Fringe theatre is a term used to describe alternative theatre, or entertainment not of the mainstream. In London, fringe theatre is part of the Off West End theatre scene, the equivalent of New York's off-Broadway theatre. There are also many unjuried theatre festivals which are often called fringe festivals. These festivals, such as Edinburgh Fringe and Adelaide Fringe Festival, permit artists to produce a wide variety of interesting works.

Other long running fringe festivals are the [Windsor Fringe] (founded 1969) and Malvern Fringe (founded 1977) which have provided platforms for showcasing up and coming talent. The oldest and largest fringe festival in England is the Brighton Festival Fringe, which has provided Fringe activity alongside the main Brighton Festival since its creation in 1967.

The second-largest fringe festival in the world is the Adelaide Fringe Festival. The Adelaide Fringe evolved in the early 1970s as a reaction against the establishment and the then 'mainstream' Adelaide Festival of Arts. Today, although two events are now inextricably linked, the Fringe Festival has overtaken the main Festival of Arts in terms of attendance. The Adelaide Fringe is renowned for its innovation, spontaneity and carnival atmosphere, and is widely regarded as one of the best events of its kind in the world.^{[citation needed]}

The largest fringe festival in North America is the Edmonton International Fringe Festival, followed closely by the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival. Founded in 1982 and 1988 respectively, Edmonton and Winnipeg are the premier stops on the Canadian fringe tour, a semi-official series of fringe theatre festivals that permit performers to travel east to west, from June to September. Canada now has more Fringe Festivals than any other country in the world and each Canadian Fringe festival strongly adheres to the philosophy that a "Fringe Festival" be unjuried, return 100% of box office proceeds back to the participating artists and remain affordable and accessible to all. The oldest and largest Fringe Festival in the United States is the Orlando Fringe.

Fringe festivals are becoming more common, with many major cities throughout the world now conducting their own Fringe Festivals of sorts.

 Fringe theater festival organisation

The mechanics of a Fringe festival are fairly simple. The most important element in the administration that creates a Fringe festival as opposed to a "normal" arts festival is the unjuried nature of the performances. Some festivals, notably the New York International Fringe Festival, stray from the original concept in that they pick their participants using a jury-based application process.

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. (Some festivals have children's areas, with an appropriate content limitation.) Many festivals find too many applicants for the number of available spaces; in this case, applicants are chosen based on an unrelated criteria, such as order of application or a random draw. The one common limitation of a Fringe festival is a geographic one; applicants may be divided into groups to ensure a mix of local, national and international talent.

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. Performers sometimes billet in the homes of local residents, further reducing their costs.

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

Shows are typically technically sparse; they are commonly presented in shared venues, often with shared technicians and limited technical time, so sets and other technical theatre elements are kept simple. Venues themselves are often adapted from other uses.

Casts tend to be smaller than mainstream theatre; since many of the performing groups are travelling, 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.

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^{[citation needed]} make risk-taking more feasible.

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.

List of Fringe Festivals Around The World

• Adelaide Fringe Festival
• Brighton Festival Fringe
• Calgary Fringe Festival
• Edinburgh Fringe
• Edmonton International Fringe Festival
• Indianapolis Theatre Fringe Festival
• London Fringe Theatre Festival (Ontario)
• Malvern Fringe Festival
• Minnesota Fringe Festival
• Prague Fringe
• Rogue Performance Festival
• Saskatoon fringe theatre festival
• San Francisco Fringe Festival
• M1 Singapore Fringe Festival
• Toronto Fringe Festival
• Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival
• Vancouver Fringe Festival
• New York International Fringe Festival
• Fringe Theatre Network
• Showcase theatre (performing arts group)
• Capital Fringe

