[I started writing this when I found the press release on some website (how come it doesn't show up on the Fringe site with a websearch?) and the tone at that website was so much about posting the information without questioning it. Do searches, and you'd think the Fringe was "indyish" and "pop montreal", the way they blow their horns and make announcements.]
The Fringe For All is a preview of the Fringe, and ultimately the press has no greater standing than the rest of us. The notion that it's a "press conference" is some of what's wrong with the Fringe these days.
In the old days, it was usually the first chance to mingle with the Fringe acts, to sort out the program and see who's doing what. The blurbs in the program hardly say much. You'd be handed the flyers by someone who was a real person, they'd be waiting for you as you came in, and the acts would try to get your attention so you'd get into their show early and then write up some buzz that would bring a bigger audience, and maybe the press. The acts knew that you'd paid $10 to get into the Fringe For All, knew that you were so into the Fringe that you made that effort, so of course you were treated like you mattered.
In 1996 when someone from Toronto sent her father to read a bit of the script (the show was Barb, it helped to make the show's FFA bit stand out, and it certainly caused me to get on-side that show. I think that was the first instance of me doing some postering for an act.
And yes, we'd mingle with the press because it was impossible to avoid them in the small venue. I am as likely to sit with a member of the press as anyone else now, merely because I've known them all these years. When it comes to the Fringe, we inhabit the same neighborhood.
The Fringe asked us to cross the line. We were addressed not merely as a potential audience in the introduction to the program, we were treated as a key part of the festival, to go out and see shows, making our own choices, and then to write buzz. And once you've made that line between the audience and the performers fainter, there is great potential.
Now that is lost in the bigness, and the darkness, of the venue. The acts may hand you a flyer, but there's hardly any intimacy to it, which was a hallmark of the Fringe, and is still a very valid means of promotion (and yes, that intimacy can be translated to the internet, but most acts can't make that transistion).
It's become a show, complete with MCs that too often are trying to perform, rather than merely announcing the next act, which results in a bloated evening when all we want to see are the snippets to get a handle on the shows. There's no point in "entertaining" the audience when we are there to sample the Fringe shows. We'll get entertained when we actually go see Fringe shows.
I should point out that the press often leaves early, so the longer the evening goes, the less likely the press will see the bits from the later acts. In some cases, it looks like the evening makes a good junket, especially as there is more catering to the press.
I've salvaged the flyers every year since the move to Cafe Campus (sorting them out and returning them to the acts), and there is terrible wastage as the acts often just dump piles of flyers about the venue, or toss them from the balcony.
Nevermind that too many flyers and posters don't really convey much, or the webpages for that matter.
If the acts aren't treating the audience as the end goal, then they will fail. Because the very things that work to attract the audience will attract the press. It's not as if the press is all that isolated from the Fringe, they may have some assigned criteria, but they are also Fringe goers who can be swayed. Real enthusiasm from the audience is as likely to get the press's attention as trying to seduce the press directly, and if you work the audience then there is fallback if the perceived all important press coverage doesn't happen. And no matter how good a show is, nobody will know it if it's not promoted and gets that critical early crowd in.
Not all the shows are going to get a review, and those "reviews" will be little more than a blurb. Some will say "they should review all the shows" but then it would all get diminished. The acts are really saying "I want free publicity".
Some of the most significant reviewing, as in actually critiquing the shows in depth, have been on the internet, where people review out of love and have lots of space to do a decent job. Again, trying to reach the audience reaches those who won't get "press acreditation" but nevertheless review.
Yet it's become way too easy for Fringe troupes to put their faith in the press, issue a press release that has no soul and sit back expecting coverage, and then the audience.
There isn't enough time to learn from mistakes. I can remember Sandra Botnen running around about the Thursday back in 1997, putting up posters and saying "I haven't had time to do any promotion". But if you can't do promotion, there's little reason to put on a show. You can't save a show in the last three performances, you need the audience early to create the growth with each subsequent performance.
It's become too easy for acts to think they can pull from one large pool (and that "large pool" has diminished in more recent years, as the Fringe spreads out and there is less of a communal space), when in reality the more off-beat a show the more they have to work for an audience, the more they need to target a specific portion of the population. Yet, for all the postering at the Beer Tent, there is very little away from the Fringe. You need to pull that targeted audience in, at least in the beginning, which creates buzz and attention to lure the general population. And if someone can get some press in some "obscure" newsletter or paper, they can leverage it by pointing to it via their website that shouldn't be static (but too often is, along with being bland despite all the gloss).
The audience doesn't necessarily need a reviewer to say they like it, they need an intermediary to tell them something about the show because the acts often do a lousy job.
Keep in mind that the weeklies have a deadline by the Monday or Tuesday, hardly much time to see many shows (and impossible for shows that open late). And by the Thursday when they come out, some of the reviewed shows may even have finished their run. Note the press ranks are inflated by some who will have no more than one article, out before the Fringe. You'd better make an impression if you want to make their list, or you're lost to the troupes who've been here before.
If an act can't even convey the essence of the show to someone who is tempted by it, then they've failed. And that has happened, there have been shows I've been really curious about and the acts just don't do the publicity and even when I ask them they can only mumble what's in the program. I'm not going to pimp for some show that can't even make an attempt at working the crowd. If someone doing a show about Eugene Debs doesn't make that really clear, then they lose the Eugene Deb fans who might be the very people to promote the show. (This really happened, in 2001; had I known I would have gotten out my Wobbly song book, and try to lure Bernie Saunders to the Fringe, using the hook of the time he greeted us as mayor on the steps of Burlington City Hall in 1982.)
"Why should I come to see your show?" is what the acts should be trying to answer. Not because it's funny, or because it's good; those are subjective. Art may speak for itself, but that doesn't do anything until the audience actual decides they will look over the show. You need to connect with the audience before they ever come near the venue, because that connection brings them to the venue. Maybe it's the topic of the show, maybe it's a good joke, maybe it's a good looking cast member out leafletting, and maybe it's because your show is about something that they are interested in.