What Is a Fringe Festival?

The short answer

A fringe festival is an open-access arts festival: anyone who registers, pays the fee and finds a venue can put on a show, and no panel chooses the programme. Comedy appears beside theatre, music, circus and dance. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Adelaide Fringe, Brighton Fringe, FRINGE WORLD in Perth and NZ Fringe in Wellington all work this way.

Anyone can take part

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society describes its founding principle as open access: the Fringe takes anyone with a desire to perform and a venue willing to host them, and no single person or committee decides who can appear. The Society itself runs no venues and programmes no performers. Brighton Fringe puts it the same way: whoever pays to register and finds a room can stage an event, and artists face no selection. NZ Fringe says anyone can register an event, with no gate-keeping, and FRINGE WORLD in Perth runs on an open-access model in which events register to join the festival.

So who does the choosing?

Open access does not mean nothing is chosen. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has no central selection process, but its guide for artists notes that individual venues decide which shows they programme, while the Fringe Society invites no one and covers no costs. Adelaide Fringe says it does not edit or limit its program, curate events or run venues, yet hundreds of independent curators and venues operate under its umbrella. Artists carry the risk: at Adelaide Fringe independent artists pay a fee to be registered and fund their own productions, and most of the ticket income goes back to them.

Where the idea began, and where comedy sits

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe traces the idea to 1947, when eight theatre groups turned up uninvited to perform at the Edinburgh International Festival and staged their shows on its fringe. The Festival Fringe Society followed in 1958, under a constitution that kept it out of vetting the programme. NZ Fringe began in 1990, after a group of performance makers came home from the Edinburgh Fringe wanting one of their own. Comedy is one strand among many: the Edinburgh Fringe lists theatre, comedy, dance, circus and cabaret, Brighton Fringe sorts its programme into 11 categories including comedy, and NZ Fringe invites theatre, visual art, comedy, music, circus and dance.

Anyone can take part

So who does the choosing?

Where the idea began, and where comedy sits

Sources

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