• Guide to the 2007 New York Fringe Festival
• New Zealand Fringe Festival
• Minnesota Fringe Festival
• Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals
• Edmonton Fringe
• Toronto Fringe
• Vancouver Fringe
• Athabasca Fringe
• Montreal Fringe
• Saskatoon Fringe Theatre Festival
• San Francisco Fringe
• Stratford Fringe
• London, Ontario Fringe
• Boulder Fringe
• Minnesota Fringe
• Adelaide Fringe Festival
• Malvern Fringe Festival
• The New York International Fringe Festival
• Philly Fringe
• Indianapolis Theatre Fringe Festival
• Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival
• Brighton Festival Fringe
• C venues Edinburgh Fringe
• Ottawa Fringe Festival
• Fringe Theatre Network, London, England
• Capital Fringe - Washington DC
• Cincinnati Fringe Festival - Cincinnati, OH
• The Berkshire Fringe - Great Barrington, MA
• KC Fringe Festival - Kansas City, MO
• Rogue Performance Festival - Fresno, CA
• Shunt Fringe Theatre - London, UK (A Chinese Blog Article)
• Brighton Festival Fringe
• Bath Fringe Festival

In addition to these incredible performances, FringeNYC includes: (Click on any title to learn more!)

Theater’s Alternative Universe

Joseph Neal and Margery Cohen in "The Consuming Passions."

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Published: August 18, 2007

As an experience in scruffy cultural consumption, the New York International Fringe Festival is without parallel in Manhattan, or possibly anywhere else.

From its very first year, in 1997, the Fringe has offered about 175 shows every summer, performed in small theaters, community centers and church basements, some of which depend on hand-held fans as their sole source of cooling. In certain cases, the seats seem to function as probable cause of advanced-stage sciatica. And to anyone who bemoans the disappearance of an alternative New York and sees apocalyptic implications in the arrival of Whole Foods on the Bowery, after a week perusing the Fringe I would have to issue a hearty “I don’t think so.”

On one level, the Fringe (which runs through Aug. 26) provides a contrarian lesson in the demographics of the city. There are, for instance, many more people than I would have ever imagined who seem able to accommodate their schedules on a weekday afternoon for something like “To Be Loved,” an aggressively lugubrious piece about a distraught monk embattled by grief and sexual ambivalence.

The play, by a young writer named Alex DeFazio, sinks deep into its stylistic pretensions. In it, a monk named Seigen (Liam Joynt) cannot get over the death of his lover, a young man whose affections his own carnal guilt has prompted him to dissuade. The deceased, Paul (Nicholas Gorham), expires essentially from stifled lust. Sexual rejection is understood here as among the most pernicious forms of physical torture.

Paul’s life ends early on, but he remains onstage, as statuary, wearing lipstick, skinny jeans and the facial expression of an imperious waiter. This all has the effect of reminding us what an implausible object of obsession Paul really is — a vacant man-child who appears to be waging a two-hour audition for a remake of “Velvet Goldmine.”

“To Be Loved” has been one of the most talked-about entries in the festival this year, though in general the Fringe exists beyond the architecture of hype. Signs appearing outside its performance spaces are usually no bigger than a child’s piece of construction paper. But for all there is to appreciate in this absence of announcement, it can seem even to longtime devotees as if the festival defies efforts at navigation. The Fringe remains, in some sense, the theatrical equivalent of a passport office, leaving us all to hack it out on our own.

Should you choose to confine yourself to only the most outré selections, you will find that they outnumber the hours of your allotted leisure time. Descriptions of each show available on the Fringe’s Web site (fringenyc.org) typically read like this: “A virgin stripper, a mythical wolf-woman, an 18th-century girl, a C.E.O., housewife and celebrity reporter make up the pack of ‘She Wolves.’ A solo performance that howls out a long-forgotten truth.” Or: “Lillie and Millie make the best peanut butter and jelly in Vermont thanks to their special ingredient: penis.”

Though the Fringe is too thematically diffuse for trend spotting, it seems worth noting that two pieces this year take a let’s-yuk-it-up approach to cancer. (Another entry in the misery-health genre is “In the Shadow of My Son,” which bills itself as the “Angels in America” of postpartum depression.)

“Cancer! The Musical” is the work of two brothers, Shawn Handlon and Tom Donnellon (an oncologist and cancer survivor), and a songwriter, John Edwartowski. Though largely a mess, the musical (with lyrics like “You’re feeling pretty good now/But soon you’ll be deceased!”) is noble in its intent, mocking the lack of human compassion in medical treatment. “Eye contact,” one of the characters, based on Dr. Donnellon, explains to a patient, “is the leading cause of emotional involvement.”

