‘This could be our last year’: pupil comedy troupes priced out of Edinburgh fringe

‘I don’t have any circle of relatives connections in comedy or tv, my leg up used to be that I went to a fancy college that had this dating with Edinburgh,” says Nish Kumar, who joined cartoon crew the Durham Revue whilst he used to be a pupil and were given his first style of the Edinburgh pageant fringe – and his long term occupation – as a part of the troupe. “The Revue going to the fringe created so many opportunities for me. There is nothing anywhere in the world like it. For all of its problems, I still see that it has this ability to change people’s lives and teach people the job of being a comedian.”

Now, as the price of taking displays to the perimeter continues to upward thrust, present contributors of the Durham Revue and different pupil cartoon teams say they’re being priced out of the acting arts pageant.

“We’re looking at the fact that this could be our last year,” says Alannah O’Hare, co-president of the Durham Revue, which in addition to Kumar, counts Ambika Mod, Ed Gamble, Bafta-nominated TV creator Tom Neenan and Taskmaster’s Stevie Martin as alumni. The crew has long past to the perimeter nearly annually because the mid-70s. “There’s a huge legacy there,” says O’Hare. “But it’s becoming increasingly impossible.”

Durham isn’t the one college with a legacy of creating comedy skill. As smartly because the Cambridge Footlights and Oxford Revue, there may be the Bristol Revunions, rekindled in 2008 via Charlie Perkins (now Channel 4’s head of comedy), which counts Jamie Demetriou, Ellie White and Charlotte Ritchie as former contributors. In the north-west there are the Manchester Revue and the Leeds Tealights, which boasts comedians Annie McGrath and Jack Barry, manufacturer Phoebe Bourke and comedy agent Chris Quaile amongst its alumni.

Kumar first skilled the perimeter’s transformative results in 2006. Every yr, Revue contributors write sketches and placed on displays in Durham, with the function of constructing an hour of comedy gold for the pageant. “That was the whole purpose, because we wanted to be professional comedians and there isn’t an obvious route,” Kumar says. Performing each day for a month stepped forward his writing, plus, he says: “You get a certain comfort that means you’re not having a full-blown physiological panic attack every time you stand on stage. That confidence never leaves you.”

Students additionally get the danger to look at different displays, which “teaches you a lot about what you can do in comedy” and helped Kumar take into account that now not each and every fascinating comic is a TV big name, however there’s a pipeline to it. “I got to see Russell Howard in a room with 100 people and then six months later he appeared on TV,” Kumar says.

Crucially, scholars get to enjoy this with out racking up really extensive debt. “The opportunity to go as students where you’re not putting huge amounts of personal finances at risk, it’s a really fleeting opportunity,” says O’Hare. If scholars will have to fund the enjoy themselves, “you’ll lose working-class voices, you’ll lose lower-middle-class voices,” says Kumar. “But we won’t lose art from posh people because they have independent wealth.”

McGrath, who attended 3 fringes with the Tealights, is of the same opinion: “Edinburgh has already become wildly unaffordable for so many acts and punters, and landlords have a lot to answer for. It’s really sad as it could wipe out a generation of new talent. It also means there’s a lack of diversity in what is being created if only the wealthiest acts and biggest names are able to go.”

Her pupil enjoy used to be “totally magical” and “instrumental in shaping the path I took after university,” McGrath says. “Edinburgh is where I met so many of my comedy contemporaries, and I managed to get an agent the summer I graduated which gave me the confidence to think this could be a viable career.”

Durham Revue and different troupes fund fringe runs from earnings of the former yr, with more cash raised via staging displays during the yr and, in the event that they’re fortunate, grants from their college. These aren’t assured and turning into more difficult to safe as college funds are squeezed, say O’Hare and Evie Cowen from the Leeds Tealights.

The greatest hurdles are venue and lodging prices, says O’Hare. This yr, the Revue will spend about £9,000 on lodging – 60% of its total prices – “and that’s students sharing beds, it’s not luxurious living”. Cowen says the Tealights have discovered lodging for £6,500, an enormous build up at the £4,000 spent in 2023.

To duvet the will increase, Durham Revue has began its first crowdfunder, to which Kumar and different alumni have contributed. Yet this “does not offer a long-term solution”, O’Hare says. Leeds Tealights turns 20 this yr and hopes cash raised from an anniversary display will duvet pageant prices. Both teams fear about how they’ll bridge the distance in 2026.

“It feels like the inaccessibility of it has accelerated over the past few years, and it’s impacting young people and students and people starting out,” O’Hare says.

Is there an answer? Kumar says loss of college funding is “shortsighted”. “I’d definitely like to see more bursaries coming in to help,” Kumar says. “They’re talking about placing taxes on streaming services to reinvest into UK television – I’d like to see more of that invested into grassroots arts programmes. We need to look at how arts funding has been slowly chipped away for the past 15 years.”

If scholars from all monetary backgrounds can not attend the perimeter, “you’re losing a really valuable training ground,” Kumar says. “Comedy is one of the things we still do well in this country. Not providing funding for it is insane.”