Whew. That was a blast. Those five days were a bit of a blur, but just when I thought I’d recovered from that, it was time to do reviewing at Edinburgh Fringe. (If you want to know about that, you can read the coverage on my theatre blog. Short version it that is was eight days and 39 shows out of the 320 review requests.) And then I decided it was a good idea to go on holiday the week after - and those who know me will be aware my holidays are even bigger endurance tests. But, at the time of writing this paragraph, I have just completed a 20-mile lap of Paris, and I thought I've make a start.

This is on my own web page because these are my own personal view. Nothing I’m going to say here is in conflict with agreed Durham Free Fringe ethos (we’re a team, no one person dictates things), but the focus here is a lot more on why I’m doing it and what it was like for me.

The prologue

I’ve been on the fringe scene in Durham since Durham Fringe began in 2021. I’d said for years that the north-east needs a fringe, so that local acts get a fair chance to showcase themselves. Having been active on the fringe circuit elsewhere, and having also been active in Durham Dramatic Society who run the City Theatre, I wanted to do my bit to make this succeed. Between 2021 and 2023, I effectively ran the City Theatre Durham Dramatic Society's behalf (apart from programming, ticketing and front of house which Durham Fringe took care of). I was proud of the role I played in making the City Theatre a viable venue, and I'm still proud of it.

As many of you will know, there was big falling out in 2024. I won't repeat the details now, suffice to say, it was 90% down to a deteriorating relationship with Durham Dramatic Society (including, amongst other things, taking the credit for my Durham Fringe work). Durham Fringe was caught in the middle, but the upshot was that it was impossible for me to carry on doing the same job. Whilst I could have moved to another role, it was at this point I'd decided the time had come for me to do my own thing completely.

A free fringe event made sense for several reasons. I knew Durham Fringe were keen on the idea but had never got round to doing it themselves. From my point of view, it was largely the same as what I’d done already, minus front of house and ticketing - both of which a Free Fringe largely does away with. But there was a more fundamental reason: as someone who struggled for years to get a look-in, my loyalty has always been with grass-roots artists seeking their first break. The north-east has historically been terrible at this; Durham Fringe is a VAST improvement in this regard, but as long a single act is denied the chance to show what they can do, the job is not done. That job, that I set out to do 2021, is the job I want to complete.

And that, folks, is the reason behind our tagline “a stage for everyone”. This well-meaning phrase was adopted by Edinburgh Fringe, and it's sort-of true there, but has the obvious barrier of expense. The Free Fringe at Edinburgh alleviates this, doing away costly labour-intensive pop-up theatre spaces: for many acts, especially stand-up comedians, all you need is an audience and some floor space (something pubs eagerly provided for free). However, Edinburgh Free Fringe doesn’t escape eye-watering travel and accommodation expenses. A Durham Free Fringe, on the other hand, could be affordable and accessible in every respect.

And so in 2025, two of us, Aadil Kurji and myself, decided to have a go at this. The Holy GrAle was his idea, and a great idea it’s turned out to be. There were two things we wanted to avoid: we didn't want to have to say "no" to any applicants, but we also wanted to avoid a fringe too large for us to manage. So we went for a low-key launch - almost too low-key in hindsight - but we managed an event with six acts and nine performances between them.

We’d done it. We’d put on an event. Not the most spectacular launch year - but it was never meant to be spectacular, only a start. Now we could take stock of where we were, prepare for a bigger push next year. Which is 2026, this year.

And then things went nuts.

This year …

Going into 2026, we went for a strategy of “elastic” capacity. We still wanted to say “yes” to everyone who applied, but still had no idea how many applications we’d get. So the idea was to plan a modest scale, but with provision to expand according to demand. Aadil and I eventually decided to launch applications with just the Holy GrAle on board, and consider approaching other venues later.

And so, we launched in January with no idea what would happen. I knew that if we were to be taken seriously, we needed a convincing advancement beyond six. But there was no flurry of applications after launch - and halfway into February … still no applications. Were we going to make any progress at all? Would we even get six? The first few started trickling in, we breathed a sigh of relief that at least we wouldn't be shrinking. But we went into March still not really breaking single figure … and then ... boom.

Suddenly, we found ourselves dealing with around 25 applications. Having thought about a face-saving plan make a smattering of acts not look too dismal, suddenly we had opposite challenge of finding enough venues to fit everyone in. By this point, Dan Husband had joined the team (having featured last year as a guest spot in a mixed bill show), and one side-effect of the publicity through his channels was a lot of spoken word uptake. Because of this, we decided to see if the Miners’ Hall would be up it, as a hub for spoken word.

