Split me in half, please
Greetings from Praha!
It’s been a long and very smelly journey. One that began with submitting our application to Prague Fringe back in September 2016 and leading up to me getting my mineral salt deodorant confiscated at TSA this morning. It is absolutely surreal that the adventure is actually about to begin, but I’m feeling pumped up on caffeine, plane sleep, and my body odor, and am ready to commence.
So my official title with the tour is producer slash designer, which I am recently finding are the two most conflicting titles possible. For most of my work day, I am filling in budget information, booking rooms, contacting venues etc. etc. And during the nonexistent other half of my work day, I am designing video content, designing light plots, drafting artwork, creating sounds, etc. etc. The hardest part of the entire process has been how to balance these two different mindsets as the constant compete for my time and energy. How can I switch between logistics brain and artist brain, and is it possible to do so without one constantly chiming into the other? What I've been recently finding, annoyingly enough, is that in my case, the logistics have constantly been winning in the battle over the art. Which makes sense I guess: why even attempt to focus on the art when there is visa paperwork to fill out? Or an invoice that needs to be paid by a deadline? How would I ever be able to focus on lighting when there is a possibility of not getting into the country if forms aren’t filled out on time? So many questions, so very frustrating. The first and simplest answer to this question is get two people to do the two jobs. It makes almost too much sense as a solution. But this isn’t usually the case in the land of Fringe. With a production team of NINE we are still all double downing on our workloads. Josh acting as both playwright and marketing manager. Melissa acting as costume designer, producer, AND press coordinator. There are nine of us working, and still so many jobs that need to be filled.
I’ll take as an answer “well that is just a price to pay for Fringe.” None of us signed up for this because we thought we’d be dealing with an easy workload, and the double/triple workload (or, heaven forbid, you are a one-person show and find yourself taking on all of those roles) is without a doubt one of the defining elements of the Fringe. Also granted, the beautiful people organizing the festivals are definitely doing the same, so it is in no way fair to ask of them to take on more responsibilities to lighten the blow on their artists. Which let me also take this time to thank EVERY Fringe festival organizer for the incredible support and dedication to the art, it’s absolutely phenomenal. So, back to my conflicting conflict, perhaps where we can begin is by keeping our experiences and tactics transparent and public. So many of the struggles in navigating the Fringe world (x5 festivals) came from learning how to navigate them for the first time. Next year, in hope and in theory, should be a breeze with all that we’ve learned leading up to this summer. But I am not doing enough if I’m hoarding these resources to myself, specifically regarding the little things like insurance, visa specifications for Americans, how to plug your shit in and get it to power up, the list goes on and on.
Part of the reasoning behind beginning this blog is to share and record these learnings, which I will aim to do to the best of my ability as the summer continues on. In the meantime, however, I invite any people looking to join the Fringe madness to e-mail me (bryanschall at me.com) with questions, quandaries, or if you just need someone to talk you out of it all ;). I know that our group could never have done this without the invaluable love and support we received from other Fringe groups (shoutout to: The Traveling Sisters, The Desperettes, Tooth + Nail, XNTHONY, Madame Señorita, DIVE Cabaret, and so many others) and so I open up the same offer to anyone reading this. Godspeed!
