To quote the timeless advice of the Moloko hit single: The Time Is Now. By “now”, we mean from June onwards. If you are approaching the media at the start of August, you may very well have missed the boat. In June, when the Fringe programme is announced, this is the time when our plans start assembling.
As an editor, I sift through all the shows and create a long list of shows that we could cover. And oh boy it’s long. When we work out how many reviewers we have on the ground in Edinburgh, that’s when we have to put the jigsaw together. We aim that our coverage is a balance. We aim for a mix of the known and the unknown. We try and mix it up so we are featuring drama, music, comedy, dance and reflect the breadth of performance that is available to Fringe audiences.
It’s a task fraught with challenges. You’d be surprised, for example, how often the shows we’d like to feature end up performing at the same time. Also we like to do justice to the shows we review – which means scheduling in time to write up our reviews rather than just dashing down a couple of rushed lines that are little use to the shows or the audiences.
So, the message is get in touch with the media as early as you can. There are a limited capacity what each online review site can cover and that dance card gets filled up very quickly.