I won’t tell a lie, getting extra venues on board was a challenge, with a lot of chasing up emails, retrieving lost emails from spam folders, getting details agreed with venues, and some ultra-stressful last-minute enquiries to confirm some things we'd not properly confirmed. But with the Miners Hall on board and the Market Tavern as the third venue, we got the final details sorted out with days to spare. With the last bits of programming finalised with days to spare, off we went …

... and five days later, we'd done it.

If there’s one thing I've noticed, it's that Durham Free Fringe is beginning to take a life of its own. I originally expected it to work similarly to Edinburgh Free Fringe: a open self-selecting programme, but dominated by stand-up comedy. Instead, spoken word and music have become the dominant parts of the programme. We've also deviated heavily from the Edinburgh model of stewarding audiences into spaces at the start of a show and out at end. Instead we had audiences dropping in and dropping out, from just one drink to hours of shows. Other things that evolved in their own way was strong attachment of artists and audiences to one favourite venue, and a surprise impromptu performance at the front of the Market Tavern into the Market Place.*

*: Not sure that was actually legal, but so far no-one has come to arrest me.

And to be clear: all of these changes of plan are good. I believe fringe festival are at their best when they are shaped by the performers. You could impose limits on one category in the name of a “balanced” festival (spoken word in our case, other festivals might want a limit on comedy). I think that would be a mistake. If we're short of theatre or magic acts, we won't do anybody any favours by curbing a surplus of acts in other categories. I'd much rather let our eventual line-up come as a surprise.

There is, however, one challenge which you may not appreciate: imposter syndrome. I've had this as a performer, as has pretty much all other performers: the feeling that you're not a "real" artist, and the "real" artists are the ones with more established careers than you. But it's a lot more daunting to battle imposter syndrome when you're running an event, especially when you're in the shadow of a more established and bigger event: again, the feeling that your festival isn't a "real" festival, and the "real" festival is the one you're running alongside.

However, the thing that helped me through this imposter syndrome was the support I had. Huge thanks to Aadil and Dan as co-organisers, of course - quite apart from sharing the workload, I'm not sure I could have held my nerve without. A big thank you also, though, to the numerous people inside and outside Durham who wished us luck and said they appreciate what we're doing. I realise I was mostly responded to this with a seemingly non-committal "cheers pal" but only because I was trying to not look like an over-stressed madman. I truly appreciate the support and encouragement, it gives me the motivation to press on.

But the thing that brought tears to my eyes more than anything was a packed Holy GrAle on the final night when we had our musical finale. It was thing point that made me thing: we've done it. This is more than a few stragglers cobbling together a small gathering - this is an event in its own right. And, I hope, and event people will keep coming to.

Which brings us to Durham Free Fringe 2027, which we're planning already.

What could have been done better ...

Okay, now it's time for the introspection. Though Durham Free Fringe 2026 was ultimately a success, it was messy. This probably applies to most events, but however smooth it looked on the surface, it was a lot scrappier under the hood. Our expectation is that there will be more applicants next year - and we want to continue to say "yes" to everybody - and we are going to have to get more organised. We are in early days on considering what this would be like.

In the meantime, however this list - treated as the "yes, we know" list - is a summary of the areas where I accept things could be improved:

• Should have had venues on standby earlier: In our defence, it seemed a good idea at the time to start with just the Holy GrAle. But it turns out we'd underestimated how long it takes to confirm venues we've previously not worked with. It also didn't help that we spent too long trying to enlist one venue (that I was convinced would be up for it) who never answered any of our messages. I think we're pretty much agreed that next time we'll need get more venues signed up before applications open. We can figure out coping with higher-than- or lower-than-expected demand later
• Artists offers shouldn't have been that late: The cause of this was, of course, not getting venues confirmed until late in the day. We originally said we'd try to get offers out in April, May would probably have been okay, but June was really pushing it, with some final slots not even sorted until July. Thank you to everyone for putting up with the late schedule, but you deserve more certainty.
• PA systems are not optional. The service we advertised guaranteed nothing more than a room - we said we might be able to provide extra help, but ultimately the only guarantee if the performers providing their own. However, this is not how things are working in practice. The Holy GrAle and Miners' Hall really work better with one PA system for everybody rather than everyone bringing in their own equipment - and I don't think the music acts would have managed without, even if they said they could. The good news is that we actually got inundated with offers for PA systems, but we didn't quite manage to cover all bases and a couple of acts slipped through the cracks. Sorry if that was you - we will be better organised next time.
• Too much manual admin: The admin for a 6-show fringe in 2025 was a doddle. However, organising 30 acts manually was a nightmare. We just about kept on top of communicating with all 30 applicants (apart from one act where Dan and I thought each other had made a show offer, oops, sorry), but listings were a right pain: website, brochure and various daily guides all requiring the same information in different orders. We've gotta figure out a better way of doing this. Speaking of publicity ...
• Publicity should have been created sooner: Again, this is another problem caused by venue management delaying everything, but we really should have got the brochures printed out at least a week before the free fringe started. It was great to see so many of you browsing these, but browsing in advance would have been better.
• Lack of uptake for comedy: This one I didn't see coming. I assumed this would be our dominant category based on how the Edinburgh Free Fringe venues go, but we only had six comedy listings, of which three were borderline spoken word. Will be interested to see what you think about that. Should we try harder to get a proper comedy line-up? Or does that not matter and we just go ahead with whatever we get?
• Market Tavern: This venue is the one that struggled for audiences. Apart from aforementioned audacious musician who played outside to the Market Place, the audiences never broke low single figures, including my show that performed much better at the Holy GrAle last year. I think the lesson we've learned the hard way is that much of our audience are attached to one particular venue. Holy GrAle and Miners Hall did fine because they had an existing performing arts scene. Market Tavern doesn't really, and doesn't have an easy audience to draw on. Open to suggestions for this.
• Mixed bill events: We've also not really had much update for mixed bill events, which is a bit of a disappointment because I think these events do a lot to bring a festival together. What do you think? Persist with this or give up?
• Donations: Whilst we're pleased that acts are getting some money for this, it's not as neat and tidy as Edinburgh Free Fringe. There, audiences enter a room for a specific act, leave at the end, and donate for that act. But with audiences dropping in for several shows, it's unclear who was donating for a specific act and who was donating for all of the acts that evening. Something to discuss for next year.

