Kate Cheka: Who’s got the power at Edinburgh Fringe?
Power
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Power 〰️
The Edinburgh Fringe is back for 2026, and with it, our annual feature series! This year, we’re taking on POWER: Who’s got it? Where is it? Where should it be? How do you get it? Our comedians are the only ones with the answers.
By Kate Cheka
She lied, dear reader, she lied to us and said “never again”. Famous last words in the caption of my final Instagram post of 2024’s Edinburgh Fringe. She swore never to return and yet here she is doing it again. A glutton for punishment.
Last year, I went as far as to book a few day Fringe work-in-progress and then came to the conclusion I would rather have a summer of joy and pleasure and getting my tits out on the beach and did that instead. But here we are back for round two *ding ding* because I just can’t help myself. I had a new show I’d written and what does one do with a new show in the comedy scene of the UK but take it to Edinburgh?
Which means we are just in time for an abundance of discourse letting us know how financially difficult, how monetarily painful the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is. And how in one way or another the performers must suck it up because that is the hoop you have to jump through for the industry to take notice. I’m starting to suspect the hoops I have jumped through in this industry are becoming nooses around my neck.
Though I resist the fees as much as possible — last time my mantra was no production, no PR and no agent — and though it broke me into pieces (I sobbed every day after for two weeks), I am somehow repeating the same formula this year. There is just something in my single-mother raised, free school meal heart that cannot bear the thought of parting with a few grand even if it is supposed to guarantee later future success. My heart dropped out my arse when I saw a fellow comedian's prestigious producer/venue bill post-Fringe where the £14k they had amassed in ticket sales profit had been whittled down through fees, expenses and costs to a shiny 28 pounds sterling. We provide all the value and yet somehow we are still not earning.
It feels creepily like the British (or maybe that should say “capitalists”) that they have not thought of a profit model that isn’t just colonialism, the plundering of others' labour or resources. I certainly feel like I’m the feudal subject when I begin my begging campaign for a venue every year, which somehow involves me sucking the (metaphorical) dick of some white man. A shame because I spend enough time doing that (literally) in my personal life and it's not good to turn all your hobbies into work.
Perhaps I should take a leaf from the comedians who turn to sex work, selling feet pics or otherwise on OnlyFans, something that seems to be limited to women naturally and, absolutely no judgement here, but I would like it if the industry wasn’t so predatory that we couldn’t sustain ourselves from it. I was once told that the money spent on Fringe PR goes to pay for fancy dinners for reviewers, as a bribe to come see your show. And there is a hidden cost to all this begging I do from white men, when last time I had to get a middleman white man to broker the deal, only to end up with a venue where they must have been racist or misogynist (or both!), responded to none of my emails, and then rejected all the award judges’ requests to come to my show.
You need to stay on the side of these men which I’m not always very good at. Perhaps I’d be further in my career if I had spent my time at fancy university networking with the sort of people whose parents fuck dead animal parts. I worked three jobs to get myself through the final year of A Levels, because sometimes you have to kick in the doors of privilege just to find out it is seven men wanking on a biscuit. (Or in the case of comedy you, the woman comedian, is the biscuit.)
There is a saying said sometimes among Black and global majority people that we are our ancestors’ wildest dreams, but I can’t imagine my ancestors roaming the savannah being like: “I hope she’s out there spending her days sending begging emails and sucking up to the sort of people who’d own us if it was still legal.” I want people to be able to stand in their power rather than trying to mimic it with clout, money or prestige.
That is why I talk about politics in my art, because my existence always hinges on it. I wish I could not and just do silly sex jokes and clowning.
Not before I deliver this show though, which I’ve poured almost everything that wasn’t money (and also quite a lot of money) into. I’m taking another calculated risk in the hope that it leverages the thing I need though I’m not sure this time what that is? I said never again and I think this time I mean it. I have to step into my power and that means stepping away from an industry that is so keen to take it, profit off it, steal it but rarely acknowledge it. Besides, in the words of another white man, my show director from last time, while I waited in March to hear back from the prestigious venue: “you kind of got everything you can get without it so do you need it?” Maybe it is time to find out if the same is true for the UK comedy industry.
Kate Cheka: The Last Funny Woman is running at PBH's Free Fringe @ Voodoo Rooms (carte blanche!) from Aug 8-30th (except Mondays), 17:55. Tickets here
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