It has been nine years since the comedian Julia Sweeney’s “God Said Ha!,” a one-woman show and later a film based on her own family’s macabre fortunes with cancer. But cancer humor seems to have revived itself lately, initiated perhaps by the success of the New Yorker cartoonist Marissa Acocella Marchetto’s wonderfully funny memoir, “Cancer Vixen,” last year. “Two-Mur Humor: He’s Malignant; She’s Benign,” another of the festival’s selections, is a two-person piece performed by a couple forced to confront the prospect of terminal illnesss imultaneously.

At least one piece on the Fringe’s current schedule takes a comic approach to the far less somber, if just as unlikely, subject of dietary history. I’d heard not a word about “The Consuming Passions of Lydia Pinkham and Rev. Sylvester Graham” but wandered into it randomly and found great delight. Written and performed by Margery Cohen and Joseph Neal, accompanied by the pianist Woody Regan, the musical examines our dueling impulse to view the American table both as a source of near-erotic pleasure and as a means of discipline and social control.

Graham, an early 19th-century Connecticut minister, was a famous proselytizer for dietary restrictions, advocating whole grains, sound digestion and reduced sugar intake as both physical and moral imperatives. Here he is paired with Pinkham, his contemporary and a women’s health reformer, in a battle of wits over the virtues and vices of American eating habits. “Consuming Passions” is so whimsical that its insights seem almost accidental. Some of the songs have been revived and readapted from early-20th-century musicals, and they possess both wisdom and bite, making the production among the festival’s most winning history lessons.

“Bucharest Calling,” a drama about young people confronting limited opportunity in the post-Communist world, easily qualifies as another. Written by Peca Stefan and directed by Ana Margineanu (Romanians who are also behind a second offering at the festival, “The Sunshine Play”), the production makes excellent use of its spare surroundings.

Even the most professional efforts, like “Consuming Passions,” can feel diminished in the shabby setting of the Fringe’s performance spaces. But the bleak theater in which “Bucharest” is set serves it well, supplementing the play’s mood of despondence and emotional claustrophobia. The actors work simply, with a few chairs and grim images of Bucharest streets projected on a screen behind them.

“Bucharest Calling” reminds us that the Fringe is international in its scope. I would venture to guess that this prompts some people to narrow the field by winnowing their choices to foreign works. This is an entirely reasonable approach, though anyone taking it should know that this year it will require you to seriously consider “Joan of ArPpo,” a tragicomic parable of contemporary life, performed by a Swiss clown.

The New York International Fringe Festival runs through Aug. 26 at sites throughout the city. (212) 279-4488; full schedule available at fringenyc.org.

Welcome to the Fringe!
Now Where the Hell Is It?

Scattered venues, weak plays, Urinetown wannabes: How can we improve
the New York Fringe?

by Alexis Soloski

August 7th, 2007 4:51 PM
http://www.villagevoice.com/theater/0732,soloski,77433,11.html

Guess what's coming to dinner: 2007 Fringe rock opera The Rat King, via Toronto
photo: Lee Tondrow

These days, a skyscraper towers over Ludlow Street, a Whole Foods gleams on the corner of Bowery, a Starbucks dispenses lattes on Delancey. But the Parkside Lounge on Attorney and Houston remains unchanged. Glancing around the seedy barroom, theater director John Clancy muses, "Ten years ago, this was the only bar in the neighborhood." Having no other options, Clancy came to the Parkside in 1997 to celebrate the success of the first New York International Fringe Festival, which he co-founded. He smiled and talked for so many hours that night, so thrilled with the Fringe, that his jaw ached the next day.

A decade on, Clancy has a choice of L.E.S. bars, but still returns to the Parkside. And he's still smiling as he prepares for the 2007 Fringe. Not the New York Fringe—the Edinburgh one. Though Clancy co-created the New York Fringe and speaks warmly of its director, Elena K. Holy, he declines to participate in it. He's eager, however, for Edinburgh, describing how their Fringe dominates the entire city. He loves "this great excitement, this incredible fucking buzz of all these shows, all these artists, all these people."

