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Festival fever rubs off on audiences ; Behind the Scenes By Roses Theatre marketing and press manager Deborah Rees [Gloucestershire Echo (England)](Gloucestershire Echo (England) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) IT'S been the festival season over the summer - a whole variety of festivals hosting a huge range of different events and activities. Boutique festivals, food and drink festivals, music festivals, literature festivals - you name it, there will be a festival dedicated to it. Festivals are an interesting phenomenon and an important addition to our arts and cultural menu. They are an opportunity to try things that you might not otherwise choose to see. I am always struck by this when I go the Edinburgh Festival every year, looking for theatre and comedy shows to bring to The Roses. Audiences behave differently. There's an appetite to see a whole range of different types of show - theatre, comedy, dance, music - with audiences running (sometimes literally) from venue to venue, trying to catch as many shows as they can. Someone presses a leaflet in your hand, you have a spare hour to see it and you take a chance. Sometimes the show is brilliant, sometimes it's bad. But your attitude to risk is different and you take the rough with the smooth. This year The Roses took its oldest youth theatre to perform at the Edinburgh Festival with a devised show called A.Loan, which incorporated themes of starting university and student loans. They performed for a week and had the most incredible experience. Real audiences came to see their show, real audiences took a risk and real audiences seemed to really enjoy themselves. Of course at festivals you're on holiday, you've decided to spend some money, you've got free time to see things. It's very different to the usual run of the mill week, when we're time poor and the idea of spending a tenner on a show (or more) with no guarantee that it's going to be brilliant, is off putting. But wouldn't it be wonderful to find a way of capturing that Festival attitude and having it all year round? For those that would like to keep their toe dipped in that wonderful Festival spirit A.Loan is being performed at The Roses for the last time at 6.15pm on Thursday, September 11. (c) 2014 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved. |