An update from The Crush Bar

It's been a while. And it will be a while longer.

Photo: Pixabay.

Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a Substack about theatre, written by me, Fergus Morgan.

This is my first missive since the end of the Edinburgh Fringe. I hope you have been keeping well and, if you were involved in the festival, that you have recovered. I managed to get away to the south of France with my family for a bit, which was nice.

A lot has been happening in the theatre world recently, both terrible and awful. I am sure you are dying to know my insightful, compassionate, articulate opinions on all of it – but I am afraid you are going to have to wait for them a little while longer.

The Crush Bar will be back in your inboxes soon – but not yet. This is because I have a few other projects to focus on at the moment that are taking up all my time.

These projects include…

• Running a marathon. On Sunday, I am going to be running the Loch Ness Marathon for Macmillan Cancer Support. You can sponsor me here if you like.

• Making a podcast. I am currently making a podcast about the history of Scottish playwriting. It is called A History Of Scottish Drama In Six Plays, and it is supported by The Scottish Society Of Playwrights, Bespoken Media and the Traverse Theatre. There is going to be a launch event – featuring a panel discussion on the current state of Scottish drama – at the Traverse Theatre on October 28. If you fancy coming along, you can get a free ticket here.

• Despairing at the state of freelance journalism/Scottish theatre/the UK/the world. This is a constant project I’ve got on the go and takes up a lot of my time. You can take part, too. Simply visit www.bbc.co.uk/news and get stuck in.

• Planning a wedding. This one is really easy and totally stress free.

Anyway, projects one and two should be more or less complete by the end of October – unless I screw up the podcast or take a really long time to run the marathon – meaning I will have more time and headspace to infiltrate your inbox once again.

Now, I don’t feel any obligation to provide content to you 3200-ish freeloading bastards who do not pay me a penny to read this newsletter. 106 of you, though, are passionate/kind/delusional enough to support The Crush Bar financially, and I do feel slightly guilty in taking your hard-earned cash and not supplying anything in return.

So, I have nobly decided to forgo a few coffees in October and pause every paid supporter’s billing cycle. I will restart them again when I start publishing again.  If you are one of those legends, you don’t need to do anything. Substack takes care of it. You will, however, have an extra £5 to spend next month. Buy yourself something nice.

In the meantime, if you are looking for your Substack fix, can I point you towards Natasha Tripney’s Cafe Europa, Lauren Halvorsen’s Nothing For The Group, Bruce Dessau’s Beyond The Joke, Nancy Durrant’s The London Culture Edit, Michael MacLeod’s Edinburgh Minute, Eleanor Hall’s PassTheAux, and loads more?

Bye for now.

Fergus