A couple years ago, I was in a play written and directed by my friend Chris called The Treasure of the Puta Madre – a classic radio play for the stage where 11 characters are played by only five actors. Last year, Chris went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and saw a horribly unfunny comedian performing at a stinky venue in a lousy time slot – to a sold out audience. Chris thought: I can do this! And thus, the idea to revive the Puta Madre and bring her to Edinburgh was born.

Knowing my penchant for numbers and my successful history as a theatrical producer in Barcelona, Chris enlisted me to help him plan the event. He also know that I was about the only other person on the planet who might go 50/50 with him and invest in the tour. It should be stated here that no one brings a show to the Fringe hoping to make a profit. The more apt question is: how much are we going to lose. Why would anyone knowingly lose a heap of money? Are they crazy? Well, people usually bring a show to the Fringe 1) to get noticed by important agents or producers, 2) to showcase new performers, or new plays, 3) to be part of a Festival so diverse and so exciting, or 4) just for the fun of it. I think Chris was looking at reason #2 while I fell head first into #4.

Once we decided to go for it, the roller coaster began:

• up: all 5 of the actors were excited about the project!
• down: the two female actors realized they didn’t have enough money to live in Britain for a month and dropped out.
• up: we found two new actresses (including the lovely Jan)!
• down: one of the three male actors (not me or Chris) realized that he couldn’t afford to be out of town for so long.
• up: we found a new actor!
• down: he changed his mind.
• up: we found another and he was very excited about the project!
• down: after crunching the numbers, the budget started skyrocketing and it looked like we couldn’t afford the festival after all.
• up: we came up with the brilliant idea of selling shares^* to help subsidize part of the production!
• down: after three weeks, we didn’t hear back from any of the seven theatres we applied to.
• up: one month later, the offers started to roll in!
• down: they were all asking for more money than we had originally estimated.
• up: we bargained a couple down to what we had originally estimated!
• down: we still couldn’t afford the festival.
• up: by simply asking all the actors to pay for their own accommodation in Edinburgh, we were able to fudge the numbers so that it all became possible again!
• down: one of the actresses (not Jan) couldn’t afford this and dropped out.
• up: we decided to redistribute the parts and are now going to perform the same play with only four actors!

And this is where we find ourselves today. At every one of these “downs”, it looked like the project would be canceled. But every “up” injected a new breath of life into the show and filled us with joy. I signed the contract with the venue and the check is in the mail, so there’s no turning back now. Let’s just hope there are no more “downs” from here to August – I may be sick.

^* If anyone would like to help support the arts, please feel free to contact me and I will share all the details with you. We need all the help we can get!