Tips for performers

Comic Jason Wood offers his advice to making it through your run unscathed.

Choose who you are living with carefully - It’s one thing being in a play with them, but it’s another entirely waking up next door to them. Those quirky eccentricities that they had before they went up can be a full blown mental illness by the end. Edinburgh is intense. And for an Edinburgh virgin, your first time should always be amazing, but like all first times, it can be a huge let-down too.

Eat wisely - Remember, in Scotland they fry everything. By week two, you still want your immune system firing on all cylinders because everybody in Edinburgh has got the flu. Try to keep off the fried food until the last week, although you’ll have a job finding anything else after 10pm. If you’re unsure, go to Monster Mash - it’s the perfect compromise.

Flyering - It might sound exciting before you do it, and I don’t want to shatter any illusions, but remember to keep motivated. Try to do visual and interactive things with your prospective customers.

It is neither a good idea nor an original one to play a character that’s mute or dead. Every year there’s a new crop of people lying prostrate on the pavement with the leaflets outstretched in their hands, and there they’ll remain. Great for back sufferers, but not much else.

The reviewing process - Reviews are unpleasant whichever way you look at it, but a necessary process. The good ones can make you too complacent and the bad ones can destroy your whole week, or indeed life. Then there’s the waiting - for the reviewer to arrive at the show and then for the review to appear, sometimes not until the last week. This, of course, can be a good or a bad thing, depending how well the night went.

Try to keep hope eternal - That cliche about performing to one man and his dog is a cliche for a reason. Remember, the average size of an audience at the Festival Fringe is very small.

* Jason Wood appears in Unnatural Acts at the Teviot Dining Room, Gilded Balloon