Money, Money, Money

One day last December, it occurred to Paul Flannery that it would be fun to devise a nostalgic Fringe show based on one of the TV programmes he loved as a child. Flannery—actor, sometime Fringe comic, part-time chef—weighed up the pros and cons of The Crystal Maze and Fun House, two old favourites, but decided in the end that they wouldn't work for one reason or another. 

Another show seemed temptingly feasible, however. Knightmare was a deliriously silly puzzle-solving game for children that ran from 1987 to 1994. One contestant ("the Dungeoneer") had to negotiate a series of tasks in a virtual reality castle. The Dungeoneer wore a helmet that prevented him from seeing what was going on; the other kids had to call out instructions as they watched their friend on a screen, where he (it was usually a he) would be projected into the mysterious castle thanks to the magic of the green screen.

“The more we thought about it, the more we thought we could actually make this work,” Flannery says. He pitched the idea to Tim Child, the creator of the TV show and the owner of the rights. He loved the idea. With that seal of approval, there was basically no way that Flannery wasn't going to do everything in his power to produce a live-action version of Knightmare.

He and his team just needed a venue, costumes, transport, props, and some marketing money. And a set that can be tweaked to look like different rooms in a fantasy castle. And somewhere to sleep.

“You can't do it on the cheap," says Flannery, whose Highgate flat is now covered in glue and fiberglass and bits of puppet. “It's got to look right. It's got to live up to what people remember.” 

Like many people going to Edinburgh in the hope that the power of the Fringe will transform a bright idea into a life-changing one, Flannery was resigned to losing money on the show, but he and his co-producer couldn't provide enough by themselves to make it work.

Like an increasing number of Fringe performers, they turned to Kickstarter, a website that lets you raise money by pitching your idea to the generous but fickle population of the internet. Twenty shows are currently raising money for the Fringe this year on Kickstarter alone, up from six last year. And though Kickstarter is the biggest crowdfunding platform by a stretch, searching on rival websites reveals dozens more shows raising cash.

When I speak to Flannery in early July, Knightmare Live has raised about two thirds of its £6,000 target with a week to go. On Kickstarter, hitting the target is a requirement if you are to receive any of the money pledged. Miss the target and donors' money goes back into their accounts. Flannery, preparing for a final push on social media, is confident that the rest will arrive.

Susie Riddell was also pleasantly surprised by how many strangers and minor acquaintances have given money. Her theatre company, Bristol-based Idiot Child, turned to crowdfunding to raise a planned £4,500 to help pay for their show, I Could've Been Better, a one-man play about a peculiar 33-year-old who wants to win a school swimming competition. 

“Having the Pleasance say 'we want your show' was so exciting, but we needed to pay for it,” she says. At Edinburgh, that gets harder with every year that goes by. “I hadn't produced at Edinburgh for nine years. It was very expensive then, but now it's just crazy."

Like Flannery, Idiot Child reckoned that they needed about £15,000 to produce the show, which is around the Fringe average. People raising money on Sponsume, the website Riddell went for, get to keep all the money people pledge (apart from the slice kept by the people who run the website), regardless of whether they hit their target. As a result, Idiot Child are assured of the £1,800 the campaign has already raised when I speak to Riddell. The money will allow the company to bring a level of polish to the show that it would otherwise have lacked, she tells me – for instance, they can now afford to bring their own lighting designer up to Edinburgh.

Unexpectedly, though, the money isn't the first thing Riddell mentions when I ask her what led Idiot Child to try a crowdfunding campaign. What caught her attention in the first place, she tells me, was the potential publicity value.

"It was in the back of my mind last year that it would be a good way of getting buzz,” she says.

In particular, this led the company to pour a lot of effort into their promotional video. Many crowdfunding hopefuls produce a video pitch; but while the pitches of many theatre companies feature a line of bright young things chirpily asking for your money, Idiot Child's is polished and sharply written. It doubles up as a trailer for the show, introducing the play's strange protagonist and his peculiar quest. Riddell hopes that some of the people who see it will come to the show, even if they don't hand over any cash.

In fact, it's clear from talking to Riddell that while the money is extremely helpful, it's far from the end of the story. What she speaks about with most enthusiasm is the feeling of moral support: a crowdfunding campaign showed her small but ambitious theatre company that they are on the right track, that they have won the approval of a considerable network of unknown enthusiasts.

"We're all more relaxed now. We're saying to each other, 'Guys, people like us!'”

In the past, Riddell has often pledged money to other theatre companies' campaigns for just this reason. "It's a really great way of investing in people I respect," she said. On its own, a fiver doesn't buy you much in terms of lighting designers, but even a fiver is a valuable vote of confidence.

Riddell points out that although the technology is new, crowdfunding is really a new form of a very old idea: patronage, which for thousands of years has allowed artists to survive by getting rich people to subsidise them, either out of the goodness of their hearts or in exchange for flattery. The advantage of the new kind of patronage—maybe it needs a Web 2.0 appellation, like Distributed Patronage—is that crowdfunders don't demand that you cast their image in bronze, or compose an ode to their magnificence.

Crowdfunding won't turn Fringe theatre into a moneyspinner, but hopefully it can help make up for a reduction in the state's budget for arts funding. It will mean both of these shows are better than they would have been otherwise; and that, the reasoning goes, will help them stand out among the Edinburgh horde, giving them a better chance of a prolonged life after the Fringe, maybe even a profitable one.

Most importantly, it helps people carry on doing the worthwhile but unprofitable things they are passionate about.

"We're not getting paid to do this,” says Riddell. "We're doing it because we love it."