All of these I hope can be discussed soon with resolutions soon after. However, there's arguably a bigger challenge that we don't have control over:

The elephant in the room

Now, the more perceptive of you might have notice that whilst we frequently mention and support the work of Durham Fringe in our publicity, Durham Fringe's publicity has never mentioned us. It reads the same as if Durham Free Fringe never existed. And the circumstances in which I went from Fringe to Free Fringe weren't exactly harmonious. Based on that, you'd be forgiven for thinking there's some thinly-concealed subtext to this.

The truth, however, is a lot less dramatic. I am frequently in contact with their manager Maria Baranowska, and the main thing that's stopped us working more closely together is quite boring: we were both too busy organising our respective festivals. But we have kept each other up to date over what we're doing, and the one agreement we do have in place is that if either of us have to take action against a performer who does something bad (like racist abuse or sexual harassment), we will warn each other of this before the wrong 'un does the same with the other festival. And we have - and we welcome - performers who are involved in both festivals. Nevertheless, the two events could be working together more.

Could we work together more? I don't know. I get the impression from the grapevine that opinions of us vary substantially within Durham Fringe, but I don't know enough from the rumour-mill to know who if anyone has gripes, or what the gripes are. From my end, I hear various gripes about Durham Fringe. Now, as far as I'm concerned, that's background noise. No festival of this size is going to please all the people all the time and I can't think of a single festival of this size that doesn't have criticisms. (For my part, I still think Durham Fringe is over-dependent on volunteers, and one day this will come back to bite them - but that is a battle I don't want to pick.)

The thing I want to avoid at all costs is Durham Free Fringe becoming a magnet for people with grudges against Durham Fringe. No festival has ever succeeded by identifying itself as anti-another festival. As I see it, Durham Fringe and Durham Free Fringe are doing two different things, and neither of us are realistically in position to muscle in on the other's territory, even if we wanted to. So it benefits nobody to have an adverse relationship. Edinburgh International Festival, Edinburgh Fringe and Edinburgh Free Fringe have no trouble understanding this, and it would be better for everyone if Durham did too.

My overriding priority is doing whatever serves our acts the best. At the moment, the biggest difficulty our acts face is potential punters in Durham City in festival week who don't even know the Free Fringe exists, let alone what acts are playing. I hope that is something where we can work with Durham Fringe; I don't know if we can. But what I can say - and this is the official position of Durham Free Fringe - is that our door will always be open for working together.

What next?

I won't try to make any predictions for Durham Free Fringe 2027. I'd have never guessed how this year's Free Fringe would go this time last year, so who knows what we get next year.

There is one thing I should clearly state: I absolutely do not want to be head honcho of a large festival. I want to do whatever is needed to realise the goal of a stage for everyone. However, if demand goes up and up and up and up, we could end up in a similar situation in Durham Fringe where someone was to be in charge of a large team of people, managing them and telling them what to do. And I'm really not the person for that. I am most at home in creative projects, either on my own, or a small collaborative venture. Big top-down operations are sometimes needed, and someone's got to be at the top, but I have no interest in that being me.

Our immediate priority is to make a decision on how to organise ourselves for next year. Free Fringe 2027 will, in all probability, be too much for two people, and too big for the informal setup we've had so far. Exactly what sort of formal structure we move to and how we get to it needs to be decided - and it needs to be decided soon.

