By Julius Grafton
Adelaide Fringe Festival runs a month with a staggering number of shows and venues across sunny Adelaide. I stumbled over it in 2020 just a few days short of lockdowns while on the ENTECH tour. Kate and I caught a tent show in Rymil Park and were amazed at the whole experience.
Wikipedia says “The Adelaide Fringe, formerly Adelaide Fringe Festival, is the world’s second-largest annual arts festival (after the Edinburgh Festival Fringe), held in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. Between mid-February and mid-March each year, it features more than 7,000 artists from around Australia and the world. Over 1,300 events are staged in hundreds of venues, which include work in a huge variety of performing and visual art forms. The Fringe begins with free opening night celebrations, and other free events occur alongside ticketed events for the duration of the festival.
The three main temporary venue hubs are The Garden of Unearthly Delights, Gluttony and the Royal Croquet Club, and other temporary and permanent venues hosting Fringe events are scattered across the city, suburbs and region.
I am working sound at Gluttony just now and loving the inclusion (I’m twice the age of any of the crew) and the vibe. Across the road is The Garden and, like Gluttony, it is a park FULL of tents and temporary venues. We have 14 in our park.
Our Production is headed by Cat Cohen, with an all-female leadership who quite frankly blow my mind with their skill sets. It makes gender irrelevant and I think that day has arrived. On day one I moved into MOA, a 600-seat tent venue where the stunning Marcia Hines stars in Velvet. We do two shows a day, followed by a quirky circus-based show called Rouge. On weekends they have an R-rated late show called ‘Rouge goes Rogue’ – and it is essentially the same show, minus some clothes.
Charlotte Kirby, audio system engineer par excellence
Doing four shows from 4pm until midnight tests you, especially in the rehearsal phase. I found the correct balance of food in a cool bag ensured survival. We were all fatigued by opening late last week, but once the show run started it fell into a groove.
Technically Gluttony (it is a self-contained private company) does a ‘dry hire’ from Novatech. Gluttony crew set up each venue, with two Novatech crew rotating around sorting out people like me (I am learning Dante patch on a Yamaha CL audio system) and it all came together.
The packaging from Novatech is first-rate. Each system element has a pick sheet, with everything plus more included – right down to any tools you may need (and I didn’t). They put a ‘Ready for Hire’ sticker over the case catch.
According to the brothers, Leko and Menk Novakovic, they prep on return, backwards from most. They say it takes more time but each system element is thus ready to go, and a lot of our industry has ‘last minute’ stuff happening. Right? Yes!
My PA is immaculate, my mixing less so as I learn the tricks and work the complexity of a show (Velvet) with most singers working thrust. Feedback is my enemy. There is no band, rather Velvet has a percussionist DJ – with 18 lines. I have 32 channels of show. Velvet touring SM Justin Marshman does very thorough and helpful show reports each day.
Rouge on the other hand has Qlab replay and 2 mics!
Moa has three Gluttony crew, Sarah Platts the SM, Jack the LD, and me. My colleagues are first-class professionals and I appreciate them mentoring me – a band sound guy – in a theatre environment. Last Saturday night Gluttony had 30,000 people in the park.
The Garden in the opposite same-sized park has similar statistics.
Fringe is utterly amazing!