The New York Fringe Festival—which starts it 11th year on Friday—doesn't exude that kind of excitement or buzz. It has largely failed to attract the range and quality of shows at other fringe festivals— Edinburgh, Dublin, Adelaide, even nearby Philadelphia. And with its venues so scattered across the East Village, West Village, and Lower East Side, it's possible to wander those neighborhoods and remain unaware that a Fringe is happening at all, a phenomenon difficult to imagine at any other festival. Even Clancy, a man who risked lockjaw starting it, would rather take his shows elsewhere. What, if anything, can the New York Fringe do to sex itself up, to attract innovative artists, to convince more experienced artists to return? A few weeks before the start of this year's festival, I spoke with Clancy, Philadelphia Fringe artistic director Nick Stuccio, and P.S.122's Vallejo Gantner, former artistic director of the Dublin Fringe, to see how they'd improve our Fringe. Clancy argues for expanding it, Stuccio for tying it to another festival, Gantner for limiting its scope.

It should be said that the Fringe is not in desperate straits. It has enjoyed successes—most notably Urinetown, which debuted at the 1999 Fringe and later enjoyed a Broadway run. Other shows have earned Off-Broadway engagements and fine reviews, like Matt and Ben. (Though many such transfers, like Debbie Does Dallas and Dog Sees God, have flopped.) Financially, the Fringe is shockingly stable. It presents nearly 200 shows at 20-odd venues; nearly 800 applicants pay a $30 fee to vie for those slots. An adjudicating board selects the shows and assigns each a venue and times. For the $550 participation fee, the Fringe office also provides box-office managers, equipment, program-guide listings, volunteer staff, etc. (though productions are heavily encouraged to "tip" their venue directors). Of every $15 ticket sold, $8.75 goes to the company performing and $6.25 to the Fringe. Those tickets and fees, plus a very small number of grants and donations (around $30,000), produce revenues of roughly $700,000, which neatly cancels out the $700,000 in costs. The balanced budget owes in part to Holy and her assistant's positively abstemious salaries. As Clancy notes, with this current business model the Fringe "can run forever right now."

But should it? These days, very little in the New York Fringe Festival appears, well, fringe. Admittedly, "Fringe" doesn't necessarily indicate the innovative or the outré; rather, it refers to the sort of work that crops up on the fringes of a curated arts festival—that's how Edinburgh's began in 1947. Yet, ideally, a Fringe offers weirder, more outlandish work. Having attended eight of the 10 previous New York Fringes and seen well over 100 shows, I can claim with some confidence that since the mainstream success of Urinetown, the offerings have become distinctly less eccentric. (A quick glance at this year's program reveals 18 musical comedies, nine with exclamation points in their titles.) Not since 2000, when I saw Charlie Victor Romeo and Tiny Ninja Macbeth, has a Fringe show really surprised me.

In order to recapture some of the excitement and oddity of the Fringe's first few years, Clancy suggests moving to a model similar to Edinburgh's, in which the New York Fringe abandons adjudication and makes the festival open to all comers—all comers who can find a venue to house them. Clancy, who tends to swear when excited, effuses: "Any fucking show, anything—fine. You find your space and you're in the festival. It's a radical rethinking." In this model, venues decide which shows they want to host, make deals with the artists, and report the details to the Fringe Office. The Fringe Office would produce the Fringe guide and oversee the festival's PR. (The Fringe would also have to abandon the aspect of its artist agreement that requires authors, for seven years after the festival, to pay the Fringe 2 percent of all royalties over $20,000 for a play mounted at the festival. It's a clause that probably contributes to the amateurishness of much Fringe playwriting, as established playwrights are unlikely to consent to having their plays tithed by an organization that's presenting, not producing the work.)

Clancy thinks his plan would draw in venues in Brooklyn and Queens and make the festival again appeal to artists of his standing. Says Clancy: "If Ars Nova and Galapagos and P.S.122 and the Brick—all the spaces that have that sex appeal and that buzz—were now running Fringe festivals and had their own beer gardens, that might be very interesting. If St. Ann's Warehouse said, 'John, we're a Fringe venue, we're very interested in doing your show in the Fringe,' I'd say, 'Yeah, I'd love to play St. Ann's—sign me up, you got it.' He does acknowledge that his idea might diffuse an already scattered festival. "My plan could very well result in the complete destruction of the festival within two years," he says. "It could blow up, it could be a mess and be over, and that's the risk—that's the excitement."

