Fierce competition for bums on seats

CAMPAIGN team Becca Dale, Chantel Birtwistle and Charlotte Kilroy with their first ticket sales of the festival, bought by Andrew Roberts and Andrew Grant

Split Second, a drama about the consequences of careless driving following the death of 15-year-old Chris Dale, from Moorside, is on all this week at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, courtesy of Oldham Theatre Workshop.

Local youth worker CHARLOTTE KILROY, who is with the party, writes this daily blog.

Day Two at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival brought something completely different!

The team was split into two, with the production team heading off to the venue first thing in the morning, and the campaign team braving the breezy weather and taking on the Royal Mile to begin marketing the show.

At the venue, the production team was zoned in, carrying out a technical rehearsal all morning, hoping to ensure that the performance would go off without a hitch.

Meanwhile out on the Royal Mile, the campaign team was handing out leaflets left right and centre, in awe of the lengths that some companies will go to in order to get people to come and watch their show — walking around the streets with trousers round their ankles! Needless to say, this wasn’t something we took part in!

The level of competition we faced on the Royal Mile was immense, so many different amazing shows, so many sales pitches, and we all wanted the same thing, bums on seats.

At first, it is safe to say it is incredibly disheartening when nearly every person completely ignores you, or makes a comment like “no thanks” without even hearing what you have to say, but this only made us want to work harder.

We stuck at it and before we knew it, so many people had our leaflets and badges and seem genuinely interested in what we were doing.

After a spot of lunch, we all headed back to the venue, the actors taking their place back stage, and the campaign team waiting at the doors nervously to see who was going to turn up.

Afternoon: despite having a small audience, including three Oldhamers who had come to see the piece after reading about it in the Oldham Evening Chronicle and a woman whose Chaddertonian friend had called her to recommend the performance, the piece ran without a hitch and was very well received.

Rob, who plays the main character of Jake, had this to say about the first performance: “We are all so relieved to have gotten the first performance under out belt, and even though it was a small audience, they were completely engaged from start to finish.

“We are all incredibly excited for the rest of the performances all this week!”

Unbeknown to the cast, there were a number of critics sitting on the front row, and we wait with baited breath for the reviews to come out in tomorrow’s Edinburgh Fringe publications. We’ll keep you posted!

More tomorrow