Fringe chief celebrates spontaneity and ambition

• Fringe chief executive Kath Mainland says she hopes proposed reforms to give seats on the festival's board to performers, below, will improve the event. Picture: Toby Williams

It is that variety that Kath Mainland, in her second summer as the event's chief executive, is determined to celebrate and foster, amid record figures spelling out the Fringe's sprawling semi-anarchy: 40,254 performances of 2,453 shows in 259 venues.

Her advice to the tens of thousands of punters and performers: save room on your shows-to-see list for the one you hear about at the bus-stop; it could be the best you'll ever see. And don't forget to eat your breakfast.

Self-effacing and enthusiastic, Mainland is a long-time and dedicated festival insider and organiser, but doesn't easily give out glib soundbites, as shown yesterday as she outlined two "scenarios" for reform of the Festival Fringe Society and its board, which oversees the event.

The reform means performers and venues would be guaranteed three seats each on the elected board of 15. Fringe Society membership - which is needed in order to vote for board members - would be offered to those appearing at the festival and regulars from past year. (It is currently open to anyone for 10).

Dry though the details may seem, they are aimed at ensuring the performers, venue operators and those who market the festival have a big say in running it. They are also aimed at continuing the Fringe on a smooth upward path after a sometimes tumultuous two years, driven in part by the failure of its box office system.

The Fringe, Mainland said yesterday, is looking "in good shape". She is hoping for a sunny opening weekend, and for the city to come out and celebrate its festival.

"I feel very positive at this point," she said. "I've been wandering around, performers are arriving, building stages, everyone seems really up for it and looking forward to it which is exactly what you want.

"The great thing is you never know what it's going to be. It feels very spontaneous to me, and that's the beauty of it. You hear lots of different accents as you wander around, people just discovering it."

Mainland, as chief executive - most specifically not the event's "director" - performs a sometimes difficult balancing act of her own. On the one hand, her mantra is that the Fringe is an "open access", non-programmed festival welcoming anyone and everything.

But she remains in place as a guiding hand - and if things go wrong, will bear the brunt, as her predecessor Jon Morgan proved with his abrupt early departure after the ticketing crisis of 2008.

But for now there is calm. Yesterday Mainland praised William Burdett-Coutts, the veteran festival operator celebrating his 30th anniversary this year, for his ambitious new venue in the Spiegeltent built around the Ross bandstand in the Princes Street Gardens.

She said: "One of the things that will be different is this significant new venue. He has often thought it was a shame it was not used at the festival, and a lot of people have thought that.

"He's done a lovely job and I think it's great. New venues are good, the programme is bigger."

After venue reports of strong early ticket sales, Mainland confirmed they are "good at this point", adding: "It's where we are at the end that matters, but we are very happy with where we are at this point compared to last year."

While she celebrates this year's big new venues - which also include the Underbelly's expansion into Edinburgh University's grand McEwan Hall - Mainland has also worked to improve the exposure of free Fringe shows (there are more than 500 of them this year). However, the hip young Forest Fringe is not listed in the main Fringe programme, in part because they don't seem to work to the same deadlines as other performers.

Mainland said: "What you get here, and what makes it really exciting as a member of the audience, is the range. You can be in a tiny, intimate, very temporary-feeling space, and see something you've never heard of, and you can be somewhere grander and bigger with somebody you have heard of. It's seeing things side by side. You don't do that outside the [Fringe] festival."

She said her job with the Fringe office is to advise and assist performers and the audience, and raise the profile of the Fringe in a competitive marketplace. "The festival will be successful if companies continue see it as a place where they want to bring work," she said, and that seems to be happening.

The reforms are to be outlined at an open public meeting on Tuesday.

"[The change] protects, enshrines the idea that performers and venue managers are a huge part of what makes this festival," she said. "They are out there, taking risks, making entrepreneurial decisions, taking creative risks. The Fringe is founded on that."

The Fringe may seem more awash with big-selling celebrity or TV names this year - from Britain's Got Talent stars Flawless to Abi Titmuss - though like any Fringe "trend" it is hard to gauge.

Big shows by big-name comedians have seen some commentators suggest they should be kept at arms length to preserve the "Fringe spirit" of discovery.

But Mainland said: "The Fringe is whatever it is. Anybody who wants to be part of it can be part of it. If it's open access, it's open access … Big names can bring audiences with them, and that can be of benefit to everybody.

"Our job through the website and through the programme is persuading people who have only discovered the Fringe because they saw a name they recognised, and talk those people into some of the other things that are on offer. Commercial is not a terrible word to me."

Famous people are always at the festival, she added - not just on stage but also as part of the audience.

Her work this year will include as ever a round of press interviews, from The Scotsman to the international media. Journalists from South Korea, the BBC's Arabic and Persian services, contingents from Italy, Israel, the US and elsewhere have converged on Edinburgh, often on the heels of performers from their countries, proving once again the event's international reach.

The Fringe is also currently waiting to see the impact of arts funding cuts. But the event will weather them well, she predicts.

The British Council, a key backer itself facing cuts, is already talking about its showcase next year. Fringe funding from Edinburgh City Council was cut by 1.5 per cent this year - a relatively small sum.

"Even in straightened economic times, you can't diminish your ambition and your vision, it's the best festival in the world, it just is, it's worth supporting."

BACKGROUND

KATH Mainland was born in 1969 in Orkney. Early memories include her father, a fiddle player, taking her on theatre trips in Scotland and to London.

She read English literature at Glasgow University, and then gained an accounting diploma at Strathclyde.

She first worked on the Fringe in 1991 as an administrative assistant making tea, answering telephones and typing venue listings into the organisation's one antique computer.

She went on to work with major Scottish festivals from the Assembly Rooms venue to Edinburgh's Hogmanay, and became administrative director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. She was appointed the Fringe's new chief executive in February 2009.

She took up the post in May that year, on the heels of a crisis of confidence over failures in the ticketing system in the summer of 2008 that contributed to pushing the organisation 500,000 in debt and lead to the abrupt departure of her predecessor.

Ticket sales bounced back last summer and now the event appears poised for another strong year.