We rehearsed evenings and weekends in a couple of different venues over the month of July. We laughed quite a lot and had a jolly old time whilst rehearsing sections. Then we’d do a run and it would be 15 mins too long and the most boring play ever imagined. So we’d cut some, rehearse cuts, do character work, have a lovely time again, then run it to find it was 20 mins too long. Fun/frustrating/fun/frustrating/fun/despairing.

We presented our London preview at the fundraiser on a Sunday evening in the Rosemary Branch, N1, which is a delightful pub theatre. We had our doubts about so much – the writing, the style, the characters, but the show went well and the audience were wonderful. We raised over £400 which paid for our travel to Edinburgh, our flyers and posters, and stocked our petty cash. Brilliant. We got drunk and rolly pollied home feeling positive…

Then BOOM. The voice of the reviewers. In hindsight, it was a silly thing to do to invite reviewers to our preview, first major lesson learned. We were reviewed by two people and neither were impressed. In fact one of them seemed to be actually angry at us – which I couldn’t help but kind of enjoy. On one hand it was quite hard – taking such a beating 3 days before we were due to open in Edinburgh, but on the other, it felt refreshing to be told the truth in such exact terms from a stranger, and the points made were very helpful. It would be difficult for a friend to offer such harsh criticism.

Sleeper train to Edinburgh. Cracking. Like being in the olden days.

We got to space to find the stage even smaller than we’d imagined. The owner of the pub greeted us by telling us cheerily we’d never get an audience at 2pm. The bar staff were walking in and out clinking trays of glasses while we tried to rehearse. Nick nearly cried. Ha.

I had decided that HOT AIR would benefit greatly from a new, darker, hopefully more satisfying ending. I spent the 24 hours typing furiously at our digs while Alice and Nick covered Edinburgh in our posters. We wrote and rehearsed, wrote and rehearsed. Drank red bull. Fun/frustrating/fun/frustrating/fun/despairing.

By Friday afternoon we had got our new ending (sort of) ready. We presented it to an audience of 7 or 8 and it went down fairly well. Afterwards we had a pint and decided to ditch it for what we were doing in the first place. So we returned to our original, but feeling better for how much we had learned about the characters and script through the last few days work.

We got used to the space, it wasn’t ideal but that’s the fringe. And it was a blessing that it was small as it meant 15-20 made it feel reasonably full (thankfully we didn’t have quite as tiny audiences as we were initially warned about).

It took us a couple of weeks to get reviewed again (which is similar to forever), but once we did and we could quote some good things (yaaaas) on the flyer – we started to pull in audiences. So the last couple of days were great – audiences of 25-30 and they really enjoyed it, which meant we really enjoyed it. Praise the lord.

In the end, HOT AIR was hit and miss. We got audiences who loved it, and audiences who thought we were idiots. It was an acquired taste I think, and we are very proud of what we have achieved with it. Essentially, it has informed us greatly on how to push our theatre in the direction of brilliance.

We have learned so much in Edinburgh; about ourselves, about creating theatre, about planning, about writing, about when to listen and when to stick to your guns, about selling the company, and ultimately about what we are aiming to achieve as Ten Pence Short.

Roll on Fringe 2010.

Laura

The writing has been no less than an absolute struggle. I’ve forced myself to stay home for full weekends at a time; only to wind up wandering round the house in my pyjamas, wild haired and pop-eyed, wringing my hands and muttering ‘for fuck’ sake’, and ‘what the fuck?’, and ‘fuck off’ and other things like that, then drinking lager. I have the attention span of a petit pois and am lazier than a dead person.

However, we’ve come through the other side of that now. We’ve got a 1^st draft, which works quite well, and I’m going to spend this weekend wringing and muttering till I make it better.  Actually, I’m enjoying it now, which is wonderful and quite as it should be.

What else…?

We’ve got cracking poster and flyer designs, and tenpenceshort.com is all up and running. This all courtesy of Mr Michael Cranston. We love Mike – let it be known. We’ve got a facebook page, pray come find us if you are on there.

Press release done. Travel booked both ways now. Accommodation dubiously decided (we’re all staying in a house with a woman called Fatima off Gumtree, who will sleep on the sofa while we’re there. Interesting.) Play nearly written. Rehearsals starting Sunday.

And if there is anyone out there who may have doubted our plans to fund by scratchcard – I’ll have you know we won 22 bucks last week. It was a magnificent moment – in your face, non-believers.

Laura

Getting stuff for free is fun. Here’s how it’s been working out for us –

Hiring a venue for the Fringe can be an expensive business, generally speaking they cost a fair bit more than zero. We’re doing our show on the Free Festival, meaning we don’t pay for our space, and the audience in turn don’t pay for tickets. It’s a sort of ‘pay if you want’ ethos, in that the audience will be invited to make a donation at the end if they’ve enjoyed it.

Rehearsal space: some wonderful people I used to work for have been very kind and allowed us to use a room in their building from time to time, so until rehearsals take full swing in July this will be brilliant for us. After that, we’re thinking: ROOMS ABOVE PUBS. There are a lot of empty rooms above pubs you know. Why is nobody in there, drinking? We have plans to get inside them.

Pads, pens and USB sticks have been kindly donated by a friend. No names can be revealed for fear of a vicious reprisal from the stationary woman at his office. The word on the street is an economical way to create a website is to use wordpress.com, so we’ve signed up to that bad boy and hope (with the help of a technically minded buddy) to have that ready to introduce to the world next month.

And travel up there was looking tres expensive, but we managed to poach 3 sleeper train tickets with firstscotrail.com for £77. We haven’t worked out the return journey, but one step at a time folks. They release the cheap sleeper train tickets (bargain berths) every Friday – so if you want to get some check this Friday morning – you might be in luck!

So, so far so good I’d say. We only need a splash of cash for set, costume, accommodation, posters, flyers, marketing, eating….hmmm, maybe if we each chuck in a tenner and get down the casino?

Laura