Holy doesn't favor Clancy's idea. She writes: "Some people (that I love dearly) have suggested that we should get a lot bigger and that we should use venues in other boroughs. . . . I think it makes FringeNYC much less special. Frankly, with all of the Off-Broadway venues in Manhattan disappearing . . . we're increasingly becoming a rare opportunity to get to perform in this borough." Also, Holy may not wish to surrender the more hands-on and service-oriented position she currently occupies. "The beauty of the Fringe," says Clancy, "—what Elena does so well and what she gets so much pleasure out of—is taking care of that artist, that kid, who's just come to New York, and making sure they have the best possible deal. It's still the best deal."

Nick Stuccio of the Philadelphia Fringe proposes an alternative model. Philadelphia began its Fringe in the same year as New York, but a few years later it altered its structure, continuing to run the Fringe but also offering the fully curated and produced Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, which runs alongside it. This encourages more established artists to present work, and shows the Philly Fringe applicants the edgy stuff that Stuccio likes best. "I created the current festival in the ways that I like to go to festivals," he says. "I like to see the big names and these big international superstars making incredible experimental work, but I also love to see the garage theater—in the garage or in the basement or on the street."

Stuccio thinks the two festivals "work synergistically, they work in tandem." And invited companies like the Wooster Group or Pig Iron provide a model of accomplishment different from the Fringe-to-Broadway trajectory of Urinetown. It doesn't seem likely that the New York Fringe's tight budget could run toward hiring the Wooster Group (or anyone, really), but now that it has established itself, perhaps it could garner more city and state funding for such a project, or partner with an extant festival—like Under the Radar or the Lincoln Center Festival.

In Dublin, Gantner split the difference between Clancy's and Stuccio's models. Gantner says he chose the 100 or so shows included each year on the basis of "Is this innovative? Is it exciting? Why is it different? Why does it need to be presented during Fringe time and not a different time? We had a clear identity: to be experimental." Gantner thinks that the Fringe could join with some independent venues, like P.S.122, but also reduce its scope, presenting fewer shows but giving those shows more individual attention.

This model wouldn't strain the Fringe's budget and could allow for more hands-on relationships with the artists. "There's an aspect of interacting with the artists and making them feel supported that doesn't have to be expensive," Gantner says. "There are many companies I know that won't go back to the Fringe because they didn't feel supported. They'll go back to the Dublin Fringe, but not the New York Fringe."

Of course, each of these models evades the question of whether or not New York actually needs a Fringe. Though many of the Fringe's original L.E.S. theaters have succumbed to gentrification, New York doesn't lack for Off-Off Broadway venues, some of them quite cheap. And the boom in Internet review sites like nytheatre.com assure that nearly every show receives some sort of press attention. While summer was once a sluggish time in the New York theater season, that's no longer true, and the Fringe must compete with the Ice Factory, the Lincoln Center Festival, the American Living Room Festival, the Dixon Place Hot! Festival, the Midtown Theater Festival, and the Summer Play Festival, to say nothing of the city's other myriad distractions. The central post-show hangout, a staple of the Fringe in nearly ever other city, has never really caught on here. Gantner wonders, "Why take two subways and a 10-minute walk to a festival bar? Why not go to the bar down the block? It's a festival every day in New York City—that is the problem. There's a truth to the fact that festivals work best in small cities."

But many of the Fringe's current crop of participants actively disagree. Playwright William August Schulenberg, whose Riding the Bull will play at CSV Cultural Center, loves the Fringe for the sense of community it offers. "It's not just getting my work seen," he says. "There are eight other shows [where] I know someone who's in them, and I'm so excited to go from one show to the next." As for the monetary arrangements, he says: "Having done some producing on my own, I know how expensive things are. It seems more than fair to me. If we were to do this play without the Fringe's help, it would cost much more." Jody Person, who will stage To Be Loved at the Theaters at 45 Bleecker, agrees. "Self-producing is simply becoming unaffordable in NYC," she says. "Even in Brooklyn and Long Island City! While Fringe isn't free, it's the only framework I know of in New York where a performance can be created for under $2,000 and be slated to run only five or six times and still find an audience." Even Gantner expresses awe at the financial arrangements, particularly the participation fee of $550. "That," he says, "is an amazing deal."