After that, we intend to have a wider meet-up to discuss how things went and what to do for next year. I propose that the focus should be on what artists think are best for them. Until now, we have closely followed the Edinburgh Free Fringe model. But Durham is not Edinburgh and now is a good time to think about what works for Edinburgh is right here. Should we try to be more like Edinburgh Free Fringe with audiences entering and leaving for set events? Or should we overhaul the donations system to work with the way our events work? Those and other things we'd love to get your views on. We originally intended to do this in late September, but that didn't happen because we're knackered. But we hope to have one soon.

And finally: all being well, we hope to start doing the odd year-round event. These will probably be fundraising events, and rely heavily on acts we had before, but we've only just started thinking about this. Hope to have more details soon.

And finally ...

Whilst Durham Free Fringe has been a joyous week for me, it wouldn't be right to close an article about an off-shoot of Edinburgh Free Fringe without looking at the appalling events going on there. Last year, under the watch of PBH Free Fringe, one venue committed outright racial discrimination. I can say this because the artist who kicked out because of his ethnicity took the venue to court and won. There is another case ongoing at another PBH Free Fringe venue, but their excuses if anything were even worse and they'll probably lose in court too. So two venues committing discrimination - and so far not a word of disapproval from PBH Free Fringe, let alone action.

I have a bit of sympathy with PBH Free Fringe here. Unlike the paid venues in Edinburgh Fringe, the Free Fringe have very little power over the venues, who still run and staff the venues and have the same power over visiting artists that a pub has the rest of the year. Should one of them decide equality law doesn't apply to them, PBH Free Fringe cannot overrule them - and protesting too strongly jeopardises the remaining acts. PBH Free Fringe could have chosen to do without these two venues this year, but they were two pretty high-profile venues. Could I trust myself to hold firm if, God forbid, one of our venues did that?

But, at the end of the day, I really think there is no justification for any course of action other than cutting ties with venues that behave that disgracefully. Thankfully, I am confident none of the venues we are working with would pull that stunt, so hopefully we'll never be in this horrible situation. But I am strongly of the view that when it comes to serious matters like bullying, discrimination, and sexual harassment, nobody should be indispensable. It doesn't matter how valuable a venue or an artist becomes to us - as soon as someone thinks they can get away with things because they're untouchable, we are part of the problem if we don't say no.

This is just my view - it is possible that the rest of Durham Free Fringe would decide it's not worth picking that sort of fight. If I get outvoted, so be it. But that is what I want. If it comes to the choice of doing the right thing and taking a stand, or doing the easy thing and keeping your head down, give me the right thing any day.

Hopefully we will (I sincerely hope) never be put to that test. Whilst at least one free fringe chain in Edinburgh faces questions over how welcoming or inclusive they truly are, this year we were as welcoming and inclusive as can be. It was a bitter blow to see a fringe venue I'd run from the outset taken off my hands that way, but I'm proud of the team and community we've rebuilt. So this is a goodbye to Durham Free Fringe 2026, and I look forward to what 2027 brings us.

I'll be updating both my website and Durham Free Fringe's site with all the things that happened this year. But for now, this is your update.

AT LAST! I CAN ANNOUNCE THIS!

I am super-excited thqat I can finally confirm my new creative project. I've had a great time doing The Rats in the Walls and Doctor Coppelius, but it has been commented that I don;t half pick some depressing subject material, and do you know what, you're right. It's about time I did a happy and joyous story, and after a lot of negotiations, I am now in a position to tell you what I have in store: a stage adaptation of John O'Farell's super book This Is Your Life.

This Is Your Life is the story of Jimmy Conway, who is in a dead-end job and a dead-end life. In despair after his escape fails, his is mistaken for a close friend of a famous comedian - and then, through a series of misunderstandings, bluffs, and lazy journalism, gets lauded as a brilliant stand-up comedian himself. So much, that he ends up performing a gig to the London Palladium ... even though he has never done stand-up comedy in his life.

The concept I've had in the head all this time is that you the audience are watching Jimmy Conway's comeback gig, with his story delivered in the format of stand-up comedy, but very much story first, gags second. The fact this is in the back-room of a pub and not another 2,000-seater venue should be a clue of how things went, but there's more to it than you might think - however, I'll say no more because there's a good twist at the end.

(On a personal note this story appealed to me for the themes of both celebrity culture and getting stuck in a dead-end life. I've seen both of those and the depiction in the book is spot on.)

So, the dates and times ... the very first work in progress performance will be at Buxton Fringe at The Cheshire Cheese on 15th July at 3.00 p.m., and then the second performance will be at Durham Free Fringe at The Market Tavern on 30th July also at 3.00 p.m. Both of these are free, because you are doing me a favour as being test audiences. In the long term, I plan to upscale this to its intended full-length three-hander format, but I haven't even started thinking about how to get there. I'm going to get this done (along with the rest of Durham Free Fringe), and make plans after that.

