TO BEGIN
Listo! can be played by between two and six people (live and six are ideal numbers). You will need:
I One die
I One counter for each person and one for the Festival Countdown Track (coins, paperclips, bits of paper, bottle tops are all suitable)
I Pencils and rubbers
I Something intoxicating to drink
I A copy of the Listo card (see sample on this page) for each player.
RULES
I The object of the game is to put on the show with the largest audience in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. To do this you need to collect: A show
Fame Points
Talent Points
A venue
I Each player is a performer. Because success often depends on having a distinctive name, the perfomers must decide on a suitable surname — Berkoff, Cockles, Skinner etc. — which they all share, Sally Cockles, John Cockles, Tim Cookies and so on. Write these names in the boxes provided on the Listo player card.
I Each perlormer chooses a show from the list at the bottom of this page. More than one performer can choose the same show. The shows require different numbers of Talent points to perform. It is easier and quicker to earn the Talent Points for a low-value Show, but you might not score as many points when you get to the end of the Festival.
I Each performer begins by chosing one of the Bar squares on which to start and continues around the board according to the throw of the die. You can collect your Talent, Fame and Venue as you progress around the board as well as other benefits and forfeits.
I Most squares require you to select the option coresponding to the number you threw on the die. You will find this option detailed on the lists headed Tread the Boards, Listo! and Break-A-Leg. Read these and act upon them. Other squares including the Stage/right, Taxi, Fringe Club and Show have the instructions
_ written in the box itself. TOThc List 14 — 20 August 1992
Who needs talent when you’ve got fame? Who needs either when Lady
Luck smiles? The List invites you to have a stab at negotiating the trials
and tribulations of a soaraway Fringe success. Slap on your greasepaint, it’s time to play Listo!
I When a performer lands on the Listo! box, all the performers have to shout the word Listo.’. Any performer who fails to do so has to perfomi the role described in the relevant Listo entry.
I Venues require certain amounts of Fame to perform at. Any performer landing on a Venue square, can book it. There can only be one performer per Venue
I Anytime you land on a Show Box, you can choose to swap your existing Show for another one. This is useful if you have too few or too many Talent Points.
I As soon as you have the necessary Fame and Talent points head for the Venue you’ve booked. The next time you pass your Venue, you stop on that square (in this case you do not need to throw the exact number to land on it). The first performer to reach this point in the game declares that the Festival has started. and remains in the Venue while the other performers head for their Venues. Once again, for this purpose, they do not need to land exactly on the Venue square. .
I The Festival lasts four weeks. A week passes every time play returns to the performer who declared the Festival open.
I Festival weeks are shown on the Festival Countdown Track. For each Festival Week that you are in your Venue, you will attract an audience. The performer with the largest audience for all four weeks is the winner.
I Performers who do not make it to their venue by the last week of the Festival cannot attract an audience and cannot win.
I To calculate your audience numbers:
1 Add up your Talent Points + Fame Points + Talent Points Needed + Fame Points Needed + ten points for each week you have performed in the Festival (ie 10, 20, 30 or 40 points). Multiply this number by one throw of the die. This is your final audience figure.
2 If you do not have enough Talent or Fame Points for your show and venue, add up the number ofpoints you lack, add ten points for each week you have performed in the Festival and mutiply this number by one throw of the die. This figure is the number of people who left in the interval because the show was so bad. Take this from your first score (according to 1 above) to get your revised audience figure. I The winner is the performer with the largest audience.
SHOWS
1 Trevor Nunn asks you to perform Wagner’s entire Ring Cycle single-handedly. You must even provide your own rubber ring and bicycle
Talent points needed: 60
2 Zenya Hamada pays you considerable
amounts of money to translate his latest epic, Pythagoras, Einstein, Hawking and Me, into coherent English and then to take the lead role.
Talent points needed: 50
3 Your novelty Musical Spoons act catches the attention of a top promoter who asks you to open for Mike Oldfield’s performance of Tubercular Smells. Talent points needed: 50 4 You're given just three hours to rewrite the jokes in the medical revue, Forget the Punctuation, That's My Colon. Talent points
neededzdo
5 The president of a now disbanded Eastern European nation state casts you in Slwrvzzyk Zpo, a subversively ironic, 12-hour, living-
! sculpture residency in a Stockbridge left that
no-one understands. You play the statue. Talent
points needed: 40
5 Mike Leigh gets you to improvise the part of a lower middle-class housewife who sets up an unsuccessful hairdressing business in Abigail's Parting. Talent points needed: 40
7 Steven Berkoff asks you to swear a lot and act very slowly in a radical reworking of Ben Elton's Silly Cow. Talent points needed: 30 8 Brian McMaster gives you a last-minute commission to perform The Complete Shopping Lists of C .P. Taylor. Talent points
needed:30
9 Right-on pressure group gives you the backing to do a one-person show that lambasts Shakespeare’s failure to address issues of vegetarianism, the Third World debt crisis and poor student discos. You call it Willy or Won't lle?. Talent points needed: 30
10 A shady entrepreneur takes you on as the funny wee baldy guy in a stage tribute to The Genius ofBenny llill. Talent points needed: 20 11 Hull Sucks Theatre Company gives you the job of prompt for its camp nightclub comedy, Flouncers. Talent points needed: 20
12 The Retired Grouse—shooters Amateur Theatrical Society asks you to play the dead body in its Agatha Christie thriller, Murder at the Manor and Everyone’s C orpsing. Talent
points needed: 10
LISTO!
NAME
TALENT POINTS
FAME POINTS
snow were,“ VENUE “:33”
exms‘