Fringe theatre

Fringe theatre is

In 1947, eight theatre companies showed up at the Edinburgh International Festival, hoping to gain recognition from the mass gathering at the festival. In 1948, Robert Kemp, a Scottish journalist and playwright, described the situation, "Round the fringe of official Festival drama, there seems to be more private enterprise than before ... I am afraid some of us are not going to be at home during the evenings!".^[2] Edinburgh Festival Fringe was founded under the name "Festival Adjuncts", in 1947.

The fringe movement in Britain has been said to start in the 1960s, similar to the United States'

Meanwhile, in the United States, experimental theatre was growing due to the political protest of the Vietnam War. The Living Theatre, founded by Julian Beck, is considered the leader of the "flower power" and "hippie" movement.^[3]

By the early 1970s, many fringe theatres began to receive small subsidies. After the

Fringe theatres were attractive to people in the 1960s due to their adventurousness but became less wild in the 1970s while the standards of production rose.[3]

In 1982, the first fringe festival in North America^{[citation needed]} was started in Edmonton, Alberta. It was then a theatre component of the larger Summerfest but evolved to become a stand-alone event, the Edmonton International Fringe Festival, one of the largest annual arts events in Canada and still the largest fringe in North America by attendance.^{[citation needed]} The oldest^{[citation needed]} fringe festival in the United States is Orlando, FL, founded in 1992. There are more fringe festivals in North America than any other continent.

Festival organization

One distinction between fringe festivals and conventional arts festivals is the method used to choose participants. Typically, conventional festivals use a jury selection process, whereas many fringe festivals do not use a jury process in their selection criteria, hence the descriptor unjuried or open-access. There are exceptions to this; some fringe festivals (e.g., New York International Fringe Festival) do employ a jury-based selection process.^[6][7][8]

All performers are welcome to apply, regardless of their professional or amateur status. No restrictions are made as to the nature, style or theme of the performance, though some festivals have children's areas with appropriate content limitations. Festivals may have too many applicants for the number of available spaces; in this case, applicants are chosen based on an unrelated criterion, such as order of application or a random draw.

The number of performances varies among different fringe festivals. Larger festivals may have thousands of performances (e.g., Edinburgh's 2013 festival had 45,464 performances).^[9]

Fringe festivals typically have a common organising group that handles ticketing, scheduling, and some overall promotion (such as a program including all performers). Each production pays a set fee to this group, which usually includes their stage time as well as the organizational elements. The organising group and/or the venues often rely on a large pool of volunteers.

Ticket pricing varies between festivals. At UK fringe festivals, groups can decide their own ticket prices, and some sell tickets at fixed rates in one or two tiers, or in groups of 5 or 10.^{[citation needed]}

Although it is unusual for the organising group to choose any winners of the festival, other organisations often make their own judgements of festival entries^{[citation needed]} . Productions can be reviewed by newspapers or publications specific to the festival, and awards may be given by certain organisations. Awards or favourable reviews can increase the tickets sales of productions or lead to extra dates being added ^{[original research?]}.

Elements of a typical production

The limitations and opportunities that the fringe festival format presents lead to some common features.

Shows are not judged or juried. Depending on the popularity, some fringe festivals may use a lottery system to determine which shows are selected.

Shows are typically technically sparse. They are commonly presented in shared venues, often with shared technicians and limited technical time, so sets and other

Casts tend to be smaller than mainstream theatre; since many of the performing groups are traveling, and venues (and thus potential income) tend to be fairly small, expenses must usually be kept to a minimum. One-person shows are therefore quite common at fringe festivals. ^{[citation needed]}

Fringe festival productions often showcase new scripts, especially ones on more obscure, edgy, or unusual material. The lack of artistic vetting combined with relatively easy entry make risk-taking more feasible.^[10]

While most mainstream theatre shows are two or three acts long, taking two to three hours with intermissions, fringe shows tend to be closer to one-hour, single-act productions. The typically lowered ticket prices of a fringe theatre show permit audiences to attend multiple shows in a single evening.^[11]

Performers sometimes billet in the homes of local residents, further reducing their costs.^[12][13][14]

List of fringe festivals

See also

• Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals
• Experimental theatre

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fringe Festivals.

• World Fringe