Huge thanks to John O'Farell for allowing me to take a chance on this book, and thanks also to his agent Yasmin McDonald for working out the agreement to get started. And finally - the teaser image is for this play. A man struggling to carry the weight of a massive star - I wonder if this could be a metaphor for something?

As usual, June was supposed to be a calm month between the mayhem of May and July, and I've still been busy enough to not have time to post any updates. Let's do a catchup before things fall behind any further.

Scarborough Fringe: Well, that was fun. Couldn't do YMCA Theatre this year because the venue was out of action for an all-week hire, so instead I performed at Shakespeare Scratch Space, which is a former pub that now works as an art gallery and arts venue. Actually, this was a good opportunity, because the people running this venue seem to have grand plans for next year which I might be part of. Show of It's Not Cluedo was also good too, this time solving the murder of Donald Duck at Scarborough Castle.

I'm been hearing a lot of good feedback from my new practice this year of letting guests doing their own mini-acts in the shows. Thanks, glad you like it, looks like I'll be sticking with this.

The only downside was that I stupidly left my accommodation to the last moment, forgetting that all accommodation gets booked up when some 90s band is on at Scarborough Open Air Theatre. So instead I had to stay a 20 minute bus ride away in Burniston. Which would still have been fine had the owner not turned out to be a Covid wingnut and I made my hastiest exit from a hotel ever. Won't be making that mistake again.

Swan Lake: Forgot to mention this one in advance, but yet again I did the lights for Durham University Ballet Company at the Gala. This is about the busiest possible time for me to me doing this (certainly when you're doing it the day immediately before going to Scarborough), but they keep asking me nicely so I couldn't say no.

Also, I really do enjoy getting my hands on the lighting at the Gala, and with a bit of help from the Gala staff I think I've done my best lighting plot ever. I'll try to compile photos across all three shows when I have a calmer moment, but in the meantime here's an early photo. (Credit: the awesome Dandy Chen, once again.)

Anyway, that's June done. In July, I of course have Durham Free Fringe, which I think I've mention has gone nuts and we've brought on two new venues to meet demand. I've started putting updated on the Durham Free Fringe website where they belong, but here's some links here:

• Miners’ Hall joins Durham Free Fringe.
• Market Tavern joins Durham Free Fringe.

Anyway, that's not until July. Which is tomorrow. Eek, it can't be July already?

Should really have done this update a couple of weeks ago, but I've been hibernating. Better do it now before things go nuts again.

Starting with It's Not Cluedo at Brighton Fringe. Once again ... er, wow. Ticket sales considerably ahead of last year, and I think gross sales might have hit the £1,500 mark. My guests were amazing, and I'm really pleased with my experiment to give acts the chance to showcase things from their own performances. The most unexpected bit was getting two hen nights along to two performances. But - contrary to legend when they're all pissed up on prosecco and screaming "Come on, get your cock out!" - they were very well behaved and great fun to have along.

Birmingham was a bit more flaky. Only sold a handful of tickets there, but Old Joint Stock were very helpful and managed to find an audience for me with a respectable 30-40. Seriously, very grateful for Old Joint Stock's support through this, talking me through options and basing the chosen way forward on what I think's best for me. So not the money-raker I thoughts this might be, but still a lot of fun. Also the first time I've done a game entirely with guests from the audience. We may actually start making a thing out of this. Watch this space.

Also did Doctor Coppelius. As expected, this was a niche show with small audiences, but it's meant to be for a small audience - and besides, after 60+ audiences with the other show, it gets me all nostalgic to go "Yippee! Audience of 9 today!" Oh, and there was the usual fun and games with last-minute technical problems before shows, including a five-hour slog to iron out a bug found at the last moment in Birmingham, and a re-partition and reinstallation of my laptop to solve a projector connection problem that came out of nowhere in Brighton. For some reason, I think that is fun.

In fact, the only thing that wasn't fun was my journey home. Some idiot got on to the tracks and the trains to London was delayed and a missed my connecting last train to Durham. Shouldn't have been a problem, LNER is supposed to arrange taxis so you don't get stranded, but there was no-one to be seen. Those people I was able to speak to either buggered off and never came back, or waited to hear from someone else who never came back. Honourable exception for the night manager at York station who finally did something, but I was back home at 4 a.m. Yes, LNER, 4 a.m. Would have been earlier had your organisation not been so shambolic. And I left my mobile phone on a train in the process of navigating the chaos on the Brighton Main Line. I know exactly where my mobile phone ended up - and Southern Rail has so far been as helpful as a hedgehog in a condom factory. Looks like two sets of complaints from me.

But that's enough of useless customer service. Still got It's Not Cluedo at Scarborough Fringe, Buxton Fringe and Durham Free Fringe. For Durham Fringe, we've started programming, have our first confirmed act, and hope to have good news on venues very soon.

