Fringe chief welcomes cut prices

Published on Saturday 30 May 2009 19:48

THE new boss of the Fringe festival has called for ticket prices to be slashed.

Kath Mainland, the chief executive of the world's biggest arts event, claims the cost of attending shows needs to be reduced in order for it to continue growing.

She also said of the box-office chaos that tarnished last year's Fringe had caused concern across the world.

Mainland spoke out shortly after taking up her post, which was created after previous director Jon Morgan stepped down following negative publicity and the Fringe's first sales drop, of some 10 per cent, in eight years.

Last year's ticket sales were crippled by a series of failures in a new and largely untested computerised 385,000 box-office system.

Printing problems meant that tickets were sent out late and some performances were oversold.

The chaos led to a double investigation, overseen by the government, but now Mainland insists she is confident of steadying the ship.

Mainland, the former administrative director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, said it was important to adjust to economic circumstances: "It's expensive to bring a show here and because it's expensive ticket prices aren't cheap.

"What we need to do is work to make it cheaper for people to take part so it will be cheaper for audiences."

Last year there was a huge expansion of shows that were either free, or where ticket costs were pegged to 5. Mainland says that will continue: "I wouldn't be surprised if people were doing more of that and so they should. The Fringe is about discovery and taking a chance and you're more likely to do that if it's a fiver.

She is in no doubt that people will continue to flock to the Fringe despite the recession and was buoyed by the fact that this year's event has grown marginally, from 2,088 shows to 2,098.

She said: "This is the original Fringe, the place where it all started. It's still the biggest open-access festival in the world and not just some feel-good, fuzzy thing that happens."

But she admitted the brand had been damaged by last year's instability: "I think the impact was global. I've got friends across the world who were going, 'Oh my god.' People are concerned about what happens here and that's good. Maybe the only brilliant thing to come out of last year was the upswell of support for the Fringe."