At the Edinburgh Festival 2

An unavoidable part of any visit to the Festival is the flyering.  Across the city but especially near the major venues and along the Royal Mile are swarms of enthusiastic people thrusting brightly coloured paper flyers for their shows at unresponsive passers-by.  For a sector of society (ie performers and writers) purportedly concerned with environmental issues the waste is unbelievable.

It is an article of faith that a successful show Edinburgh relies on a minimum of one hour a day of flyering per cast member.  Yet the widely held rule of thumb that a 1% yield (ie one audience member per every 100 flyers handed out) is par doesn't bear out this argument.

I think that flyering has more to do with regaining a sense of agency in the face of the overwhelming odds against success; most shows lose money because there are so many shows competing for business; performers are reduced to attempting anything at all, regardless of its efficacy, to increase the chance of success, regardless of the efficacy of the action.  Your own time is cheap, why not use it?

Of course this grasping at straws is nothing more than superstition.  Although there is no logic in agency for agency's sake, most of us are guilty of those silly rituals that seem to pay dividends in the face of their illogicality.

Performers who would never deign to flyer their own show in London, instead employing kids who are happy to take a few quid for a few hours work, happily do so at the Festival.  Superstition notwithstanding, I suspect that the real reason is that this pointless task is a leveler; part of the shared 'Edinburgh experience' to bond over.

We had an audience of 9 last night.