This was supposed to be one of the thing I wrote in December, but due to the combination of my day job temporarily going nuts, and me fighting off a monster stomach bug at the same time. Anyone waiting for me to wrap up everything on the theatre blog, apologies. Will make a proper attempt to catch up this weekend.

Anyway, here we go:

The good ...

Fewer items to list compared to last year, but one of them really is a big deal.

• We launched Durham Free Fringe. Probably the most audacious thing I've ever done in theatre. And the most stress-inducing as well. Honestly, I'd spent pretty much every day from November 2024 to July 2025 stressing over how this would turn out. Would we get enough acts? Would we get an audience? Would things hold together with our venues? And so many other things. But, madlads that we are, we pulled it off. Enough to put a programme together, and whilst the audience varied from event to event, I'd say our bigger events had some really respectable audiences. I won't tell a lie, not everything worked as well as we hoped it would, we had some precarious moments, and we learned a lot of lessons. But that was our first attempt, and we've got a better plan in place for Durham Free Fringe 2026. Hope to open programming in the next week or so.
• It's not Cluedo had its second year, continuing my partnership with the Rotunda at Brighton Fringe, reprising at Scarborough, finally coming to Buxton and Durham, both of which I'd wanted to do for ages. The show's evolved into something a lot more versatile than last year, able to scale up from informal games with a handful of audience to all-star line ups at Brighton Fringe - but I have to say, my favourite show this year was a Brighton Fringe one. No disrespect to the rest of my guests, all of whom were great, but the show that featured Do The Thing, Glenda and Rita, Aaron Weight and Bad Clowns was INCREDIBLE. Lots of people funnier than me taking the show to levels I could never have done on my own.
• I performed Doctor Coppelius. A much lower-key project, partly because the Buxton Fringe venue where I'd intended to do this, the Green Man Gallery, sadly closed for 2025. But I really did love performing in Scrivener's bookshops so I stuck with a set of intimate performances there. Got some really good feedback from that. I'm not quite done with this, because the new Rotunda Pip space was just too tempting for an encore, so if you'd like to see me do something serious for a change at Brighton Fringe, you can see me there.
• I've been getting busy with lighting. Just a side-project compared to everything else, but I finally managed to get my mits on some lighting rigs of the big theatres. I learned loads from And There Were None at the People's Theatre, although I left the big decisions to the director there as he knows his way round the 100+ lights better than me. Then it was an encore for Durham University Ballet Company where I had two hours to knock together a lighting plot from zero. Oh, and I found out at the last moment I was operating the sound too. But miraculously it worked and I was amazed by how this turned out.
• I ditched Theatre Twitter: Not the grandest milestone of the year, but really wanted to do this ever since the AI revenge porn guy bought the site. Quite apart from the moral arguments - of which I have many - it's just become totally unusable, from stupid promotion of Musk-approved conspiracy theories to just being overrun by bugs. Until last year, however, I was stuck with the hellsite for the lack of a viable alternative. But finally, enough people moved to Bluesky for me to set up a new home there, thanks to the election of an orange maniac. I'd have preferred it if aforementioned orange maniac wasn't elected, but a social media channel that actually works is a silver lining.

I've got photos from various projects to add to the site which I hope to finally get round to. But honestly, I've got some good ones.

The bad ...

Partly because I'm aware that the temptation is for artists to paint a artificially good picture of success, but mostly so I can do a play on words of that Clint Eastwood film, here's the things that didn't work so well.

• I got the walk of shame. It finally happened. Every fringe performer dreads getting no-one to a performance, and I've had a few near misses, but it finally happened for one of my Doctor Coppelius performances at Buxton. In my defence, this happened during a monster heatwave and it clobbered ticket sales for pretty much everybody in the first week. Second week was better, but always frustrating to not get the word-of-mouth publicity you need at the start of the run. MI actually had sold tickets for that performance, but they didn't turn up. My request: please don't do that. If you buy tickets to a small show where every bum on seat counts, it really demoralises performers to simply not come along when you were expected. You've got the rest of the evening to chill out in the sun.
• I've hit the limit for what I can do: I've been aware for a few years that I cannot do one billion squillion zillion things at the same time, and I've been careful over what I commit to in the summer. Even so, five fringes in four months (two shows, one venue to run and lots of reviewing) is a lot of work and a lot of stress, and - I won't tell a lie - I was approaching breaking point by the end of it. As a result, I'm going to be more careful about overstretching myself in 2026. For anyone who thinks they're not doing enough and looking enviously at people who do everything and wondering how we manage to do it all - take it from me, we're looking enviously at you not having all these high-stress high-stakes projects. Do copy what I'm doing unless you're mad.
• I ditched Theatre Twitter. Whilst I'm glad to be rid of the cursed birdapp hellsite, Bluesky has only been a partial substitute. Progress on a theatre Bluesky community is slow, and I suspect it will never fully rebuild what was once Theatre Twitter. And that's not good for me, because that was one of my best publicity channels. Theatre blog hasn't been too bad, because Google has mostly filled the gap left my Twitter, but my theatre projects have taken a bigger hit with publicity. Instagram seems to have taken over as the main social media publicity channel now, but I've found images too much of a faff. No intention of going back, though - even if I wanted to, Theatre Twitter's pretty much decimated now. So it's still worth it.

