Student Stories
Grey College Crowdfunding Platform 2016-17
Phoenix Theatre Company make Edinburgh Fringe Run
PTC took their new play “Angels In Erotica” to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Matchfund-
ed by the Grey Association, they raised £1600. Alex Maxwell helped run the campaign.
The aim of our crowdfunding project was to do something that Phoe-
nix Theatre Company had never done before, take a show to the Edin-
burgh Festival Fringe! The Fringe is the largest arts festival in the world,
and usually a fair few shows from Durham Student Theatre make the
trip to Edinburgh each summer. However, these shows usually come
from richer theatre companies, which can afford to take what is some-
times a sizeable financial loss in return for the prestige and publicity
of a Fringe-run. With its limited resources, PTC could not afford such
largesse, but we were determined no to let this stop us. Crowdfund-
ing offered us a way to pay off one of our largest costs, the hiring of
the venue, before we even reached the festival. We achieved this goal
thanks to the generosity of the 25 people who together gave £1,100 to
our campaign, and to the Grey Association who matched the first £500
that was donated to make a total of £1,600
The show we were taking up to Edinburgh was Angels in Erotica,
written by Freddie Drewer (who also assistant-directed the show). The
show had had a successful run in Durham under the name ‘The Not
So Divine Comedy’ as part of the annual Durham Drama Festival that
aims to showcase new student writing. The festival’s judges, all profes-
sionals in the theatre industry, thought that the play would go down
exceptionally well at the Fringe and strongly recommended that we try
and take it there. With its tagline of ‘the world’s first ever religious-fan-
tasy-romantic-satirical-absurdist-post-modernist-sex comedy!’, it
seemed likely that the show’s outrageous comedy would go down well
with a Fringe audience that is known to enjoy the weird and wonderful.
After a rewrite by Freddie, a rebranding as ‘Angels in Erotica’, and a
lot of hard work by the production team finding a venue, creating a
poster and making a publicity plan, we arrived in Edinburgh in August
with the usual mix of excitement and trepidation. Having rehearsed
the show the week beforehand in Durham, we were now ready to hit
The Royal Mile and make our presence felt. With our entire cohort
in Angel costumes, a sign proclaiming that ‘God is Gay and the New
Messiah is a Woman’ and a catalogue of slogans like ‘It’s hotter than
Dante’s Inferno, and steamier than the Song of Solomon’, we certainly
made an impact! Along with a strong online/social media strategy, our
eye-catching Royal Mile presence throughout the run reaped rewards
as our audience numbers far exceeded even our most optimistic esti-
mations. In the end we sold out on 5 nights, meaning we could offi-
cially call ourselves “a sell-out show”. Word of mouth definitely played
a part in our success, with several very positive reviews, including one
5-star review, and plenty of familiar faces in the crowd who had come
back to see the show again with a new group of friends! Overall, PTC’s
first Edinburgh Fringe production was a resounding success, and with-
out doubt an unforgettable experience for everyone who was involved.
TOP The presenters at the Postgraduate Symposium
SECOND The 101km row, watching a little television
for encouragement
THIRD The poster for the sold out play “Angels In
Erotica”
BOTTOM A picture of the cast
11