You Can Make Five Thousand Pounds

Right, Mad Cyril here with a message for all you theatre people who want to make money. Get your wallets out, and hand me a couple of grand.

Now, fuck off to where you came from and don't even think about doing a show at the Fringe. And you've just made five grand. 

It amazes me that you keep coming back. When some people have got money burning a hole in their pocket, they nip over to Ibiza and piss it up against the wall round the back of a sleazy club. I'm not saying that the Edfringe is like a drug-dealer who tells you he's got the real shit, takes your cash and leaves you with nothing but a bitter after-taste. 

Only I am, aren't I? Still, if you want to encourage the continued degradation of art into a consumerist cluster-fuck, here's how you can really make a fucking mess of your life.

DON'T HAVE A PRESS RELEASE

Hey, you're an artist, right? A press release is, like, marketing, man. You are too busy to think about actually getting people in. And hell, fuck critics, right? They are just parasites. 

DON'T CONTACT ME

Well, I guess this one's fair enough. But don't contact Vile, either. He can't talk now, because he is tugging himself off over the numbers his blog is getting. 

I mean, if you really want to get a sit-com deal out of the Fringe, you only need Lyn Gardner to mention you in a round-up, right? Supporting independent underground media is the kind of thing they did in the 1970s, man. It's not like social media levels the playing field and this blog is knocking it out the park at all.

DON'T DO THE DRAMATURGY DATABASE

Am I right? Fucking email questions. If you'd wanted to be a writer, you'd be a journalist, right? This database isn't the biggest single set of articles about the Fringe. It isn't a platform for artists to speak about their work. No researchers ever look at it. Just ignore the reply that took me a few seconds to cut and paste and send. It's like - you are doing all the work, and it is so easy to get an article written about you in the Fringe.

Okay, troops. Vile asked me to write something cheerful to celebrate the large numbers of people who have made the effort. It might sound like this is a slagging but the odds are that if you are reading this, you've done the opposite of the advice. 

You've probably got an entry on the database. I bet you are feeling smug right now.