... and the ugly:

It wasn't my play to make The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly an annual theme. I thought the shenanigans with Durham Dramatic Society was the last ugly bit of business I had to deal with. Sadly, there's more.

• A venue I used to perform at turned racist on us. I've said my piece elsewhere as to why I believe Whistlebinkies' and Banshee Labyrinth's exclusion of a Jewish performers from their Edinburgh Fringe programmes is both illegal and racist, and I won't repeat that here. But there's nothing more gutting than one of the venues doing this being a place I performed at and liked. The easy thing to do would be to do what most fringe performers do, and keep my head down - but after all the time I spent banging on about standing up to wrongdoing wherever you see it, it would have hypocritical of me. Ah well, looks like I won't be going back to Edinburgh Horror Festival in a hurry. I can at least take a small comfort that I tricked Banshee Labyrinth into hosting a play they'd never have permitted if they knew what it was really saying. And, satisfyingly, Banshee Labyrinth can never admit they'd have had a problem with that.
• Durham Dramatic Society doesn't seem to be getting much better. Much as I resent how I was treated, part of me wondered if the root problem was me. Was the society was getting on better without me? The answer, it turns out, is no. There's been a pretty ugly incident which, for once, I had nothing to do with. I'm not going to say what allegedly happened, because I've heard contradictory accounts, I've drawn a blank over who (if anyone) is in the wrong, and this would be damaging the people should the allegations be wrong and/or a misunderstanding. What I will say - and I'm saying this because I still care about the future of DDS - is that they really do need a proper complaints procedure. This is nowhere near as bad as Banshee Labyrinth (who richly deserve to be sued to high heaven), but incidents like this could still put them on the wrong side of the law. I have no reason to believe I will be listened to, but I'm happy to explain how you're pushing your luck with the Equality Act and what you ought to do about it.

Okay, this summary looks more downbeat than it really is. But, honestly, the launch of Durham Free Fringe was by far my biggest event of 2025, and everything else was just footnotes. Hopefully in 2026 I'll have a lot more good things to tell you about Durham Free Fringe. Please don't give me any bad or ugly things to write about.

Okay, that's enough procrastination. It's time to start thinking about next year's fringe season, and the big one will be plans for Durham Free Fringe 2026. When we wrapped up this year we'd pretty much decided we were going to do this, but decided very little else about how this would work. Well, we've finally got our heads together to start making plans. And the first decision we have to make is who's going to be operating this.

As I've mentioned several times before, 2025 was always intended to be a small and manageable season, so it was two of us (Aadil Kurji and myself) doing all the things between us, from top-level decision making to petty admin. Does this make sense for future years? To be honest, we don't know. The size of Durham Free Fringe is heavily dependent on demand, and whilst we have some influence with how heavily we publicise our call for participants, we have no idea how much demand is out there. It could remain as a small niche operation, or it grow to a big network of venues like the Free Fringe organisations in Edinburgh do. Only one thing is for certain: even with the low-budget low-resource model we use, there's only a finite number of acts two people can oversee.

So we've had a discussion and we're ready to share our first decisions for our plans next year.

Our first decision is that, for next year, governance remains unchanged. Aadil and myself will continue to make decisions between us. Of course, we are always listening for how you think this should be run, and if you have any views on how you'd like this to work, please reach out to us. After Durham Free Fringe 2026, we will review this arrangement again.

Our second decision, however, is something new. Our decision in principle is that we want Durham Free Fringe to be run by artists. There are many different ways fringe venues work, all of which are valid, but the advantage of venues run by artists for artists is that the people doing the work have hands-on experience of understanding the aspiration and struggles of the people taking part.

As such, from next year, if you want to perform with us, you will also be welcome and encouraged to help out with the wider event. Exactly how this works depends on what people think they have to offer. Maybe you can operate sound cues on another show, maybe you can help us with publicity, or maybe you just have a bunch of friends you can bring along to support some acts - whatever you think you can do, we're interested. To be clear, however, this is entirely optional. If you just want to do your own show, that's also fine, and this won't count against you we're doing programming. If you performed with us this year - you're welcome to get involved whether or not you're planning a follow-up next year.

