Fringe is a little over half-way done and I’m living on green onion cakes and coffee. With a few minor hitches and snags during tech week Resurrected Motifs is up and running. In many ways the hard part of my job is done. I’m tired from seeing the show and working various front of house shifts at our venue, but the vast majority of my work is done. We’ve had a couple of great houses and we seem to be on track to break even, which is an even bigger relief to me.

Marketing doesn’t stop during Fringe, although my cast has taken over much of the work by handbilling before each show. We also scan the internet for reviews of our show, waiting to see if we get a review and if so, what they have to say. If you get a good review it can play a huge role in the marketing of the show. Five star reviews bring in audiences who talk to their friends, bringing in more audience. Even though a good review can be valuable for marketing, the short, two paragraph reviews that often appear at Fringe will inevitably just be a summary of the show and if the reviewer liked it or not. While this is somewhat helpful to a potential audience member, as an artist, I’m interested in specific, detailed feedback to help me grow. Dance in Edmonton is lucky to have Jen Mesch, who blogs at http://www.dance-conspiracy.blogspot.ca/. You can scroll down to read the review of our show. While Jen doesn’t go easy on my piece, her thoughts are clearly articulated and I’m grateful for feedback that I can consider when I start work on the next draft of ‘Howl’.

Just as my creative work with ‘Howl’ is far from done, the administrative and business work goes on. After the festival closes and we’ve loaded out of the venue I have to finish the accounting for the production, write receipts and thank you cards to our sponsors. I’ll also be burning DVDs of the video I’ve shot of the production so that the choreographers and dancers involved can add it to their portfolio. If I’ve very lucky we not only break even, but I get to write cheques to the choreographers.

And then, in a few months it’ll be time to think about Fringe again…