But is an amazing deal enough? Clancy, among others, dreams of a New York Fringe that would "compete with the Macy's Day parade, the New York Marathon. It should be something that every single New Yorker—not just theatrical people, not just downtown people, but every fucking New Yorker—goes, 'That's our Fringe.' "

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Welcome to the Fringe!
Now Where the Hell Is It?

A decade on, Clancy has a choice of L.E.S. bars, but still returns to the Parkside. And he's still smiling as he prepares for the 2007 Fringe. Not the New York Fringe—the Edinburgh one. Though Clancy co-created the New York Fringe and speaks warmly of its director, Elena K. Holy, he declines to participate in it. He's eager, however, for Edinburgh, describing how their Fringe dominates the entire city. He loves "this great excitement, this incredible fucking buzz of all these shows, all these artists, all these people."

The New York Fringe Festival—which starts it 11th year on Friday—doesn't exude that kind of excitement or buzz. It has largely failed to attract the range and quality of shows at other fringe festivals— Edinburgh, Dublin, Adelaide, even nearby Philadelphia. And with its venues so scattered across the East Village, West Village, and Lower East Side, it's possible to wander those neighborhoods and remain unaware that a Fringe is happening at all, a phenomenon difficult to imagine at any other festival. Even Clancy, a man who risked lockjaw starting it, would rather take his shows elsewhere. What, if anything, can the New York Fringe do to sex itself up, to attract innovative artists, to convince more experienced artists to return? A few weeks before the start of this year's festival, I spoke with Clancy, Philadelphia Fringe artistic director Nick Stuccio, and P.S.122's Vallejo Gantner, former artistic director of the Dublin Fringe, to see how they'd improve our Fringe. Clancy argues for expanding it, Stuccio for tying it to another festival, Gantner for limiting its scope.

It should be said that the Fringe is not in desperate straits. It has enjoyed successes—most notably Urinetown, which debuted at the 1999 Fringe and later enjoyed a Broadway run. Other shows have earned Off-Broadway engagements and fine reviews, like Matt and Ben. (Though many such transfers, like Debbie Does Dallas and Dog Sees God, have flopped.) Financially, the Fringe is shockingly stable. It presents nearly 200 shows at 20-odd venues; nearly 800 applicants pay a $30 fee to vie for those slots. An adjudicating board selects the shows and assigns each a venue and times. For the $550 participation fee, the Fringe office also provides box-office managers, equipment, program-guide listings, volunteer staff, etc. (though productions are heavily encouraged to "tip" their venue directors). Of every $15 ticket sold, $8.75 goes to the company performing and $6.25 to the Fringe. Those tickets and fees, plus a very small number of grants and donations (around $30,000), produce revenues of roughly $700,000, which neatly cancels out the $700,000 in costs. The balanced budget owes in part to Holy and her assistant's positively abstemious salaries. As Clancy notes, with this current business model the Fringe "can run forever right now."

But should it? These days, very little in the New York Fringe Festival appears, well, fringe. Admittedly, "Fringe" doesn't necessarily indicate the innovative or the outré; rather, it refers to the sort of work that crops up on the fringes of a curated arts festival—that's how Edinburgh's began in 1947. Yet, ideally, a Fringe offers weirder, more outlandish work. Having attended eight of the 10 previous New York Fringes and seen well over 100 shows, I can claim with some confidence that since the mainstream success of Urinetown, the offerings have become distinctly less eccentric. (A quick glance at this year's program reveals 18 musical comedies, nine with exclamation points in their titles.) Not since 2000, when I saw Charlie Victor Romeo and Tiny Ninja Macbeth, has a Fringe show really surprised me.

In order to recapture some of the excitement and oddity of the Fringe's first few years, Clancy suggests moving to a model similar to Edinburgh's, in which the New York Fringe abandons adjudication and makes the festival open to all comers—all comers who can find a venue to house them. Clancy, who tends to swear when excited, effuses: "Any fucking show, anything—fine. You find your space and you're in the festival. It's a radical rethinking." In this model, venues decide which shows they want to host, make deals with the artists, and report the details to the Fringe Office. The Fringe Office would produce the Fringe guide and oversee the festival's PR. (The Fringe would also have to abandon the aspect of its artist agreement that requires authors, for seven years after the festival, to pay the Fringe 2 percent of all royalties over $20,000 for a play mounted at the festival. It's a clause that probably contributes to the amateurishness of much Fringe playwriting, as established playwrights are unlikely to consent to having their plays tithed by an organization that's presenting, not producing the work.)