For prospective volunteers who are not performers: for the time being, we are still encouraging you to volunteers for Durham Fringe instead of us. This isn't because we don't want you, but because we want to avoid a team getting too large and unwieldy until we have a better idea of how this works for us. But, again, if, whatever reason, you specifically want to work with us, let us know and we'll see what we can do.

If you're waiting for news on how to apply, be patient. We won't be starting programming until the New Year. But in the meantime, if you want to contact us for whatever reason - be it feedback, interest in performing, or offers to help you - contact us at hello@durhamfreefringe.org.uk and we'll get back to you.

Postscript: Finally: yes, know. I am continuing to use my website for Durham Free Fringe updates when we have a proper free fringe website now. Please bear with us - properly configuring that site beyond a one-page job is on our list of things to do, but we're both currently ridiculously busy in our day jobs. We hope to soon have all the key information over there.

I aim to do updates at least monthly, but this is going to be a quick update because there is no news. After five fringes in four months, I've been comatose. Of course, it didn't help that I've been on holiday for nine days - as people who know me can attest, my holidays are even more exhausting than my fringe activities.

Things aren't quite still. We've had a first discussion on Durham Free Fringe plans for next year. Nowhere near any formal plans yet, but I hope to make some proper moves next month. We might actually have something to announce sooner than you think, but I'll have to get back to you on that.

And that's your update. Back to hibernation for me.

And that's really it for this year. Not said much about my final month because that was reviewing at Edinburgh Fringe, which you can read all about on my other website. I won't tell a lie, without the chance of a break after Durham Free Fringe, I was approaching breaking point at one time during my visit. But I've made it through to the end, lost count of the number of reviews I got out, and I finally I can have a rest. Well, not a complete rest, I have a few loose ends to tie up. And then I have a holiday to go on, and anybody who knows me knows my holidays are way more tiring than a normal day working. But after that, I'm pretty much clear until fringe season start ramping up in spring next year.

However, my fringe season has ended on a sour note. Two Edinburgh Fringe venues have gone full racist on us and kicked out Jewish performers for being Jewish. (They made claims as to why it wasn't about that, but their excuses are just shit - and, as I made the case on my theatre blog - not excuses accepted by the Equality Act for direct discrimination.) Most gutting: one of them in Banshee Labyrinth, where I have fond memories of doing Edinburgh Horror Festival. I must stress at this point that the racist act has been committed by the host venue, and - as far as I can tell - Edinburgh Horror Festival is an innocent party in this. But it's still enough to make me want to have nothing to do with a business that behaved as such a despicable manner. Had I been doing Edinburgh Horror Festival this year, I would have withdrawn in protest.

Anyway, Edinburgh Horror Festival was fun, but a novelty I can do without. I badly need a rest, so no decisions on anything for at least a month. And if you need to sleep for a month too, go ahead. You've earned it.

It's Monday 28th July. It's one day after Durham Free Fringe finished. And it's actually worked. We put on show. And we got an audience. And a respectable audience size.

Honestly, you have no idea how much of a relief it is to have pulled this off. I have been stressing over this for pretty much the last eight months. The difference between this and my Durham Fringe work is that, this time round, the buck really did stop with me. There really was nobody to come to my rescue. It really was a case of guesswork over which of our plans were going to work - and I won't tell a lie, there were a lot of things that didn't work the way we wanted. There were long period of time in the run-up when I was convinced this was going to be a damp squib. We did manage to get venues on board and put together a programme and get publicity out, but with all events being free and unticketed, we had no idea what audiences we would get. It really was a case of turn up and hope other people do.

But, my God, it worked. Varied from show to show, but for the 7.30 comedy shows some turnouts beyond my wildest dreams. So thank you so much to everybody who made this work. Thanks to Adil my co-organiser, our visiting artists Kathrine, Caitriona, Ben, Dan, Raymond and Jennifer, and everybody in the audience who gave our crazy gamble a chance.

The cat's already out of the bag: we intend to do this again next year. We do have lessons to learn from this one, and any feedback you have will be welcome, be it what we could do better or what direction you want us to go in. But right now, I need to sleep for a month.

We now have an actual website, so you can follow that for updates instead of reading call-outs on this is. In the meantime, here's a picture of the first It's Not Cluedo to take place in Durham.

Excuse the lack of updates, but with Buxton Fringe performances and Durham Free Fringe preparations going on, I haven't had much time for updates. If you've been following Instagram or Bluesky you should have a better idea of what's going on.