Oh, and I also have something completely different to announce, but we've got to get the paperwork confirmed for that. But it will be exciting when I'm ready.

Until next time, see you.

Proper update coming on the proper free fringe website shortly, but on (soft) deadline day for applications for Durham Free Fringe, I can report that in the last few weeks it's gone nuts. One month ago, interest was only trickling in, and I was stressing over whether we'd be able to put on an event any bigger than the pilot festival last year. Now it's a new challenge: with more entries than we were expecting, a new task to find venues to put everyone.

Our aim is unchanged: we want a stage for everyone, and I'm still hopeful we can accommodate everyone who applied. We are in discussions with several venues to increase our capacity, and hope to be able to share news soon for who's on board. After than we can embark on scheduling and offers.

In the mix of this, we have Durham Fringe applicants to consider. A handful of Free Fringe applicants also applied to Durham Fringe - if that's you, don't worry, we can include you. We have deliberately planned the programming process so that unsuccessful Durham Fringe applicants can consider us an alternative - that's the reason why the 31st March is a "soft" deadline. Nevertheless, I'm sure you'll appreciate that we don't have the resources to find a home for all 100+ applicants without a Durham Fringe venue. Our current plan is to programme for the acts we already have first. After that, we should have a better idea if we have gaps in the programme we can fill.

All getting exciting/stressful now. All that remains is to thank everyone who put their trust in us for fringe week - we want to make sure our trust is earned.

Yay! I can finally announce this. And this news really has come out of the blue.

It's Not Cluedo is coming to Old Joint Stock Theatre! And this is a really big deal for me. Until now, It's Not Cluedo has always been done at inclusive venues where I've made the approach to the venue. This time, however, the venue approached me. Old Joint Stock is a pub theatre in Birmingham, but it's also one of the most famous pub theatres in the country - I keep hearing about them and the productions they host there.

I realise this news won't be of much use to the majority of my readers who see me either in the north-east or Brighton/Buxton Fringe, but if anyone is in reach of Birmingham, it's on 30th April at 7.30 p.m., which I can take in on a detour to Brighton Fringe. This is going to be a little different to normal - since the tickets cost more than usual (I always respect the host venue's pricing policy), I'm going to go the extra mile and give you an extended show with TWO mysteries to solve. I might also work in some extra bells and whistles, and I only got the news a couple of weeks ago and I'm still considering what I can do.

This is my first time doing my own show in a fully professional venue, so I have a lot of people to thank for this journey. For everyone who's been a guest on the show, thank you so much, but thanks especially to Hooky Productions, Shellshock Improv, Brainsoup Collective, Dean Logan, Sam Honour and Becky Clayburn for helping me develop this show through workshops and previews. Of course, thank you to Michelle Yim and Ross Ericson at the Rotunda for taking a chance on my crazy idea with their co-productions. And finally: thanks to everyone who came to my shows and told people how they enjoyed it - I still don't know how this show came to Old Joint Stock's attention, but word of mouth publicity does count a lot, so thank you so much for that.

I still stunned by this, I keep reloading the web page to convince myself this is really happening and not just a wind-up. But it's here, and if you want tickets, come this way.

Late to the party with this one, and I announced this all on social media last week, but, for a change, I am doing live music for a play.

It's The Glass Menagerie at the City Theatre, and although I'm biased, I think I've done a really good good job with the music I composed on the fly for this.

I hope to get a proper recording of this done as a showcase for future directors, but I'm not familiar with musical recordings and that might take some time for me to figure out. In the meantime, I have a preview of in in the (very darkened) wings at the dress rehearsal. Wordpess is being difficult to file sizes, so here's a link to see it on Bluesky or Instagram.

Running Sun 8th - Sat 14th February. 2.30 Sun/Sat, 7.30 weekdays. Tickets from Gala Theatre Box Office or on the door, Durham City Theatre.

Postscript: Observant readers will notice this is the same City Theatre I had a highly public and acrimonious falling out with two years ago. The situation has moved on, and there is a reason why it's this particular play, but it would not be helpful to give a running commentary. Ask offline if you really want to know. I may or may not tell you.

This article was previously posted to the Durham Free Fringe website (yes, we have a proper website now), but a copy of the text is here for the benefit of anyone still looking for updates here.

After a successful launch, we are delighted to announce that programming has begun for our second year. Here’s how it’s going to work:

About the Free Fringe

The “Free Fringe” concept originated in Edinburgh. Most venues at the Edinburgh Fringe were pop-up theatre spaces, fully equipped with stages, sound and lighting. Whilst great things could be achieved on these small stages, demand was at a premium, and many artists struggled to find a venue, or afford a venue, or both. Then organisations like PBH and Laughing Horse recognised that, for many performers, you only need a room and an audience. Without these budget overheads, the events could be both free to take part in and free to watch, with artist income coming entirely from audience donations.

