In the frenetic, overcrowded environment of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, all, indeed any, audiences are important. But some punters wield more power than others.
This year sees the fifth biennial British Council Edinburgh Showcase, when the organization lays on shopping opportunities for overseas theatre promoters.
It has selected 28 British theatre shows as potential candidates for foreign touring, given them its stamp of approval, and helped pay travel expenses for "shoppers" to come to see them.
Sally Cowling, head of drama and dance at the British Council, estimates the last showcase in 2003 brought in an additional 1.5-2 million pounds (US$2.7-3.6 million) in fees to the mostly young theatre companies.
A record 212 overseas producers will start arriving in Edinburgh this week courtesy of the British Council, including an extraordinary 17 from China second only to the United States, which will send 23 delegates reflecting China's status as a huge emerging market for contemporary Western-style drama.
The country is seeing a huge boom in theatre building, but, in a scene that has been dominated by traditional Chinese theatrical forms, many impresarios are looking overseas for work to show in them. Nick Yu, artistic director of the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, has recently programmed work by young British theatre companies Kneehigh and Theatre O, as well as the Royal Shakespeare Company.
At the more commercial end of the spectrum, Les Miserables premiered at the Shanghai Grand Theatre in June this year.
Other countries fielding delegates to the British Council showcase include, for the first time, Viet Nam and Thailand, as well as Germany, the Netherlands, Mexico and Russia.
The work on offer to promoters ranges from "The Devil's Larder," an adaptation of the Jim Crace novel by young Scottish company Grid Iron, which had its Scottish premiere last week in Debenhams, to dreamthinkspeaks' "Don't Look Back," another site-specific work inspired by the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to be performed at Edinburgh's General Register House.
Cowling said the increase in site-specific work was "reflecting and responding to the fact that, as so many experiences today are virtual, people increasingly want a very intense, very local experience in theatre."
According to Paul Gudgin, the director of the Edinburgh festival fringe: "This year is a really good year for theatre, and it's partly to do with the impact of the showcase."
But, he said, there was a detrimental effect on the Fringe's theatre in non-showcase years. "We are more and more concerned. People felt that the theatre program last year wasn't the strongest. That's a problem for us to solve, an area of our work we have to develop."
In showcase years, he said, even companies that were not given the British Council's approval were keener to perform on the off chance of being spotted by a roving producer.
"The showcase demonstrates that performers are coming to the Fringe because they want to be picked up and we have to make these opportunities every year." This year there are 66 more theatre shows on the Fringe than last.
But Cowling said before the showcase's creation, "it was getting a bit pointless encouraging theatre promoters to come over to Edinburgh," because of the dominance of stand-up comedy. "The reason we did it in the first place is that theatre was looking thin. But the fringe is self-evidently big enough to cope in years we are not here. Maybe those festivals are stronger on comedy or dance," she said.
(China Daily August 16, 2005)