But we're actually doing it. It starts tomorrow, with ten performances of six acts over five days in two venues. Gotta rush, so here's a reprint of the press release.

Would love to see you this week. And we now have an actual website.

---

Durham Free Fringe brings a stage for everyone

A new festival comes to Durham this July to build on the success of Durham Fringe. Modelled on Edinburgh Free Fringe, an intiative that made performing at Edinburgh more accessible to artists, Durham Free Fringe will run alongside Durham Fringe on the 23^rd - 27^th July.

There are no fees to take part, and all performances are free to watch, with audiences invited to make donations to the performers after each show. The reason this is possible is that the Free Fringe recognises that many acts do not need pop-up theatre spaces with full sound and lighting equipment; for performances such as stand-up comedy, stoytelling and poetry, only a room in a pub is needed. Without such labour-intensive overheads, it is possible to open up performance opportunities to many more acts.

In its first year, Durham Free Fringe will be kept small and manageable. Run by Aadil Kurji leading on comedy and Chris Neville-Smith leading on theatre, Durham Free Fringe will by primarily based at The Holy GrAle, with The Station House running as a secondary venue on Saturday 26^th. The programme for the first year includes:

• Philosophy Storytime: Erotic Tales of and for Lovers of Wisdom. Previously debuted at Dundee Fringe, a one-person performance from Kathrine Cuccuru that combines storytelling and philosophical discussion. Showing on Wednesday 23^rd and Thursday 24^th July at the Holy GrAle at 6.00 p.m.
• It’s Not Cluedo! Chris Neville-Smith’s comedy game show developed with the Rotunda at Brighton Fringe finally comes home to Durham. Choose your own setting, you own murder victim, and your own list of six suspects, six weapons and nine locations. Showing on Wednesday 23^rd at the Holy GrAle at 7.30 p.m.
• (Just off the) Bailey Banter: Aadil Kurji’s mixed bill stand-up comedy sets. All welcome, from new comedians trying out new sets to established comedians with samples from larger shows. Showing on Thursday 24^th July and Friday 25^th July at the Holy GrAle at 7.30 p.m.
• The Durham Improv Jam: Your chance to come and play some improv games, or watch other performers take to the stage, in a relaxed and unscripted interactive show. Join us for an hour jam-packed full of laughs! Friday 25^th July at 4.30 p.m.
• Caitriona Dowden: Dance Like Everyone's Dancing: Following her double award-nominated debut, she returns with a feel-good show about apocalyptic dread (and the 1518 dancing plague). Showing on Friday 25^th July at the Holy GrAle at 6.00 p.m, then Saturday 26^th at the Station House at 2.00 p.m.
• Doctor Coppelius: Chris Neville-Smith’s storytelling play about the tragic villain from the ballet Coppelia. We see Doctor Coppelius’s journey from an idyllic youthful love story to the sinister puppet-master he became. Showing on Saturday 26^th at the Station House at 3.00 p.m, then Sunday 27^th May at 4.00 p.m. at the Holy Grale.

Entry to all shows are free and unticketed.

Been a slow news month for theatre projects but still plenty to keep me busy, most notably Brighton Fringe, which has gone really well. I've had some great showings of It's Not Cluedo, thanks in a large part to some incredible guests I had of these shows. I also saw some great photos taken from the audience, which I can't post here because I didn't hear back about permission, but you can enjoy it in this on instagram with this photo and this video.* This is the first time that ticket revenue has gone into four figures - and, okay, comedy is easy to sell than theatre, but it makes a refreshing change from fringe theatre performances where I've fretted over getting any kind of audience at all.

*: Insta links aren't being reliable. It's the sixth and ninth item in the set of pictures if it doesn't take you to the correct pic.

Huge thanks to all my guests - honestly, the show is only what it is because of you. Special thanks in particular to the random audience member who joined us in the last game when we were short of guests. You were fab. But I've already forgotten your name. Please identify yourself and I will make sure you are credited.

I'm not quite done with It's Not Cluedo. Currently got confirmed dates at Scarborough and Buxton Fringe here. Just a heads-up: I have already sold 15% of tickets for Scarborough It's Not Cluedo. I am considering my options for what to do if it sells out, but Scarborians: if you want to be certain, early booking advised. Also got my Doctor Coppelius run, details here. Hope to add some more dates soon - check those two links to stay up to date.

Other than that, it might look calm, but think of it as a duck: all calm and peaceful up top, but under the water where you can't see it's all very busy. Should have some news for you soon. Until then, that's all folks.