Organising Chaos

“Relatively chaotic?” an energised Lew Palaitis is firing on all cylinders, and sounds thrilled to be doing so, as the days creep towards the opening of the Sydney Fringe Festival, the first he has undertaken in this role, and one that includes 254 shows across more than 70 venues over a massive three weeks in September. “Organised chaos is probably the best way to describe it,” he continues, “There's a lot happening!”

While 2012 marks the first Fringe Festival since the departure of inaugural General Manager Meryl Rogers, Palaitis has been working towards his current position overseeing the hotbed of culture since the festival's inception when he was the Director of Marrickville's Hardware Gallery. “I've upgraded my Fringe experience each year,” Palaitis jokes.

“The festival's been going since 2010 and in the first year I participated as a venue, I had an art gallery and we had an event in the Sydney Fringe – and I had a great experience as a participant in this new festival, we had a great result, great crowd numbers and great publicity – the following year, last year, I put my hand up to become more involved with the visual arts, which saw me curating the visual arts elements of the Sydney Fringe last, so I got quite a bit more involved with the fringe itself in terms of organising that aspect of it, and by the time we got towards the end of last year I had already made the decision to move on from the gallery, it was something I'd been doing for a bit over 10 years and at the same time the role of general manager was being advertised so it was just good timing really. I decided to go for that and found myself in the General Manager's position a few months later – and now right in the thick of it – running the Sydney Fringe!

“So it was sort of a climb through the ranks and also a sideways step in a way, the background in visual arts meant that I hadn't had as much hands on with theatre and comedy and cabaret and all the other stuff that's on offer with the Fringe Festival but it was pretty well correlated with my experiences because the gallery I ran was very much focused on younger and independent artists, so even from the visual arts element I was already working with very much the sort of participants who are involved in the Sydney fringe each year and had also done quite a bit of performance stuff at the gallery – quite a bit of music and experimental music alongside the visual art – so it was a nice segue for me.

With Palaitis clearly embedded in the Fringe culture, and now overseeing the entire Sydney festival, this seemed the best opportunity to get a few tips on how to manage the overwhelming amount of entertainment on offer. “It's a common problem, it was the same thing for the last two years of the Fringe, people are always like, 'There's so much, how do I get my head around it? How do I plan it?'

“There's no easy way. I've been telling people the program's there for you to read through and see what you like and the websites there, but you've got to make your own Fringe, and there's ways to do it. People will be going to see a show they know, then be turned on to other shows at the venue; others will plan out a whole month and basically try to get to everything; on a practical level my suggestion in terms of getting your head around it is to start early,” says Palaitis. With 254 shows on offer in 23 days, it seems like sound advice.