Welcome 2023 Durham Fringe Festival performers! We are thrilled to have you on board with us for our third year of DFF. This page of our website contains information for performers including, a timeline of key dates, marketing and social media tips and tricks, useful logos for your promotional material, and an FAQ section.

Technical Rehearsal: We will use our best endeavours to give you up to 1 hour for a technical rehearsal at a time to be notified to you separately by us or the Venue.

Get in / Get out Time: You will be allowed 10 minutes prior to each show for get in and 5 minutes after each show for get out.

Promoting your show can seem like a daunting task. This guide aims to help you get started on the promotion of your show; provide you with a few tips and tricks and some Durham Fringe Festival assets for you to use on your promotional material.

What sort of show do you have? Theatre, Magic, Spoken word, Stand-up Comedy or something else entirely? As we have a wide variety of genres at Durham Fringe Festival, it’s important to make sure your marketing material clearly conveys the type of show you offer, and appeals to the right audience for you.

Key actions before we begin. Send us your short form video content, so we can share and promote your show. Share with us any news about your show or company. Like and share as many fringe social media posts as you can.

BEFORE YOU APPLY

A stand out show listing. The words you choose to use on your show listing is often all the public has to go from when choosing what to watch. 

Keep it simple! The less words, the better. Try to sum up your show in as few words as possible, giving the potential audience a snapshot into the type of show you’re offering. 

Use a strong image, and keep it consistent. Use the same fonts, styles and phrases in all your promotional materials.

Assign roles. If you have a larger company, or multiple people involved in your show, you could choose someone in your team to handle all the promotion and marketing of your show, or outsource it, if you’ve got the funds.

Keep your media release clear and concise. Focus on your achievements, reviews, awards, key performances and anything newsworthy. Use this when reaching out to media contacts.

All in the videos. Capturing videos for your instagram reels or your tiktok is a great way to build a hype around your show. Raw and behind the scenes videos work well on informal platforms like Tiktok and Instagram. A straight pitch to the camera may well be very useful but content that is off the wall, or fun, also helps to keep your audience engaged.

Keep it authentic. Sharing content that shows you and your personality helps the audience to relate to you. “Sales” posts don’t always travel on social media, so make sure you’ve got a good mix of content about you, and content about buying tickets. A ratio 4 to 1, general posts to show adverts works well.

Consider your audience. Who is your show appealing to? Are you using the right platforms to reach them? If it’s teenagers and younger people consider Tiktok. If you’ve got an older audience try Facebook and Twitter. Have you got a niche audience, for example LGBTQIA+, Veterans or the elderly? Use groups or hashtags to reach them specifically.