Starting Out On The London Fringe.

Hello,

I can not express my full excitement of finding this network.

My name is David Byrne and I've always wanted to put on Theatre.

I went to the University of Hull to "do" Drama having no real experience of Drama or Theatre apart from watching a few old shakey Whodunits at my local Hertfordshire Theatre.

My first play was a comedy and a satire at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I put it on with other students from my year and we had a really unexpected success. We totally sold out our run and I won some awards from the List Magazine and Writers' Guild. How very exciting.

My dreams of becoming a writer were now within my grasp.

After having that hit I was offered all sort of crazy things by people. This was all very flattering but the thing was I'd enjoyed working with some of my fellow students more than I'd enjoyed anything else - particularly two of them.

So I turned it all down, went back to University and wrote plays for these great all-rounders: Cara, being a wonderful actress, dramaturg, can brick-lay to a professional standard, seamstress and puppet maker. Then there is Leah, the best comic actress I've ever met, a few centimeters about being short enough for "government funding", stilt-maker, production manager, stage manager.

Basically we all looked after each other and put on lots of fun and imperfect plays for the remaining three years in cocooned bliss (see bits about our stuff here: www.sitdownandshutup.co.uk)

Now we've all left we’ve all promised we’ll give it a go at doing this properly and there is nowhere bigger, more of a challenge or more expensive than the London Fringe. And for some reason this is where we’ve decided to give it a go.

We want to make big, exciting, bold theatre. With lots of songs. And films. And puppets. And general excitement.

We have no money, few contacts and no idea where to start.

I need some advice. Big time. So it seems this is the best place to start.

Anyone want to start…?