Thursday, August 18, 2022
‘Night after night I get harassed’: comedians call for safer working conditions
Edinburgh festival 2022 | The Guardian: Posey Mehta, like many performers at the Edinburgh fringe, has been flyering for her own show. It’s called I Am Not a Gorilla so she took to the streets in a gorilla costume. She did not expect to encounter daily sexual harassment.
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3 comments:
This article peaked my interest as this is something that I have noticed more in recent years. It's unfortunate to see and hear about various types of entertainment artists experiencing this; I personally relate to it more with summer stocks. In that realm, I worked with a company in which there were many instances of harassment after shows reported to both the company and local police.
In the world of summer stocks, so many companies bring large groups of diverse individuals to a specific town for the summer to produce their season, but said individuals are coming from all over the country to live in a (most likely) new town - they do not know what to expect. In my case, individuals had no idea that late at night that they may be approached in their car, followed, or even engage with potentially harmful individuals. It got to the point where individuals were ending their contracts early because of it. It became a conversation amongst the staff and visiting artists to see what could be done to ensure the safety of the company late at night after shows or work calls... Unfortunately, not much was able to be done, and this is so in many cases in many locations.
Although I personally am not sure what there is to be done about it, I'm so glad that this is becoming part of the conversation within the industry.
It's fascinating to read about the fringe festival from a professional performer's standpoint. This year I was there with my high school theatre company, and I saw the women this article is talking about out flyering. It was and is still hard to believe that they don't account for this by expanding their public transportation hours in a city with a big festival that runs so late. I hope that during these efforts to take care of the performers and protect them from harassment, there are also efforts made to take care of individuals who feel unsafe at night and want to see those performances.
I'm glad to hear that the venue, Underbelly, removed the people who were harassing her, but this is one of the larger venues. I worry that these conditions are happening at smaller locations and that no one is there to help or do anything about it.
-B Hanser
I remember thinking the Fringe Festival is this super big deal and everyone is super professional there and just there to celebrate art and performing. I've come to realize it feels just like one of those high school festivals with just the same amount of heckling. It has got to be tough out there for Comedians. Their job is to entertain with comedy and not everyone has the same sense of humor and I think when you're just starting out everyone thinks you're not as funny as some other really famous stand up artist. On top of the harassment regular performers get you also get people thinking its okay to say things to you while you are on stage. I think this article brings up a great point regarding the safety of performers and stage crew that have to be at work until the middle of the night. You are asking these people to do things like take out the trash and roam the streets when it is not safe to do so, and many of these people live in cities where they are then forced to take public transportation. These festivals and companies in general should be required to provide safe transport when they are forcing people to leave so late.
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