Although the Free Fringe was originally for aspiring stand-up comedians, the scope has since grown wider. Some successful comedians have remained with the free fringe, storytelling, poetry and music have found homes there, and even theatre has been known to work. Established acts have often used the free fringe as a launch pad for new experimental work, but polished performances can also be found there. There’s a whole world of possibilities, and this is what we’re trying to being to Durham.

In 2026, Durham Free Fringe once again runs parallel to Durham Fringe on Wednesday 29th July to Sunday 2nd August. Our primary base will be the Holy GrAle, but we intend to reach out to other spaces to accommodate whatever interest we receive.

Like the Free Fringe in Edinburgh, you should not expect performance spaces to the same spec as the more commercial venues, but as we both technical backgrounds, we can go above and beyond support normally offered in free fringe spaces. Microphones, sound operation/design and projectors are all possible within reason. However, things such as lighting plots, blackouts or complex sets are definitely out. You are advised to have a plan in place that makes minimal use of tech, and treat anything we provide as optional extras.

Scheduling works similar to conventional fringe shows, with most acts being around an hour. For shorter acts, we will look to amalgamate them into a mixed-bill event, with our headline event, Just Off The Bailey Banter, taking stand-up sets and more.

There is no charge or deposit to take part in Durham Free Fringe – we can do this thanks the the kind support of the venues that host us. Audiences are invited to donate money at the end, which goes entirely to the performer.

We will be doing some festival-wide publicity, through posters, flyers and social media, but, like most fringe venues, we cannot guarantee an audience. So we encourage our artists to publicise their own acts. We are happy to help distribute any posters or flyers we receive from you, and propagate social media publicity (we are currently on Instagram and Bluesky).

And finally: We are not trying to compete with Durham Fringe. We are adding to the festival atmosphere that Durham Fringe did such a good job starting, but our event is very different. We have a different offering for artists and draw a different audience, and it our aspiration to add to Durham Fringe, not compete with it.

And that sums us up. If this appeals to you, read on.

What’s changed for 2026

We kept our inaugural year small and manageable, so we expect most of you to be new to us. However, for those you joined us last year, we’re doing a few things differently this time. Our key changes are:

• We are going to be programming further in advance this year. Last year, we opened programming in April so that acts did not need to commit months in advance – but, for a number of reasons, this created more problems than it solved. This time, we are setting a deadline on the 31st March for applications, after which we will start scheduling. This is a “soft” deadline and we will still consider applications after this date if we have space, but we will prioritise applications received before this date.
• Last year, we didn’t go out of our way to encourage applications from Durham Fringe hopefuls, but we ended up with some crossover anyway … and we decided we liked it. So this year, we are going to be a lot more accommodating of artists applying to both us and Durham Fringe. Our programming schedule takes into account Durham Fringe’s schedule, and you are welcome to apply to us if your show doesn’t get a slot at Durham Fringe. The one thing we won’t do is programme a show also running at Durham Fringe – there are too many problems to make that doable.
• We have an application form this year. We like to keep the process as easy as possible, and last year we did it all through informal emails. However, there’s certain things we need to establish early, such as when you are available and what tech support you need. We don’t want to put any off with unnecessarily complex application processes, so we’re open to suggestions on whether this approach is the right balance.
• We are taking a different approach to venues this year. The Holy Grale remains our key hub, but we are looking to take on other spaces as needed to meet demand. We hope to be in a position to announce more venues soon, but this is an experiment and we’ll see how it goes.
• And finally, we would welcome your help. Last year, it was just the two of us (Aadil Kurji and Chris Neville-Smith); this year we’re looking to build up more of a team. However, we’re aspiring for Durham Free Fringe to be an operation run by artists for artists. If you are performing with us, or you performed with us last year, we’ll welcome any offers of help. If, however, you’re not a performer, for the time being we encourage you to volunteer with Durham Fringe instead of us. But that’s only a guide – if you specifically want to work with us, let us know and we’ll see what we can do.

How to apply

To apply, go to our application page. The form will work its magic and send it to us, and we will get back to you within 72 hours. This will probably just be a confirmation we’ve received it, but we might ask some queries if there’s anything that need clarifying. If you don’t get an acknowledgement within 72 hours, please chase us up with an email, to be on the safe side – there’s a chance the internet failed as and we never got your application.

If for any reason you can’t use the online form, we’ve also made available forms in Word format, Libreoffice format or plain text, that you can email to us manually. However, please use the online form if you can, because it’s easier for us to process.

Please do not stress too much over what to put in the form – we hope to accommodate everyone who applies, and the information you give us will mostly likely be used by us for scheduling and general planning. Probably the most important decision to make is choosing a show description for the programme that appeals to an audience – but we are happy to advise on that if you’re not sure what to do.

