiquE faCE Of THE PlEaSaNCE age of 16 sweeping the Courtyard, manning the 4 in pictures box office, spending my days running between CONTENTS Pleasance One and Pleasance Two (there were SHE wHO laugHS lONgest 6 Kate Copstick’s comedy moments only two venues back then) and generally having the time of my life in this dynamic venture that CHaRliE Hartill Special ReservE fuNd was just a couple of years old. 8 Memories are made of this It might easily have gone the way of many a RiNgiNg THE CHaNges Fringe enterprise, but there was magic in the air 10 Mark fisher’s theatrical highlights and something about the Pleasance just worked. YOuNg PlEaSaNCE I’m proud to say the ethos established at the 12 age no barrier very beginning by founder director Christopher Richardson remains today, even as we have birthday commissiONS 14 Many happy returns expanded into a multi-venue operation across several sites. PHOTOgRaPHiC COMMiSSiONS It’s a spirit of artistic possibility, of youthful Putting the stage in the frame 15 enterprise (whatever your age), of good humour CHildren come first and of celebration – all the things, indeed, that 16 Kelly apter’s pint-size picks make the Edinburgh Fringe the most thrilling MaKiNg ligHT wORK Of iT festival in the world. 18 The venue that launched 1000 careers As you’ll see from this special birthday magazine, the first three decades have been a tremendous Vox POP joy. Thanks to you the audience, the thousands 20 what the audience says of performers and the many hundreds of people CablE TalK who’ve worked for us, it’s been an endlessly 22 The gaffer tape, the scaffolding and the crew exciting achievement. I do hope you’ll join us MaP repeatedly in our 30th anniversary season. Here’s 24 get the sketch on getting around to the next three decades! THE TRust 26 development, support and mentoring Anthony Alderson Director, PlEAsAnCE Theatre Long-TERM Partners 27 Key charitable relationships CHRistopher is not my dad 28 anthony alderson sets the record straight Into the new 29 why theatremakers love the Pleasance THROugH THE ages CONTRIBUTORS 30 30 years of great memories for the Pleasance James West Publication editor Mark Fisher TO bOldlY gO 32 what’s next for fringe theatre? designer lucy Munro The list project manager sheri Friers LondON CalliNg 34 a year-round home in islington FRONT COVER: © THEO DAVIES lET’S gET digiTal 35 from fax to Macs Published by The List Ltd in association with The Pleasance HEAD OFFICE: MaKiNg iT HaPPEN 14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE 36 Programming secrets from Ryan Taylor & Matthew dwyer Tel: 0131 550 3050, list.co.uk ©2014 The List Ltd. Reproduction in whole or in part is forbidden without the written permission listiNgS of the publishers. The List does not accept responsibility for unsolicited material. The List provides this content in good faith but no guarantee or representation is given that the content is accurate, 38 Highlights of the 2014 programme complete or up-to-date. Use of magazine content is at your own risk. H O N KIngs of the w ga i E T b all all b T E i ga w O wIld frontIer N H Pleasance founder Christopher Richardson looks back to the days of hand-made tickets, feuding techies and Amstrad meltdowns first visited the street called the In 1986, the present chairman, Jeremy Lucas Pleasance somewhere back in put £10,000 into the pot and we added the Quaker 1979 or 1980 to see my nephew House (our Pleasance Two). Into the courtyard, I in a university production of, I am we opened a small window which served drinks ashamed to say, I remember not. It to the outside and, inside, acted as a late-night took place in a dark dungeon of a place roughly performers’ bar. Now we had a computerised where today there are lines of terrifying muscle- box office based on an Amstrad computer. The making machines in the PE department which is program gave out after 17-and-a-half minutes. A the home of our Pleasance Beneath. Some time young man, now a rather distinguished doctor, later, I went to the Little Theatre, in a rather had to spend each day of the rest of the festival fine courtyard, to see a version of The Brothers with a biro and a John Bull printing set, producing Karamazov. That theatre is now Pleasance One. tickets to order. At least we had less to throw away When I next saw the Pleasance, as it had become afterwards. known, it was January 1985. It was cold and wet, Next year we were back to paper tickets and and we sat by the fireplace in the bar below the numerous pigeonholes to house them. There was theatre with large cups of tea dispensed by Betty confusion, books of tickets trampled under foot Brown and her assistant Joan, stalwart janitorial and some pretty angry promoters. team from EUSA, discussing the practicality of Then we had the Rotterdam computer. It was taking on a venue at the very edge of all things reasonably efficient and did, just about, cope with Fringe. My first love was theatre and my new- the 500 individual performances on offer. The found love was the Fringe but, as a director and thing almost no system could grasp in those days designer, I could see it was a rough place for was the selling of the last ticket to 20 hopefuls in 'I WATCHED drama. It offered tremendous opportunities, but the same second. It would do its simple best to sell the practicalities needed sorting out. I believed each of them a ticket, throw up its little electronic that’s what the Pleasance could do. It would be a hands and say, ‘No!’ and the system would go pop! THE STEELS place where great theatre and comedy could thrive The Fringe was a wild frontier back then. It among the rest of the festival excitement. was characterised by the Patching Wars in which BEND A In that first season, we made a profit of £188, companies in small venues would fight to re-plug not something we did for a further nine years! lights from an inadequate and often dangerous LITTLE And when we did, we turned it into a charity. That supply during the changeover from one show to first year, we had a crèche, roast beef off the joint, the next. Delays to the starting times naturally an art gallery with a floor covered in little clay followed. I remember sitting beneath a seating MORE animals by Charles Thackray, two performance ramp during a performance watching the steels spaces, 18 shows and a hand-driven box office. bend a little more at each round of applause. We AT EACH The administration and graphic hub was housed in were glad it was not too well received. Then there a grey square lump of plastic, the huggable 128k was the difficulty in extracting any money from ROUND OF Macintosh which, with its printer and floppy disc, box offices for tickets sold, often creating actual cost more than a sixth of the entire budget. misery and hardship. The first set of paper tickets never arrived – Of course, there are still horror stories, but APPLAUSe’ well a few did, when someone found most of the considering the huge scale of the Fringe, it is consignment spread out on a railway embankment remarkable how few. It is better than it used to be, between Reading and London. We had the whole if a tad less exciting. Yet I am surprised each year lot reprinted in a different colour to thwart the by how much I’m filled with the same excitement, ticket touts and the double booking in the rush to suppressed expectation and optimism I felt 30 be part of the audience in Edinburgh. Throwing years ago. The energy and creative explosion 80% of those tickets onto a council tip in early which spreads across one of the loveliest cities in September was a salutary learning experience. Europe is something to be cherished. 2 THE PlEAsAnCE at 3O 5 clicks away from a ticket | pleasance.co.uk THE PlEAsAnCE at 3O 3 T a reCIpe HE NCE u a N S iqu a E E Pl fa CE O THE f for success f The Pleasance is renowned for encouraging new ideas and risk taking, the result of a OffERiNg a faMilY ExPERiENCE bEiNg iNNOvaTivE THE CE O philosophy that embodies the spirit of the Fringe. Over the past three decades, it has ‘The Pleasance is like a family’ is a familiar phrase from You can’t stand still in business and the same is true for fa performers, staff and supporters alike.