We are not particularly bothered about whether you are seasoned fringe veterans or complete beginners. Unlike more commercial operations, where the pressure is on to programme well-known acts to bring in the crowds, we are more interested in giving everyone a chance to perform. What is more important to us is practicality. We might have to say no if we think your set/prop/tech requirements are not achievable in the spaces we have. Likewise if we can’t work to your availability. But if you want to take artistic risks, from your first time on stage to new untested work, you are welcome.

We expect do to most of our scheduling and offers in April. This is because we expect all Durham Fringe applications to be accounted for one way or the other, but still leave artists with plenty of time to plan their July with a firm date from us.

And that’s it. Hope this is simple enough. We look forward to hearing from you.

Questions and answers:

Can you really do theatre in a free fringe space? The Free Fringe is overwhelmingly associated with comedy, particularly stand-up comedy. The reasons why aren’t surprising: stand-up comedy needs little more than a microphone and an audience; and with almost all free fringe spaces being pubs, this is the entertainment pubgoers most warm to.

But theatre can work too provided you know what you’re doing. A play directed for the conventional stage will struggle to work in a free fringe setting due to limited space, lack of tech capability and chattier audiences. But a theatre piece that makes good us of the space it’s set in and heavily interacts with the audience can work very well.

Are there maximum and minimum running times? There are no hard and fast rules on minimum running times. Last year we were able to take acts as short as five minutes by including them in our mixed bill comedy. If you have a short act that’s isn’t comedy, please apply anyway – we’ve found that that other types of act such as spoken word can suit these events too.

For maximum running times, we work to the base assumption of shows being an hour long with a half-hour gap between them, which means shows of up to 75 minutes should be feasible. Anything longer will be difficult, and we will be reluctant to programme something that takes up space that could have gone to two other acts. But ask us – we may be able to make this work.

Can I take a work in progress to Durham Free Fringe? Yes! This is one of the things Free Fringe does best. Some of the most successful Fringe shows out there developed on the Free Fringe.

Whether you advertise your show as work in progress is less straightforward. We don’t expect shows at the free fringe to be fully polished – and arguably all fringe shows are works in progress to some degree. If, however, you are going to be reading off a script, or using cue cards for a stand-up set, it’s probably fair to bill this as WIP. But we can’t police this, so ultimately we’ll trust your judgement on what to call this.

Can I bring one show to Durham Fringe and another to Durham Free Fringe?Yes! We were a bit reluctant to encourage this last year as we didn’t know how much demand there would be, but we’ve decided we like the crossover. You might want to accompany a polished show at Durham Fringe with a new show at Durham Free Fringe, but that’s a suggestion and it’s up to you. Whatever you want to do, you’re welcome.

Am I guaranteed a slot if I apply? We’d love to yes to everybody, and we hope we can, but at this stage, we don’t know. We do have a number of ideas in place for how we can respond to demand, and expand or shrink capacity as needed, but we can only accommodate a finite number of acts and we don’t know how many applications we’re going to get. All we can say at this stage is that our aspiration is stage for everyone, and we hope we deliver on this.

Can we bring our own tech to a Free Fringe venue? We have no objection ourselves to bringing along your own equipment provided you can set it up and strike it in time. However, we would also need permission of the relevant venue, which we can’t guarantee. Best strategy is to tell us what you want to do, try to keep it as simple as possible, and have a tech-free backup plan if we have to say no.

Will we make money from this? Quite honestly, we don’t know. At the Edinburgh free fringe venues, there’s a strong expectation that you should make a proper donation if you can afford it, and £5 or so is considered a typical amount. However, the culture of Free Fringe outside of Edinburgh is relatively new and relatively untested.

However, money isn’t the best reason to do the free fringe. Trying out work, finding an audience, or just having a good time are all things we’d rate as much better reasons. If you know what you’re doing and you think you can make a tidy sum with us on the free fringe, go ahead – but for most applicants, having fun is probably a more worthwhile goal.

You said you’d welcome help from artists performing with you. How do I express interest for that? We’re going to be doing that later. We considered including this in the application process, but decided against it as this could prejudice our decision-making. Those of you who performed last year and expressed an interest in helping this year – we will be contacting you shortly. Everyone else: we’ll probably ask after we’ve given out offers.

And to stress once again: there is absolutely no obligation here. If you just want to do your own show, that’s fine. But the more help we get, the more help we can give other artists in the future.

I have a different question! Please ask, at hello@durhamfreefringe.org.uk. We’re not giving a running commentary of every discussion we’ve had and every decision we’ve made, but we’re quite open about our plans, and we’re quite happy to answer any questions of what we’re doing and why.

And that’s it. Look forward to hearing from you.

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.