Clancy thinks his plan would draw in venues in Brooklyn and Queens and make the festival again appeal to artists of his standing. Says Clancy: "If Ars Nova and Galapagos and P.S.122 and the Brick—all the spaces that have that sex appeal and that buzz—were now running Fringe festivals and had their own beer gardens, that might be very interesting. If St. Ann's Warehouse said, 'John, we're a Fringe venue, we're very interested in doing your show in the Fringe,' I'd say, 'Yeah, I'd love to play St. Ann's—sign me up, you got it.' He does acknowledge that his idea might diffuse an already scattered festival. "My plan could very well result in the complete destruction of the festival within two years," he says. "It could blow up, it could be a mess and be over, and that's the risk—that's the excitement."

Holy doesn't favor Clancy's idea. She writes: "Some people (that I love dearly) have suggested that we should get a lot bigger and that we should use venues in other boroughs. . . . I think it makes FringeNYC much less special. Frankly, with all of the Off-Broadway venues in Manhattan disappearing . . . we're increasingly becoming a rare opportunity to get to perform in this borough." Also, Holy may not wish to surrender the more hands-on and service-oriented position she currently occupies. "The beauty of the Fringe," says Clancy, "—what Elena does so well and what she gets so much pleasure out of—is taking care of that artist, that kid, who's just come to New York, and making sure they have the best possible deal. It's still the best deal."

Nick Stuccio of the Philadelphia Fringe proposes an alternative model. Philadelphia began its Fringe in the same year as New York, but a few years later it altered its structure, continuing to run the Fringe but also offering the fully curated and produced Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, which runs alongside it. This encourages more established artists to present work, and shows the Philly Fringe applicants the edgy stuff that Stuccio likes best. "I created the current festival in the ways that I like to go to festivals," he says. "I like to see the big names and these big international superstars making incredible experimental work, but I also love to see the garage theater—in the garage or in the basement or on the street."

Stuccio thinks the two festivals "work synergistically, they work in tandem." And invited companies like the Wooster Group or Pig Iron provide a model of accomplishment different from the Fringe-to-Broadway trajectory of Urinetown. It doesn't seem likely that the New York Fringe's tight budget could run toward hiring the Wooster Group (or anyone, really), but now that it has established itself, perhaps it could garner more city and state funding for such a project, or partner with an extant festival—like Under the Radar or the Lincoln Center Festival.

In Dublin, Gantner split the difference between Clancy's and Stuccio's models. Gantner says he chose the 100 or so shows included each year on the basis of "Is this innovative? Is it exciting? Why is it different? Why does it need to be presented during Fringe time and not a different time? We had a clear identity: to be experimental." Gantner thinks that the Fringe could join with some independent venues, like P.S.122, but also reduce its scope, presenting fewer shows but giving those shows more individual attention.

This model wouldn't strain the Fringe's budget and could allow for more hands-on relationships with the artists. "There's an aspect of interacting with the artists and making them feel supported that doesn't have to be expensive," Gantner says. "There are many companies I know that won't go back to the Fringe because they didn't feel supported. They'll go back to the Dublin Fringe, but not the New York Fringe."

Of course, each of these models evades the question of whether or not New York actually needs a Fringe. Though many of the Fringe's original L.E.S. theaters have succumbed to gentrification, New York doesn't lack for Off-Off Broadway venues, some of them quite cheap. And the boom in Internet review sites like nytheatre.com assure that nearly every show receives some sort of press attention. While summer was once a sluggish time in the New York theater season, that's no longer true, and the Fringe must compete with the Ice Factory, the Lincoln Center Festival, the American Living Room Festival, the Dixon Place Hot! Festival, the Midtown Theater Festival, and the Summer Play Festival, to say nothing of the city's other myriad distractions. The central post-show hangout, a staple of the Fringe in nearly ever other city, has never really caught on here. Gantner wonders, "Why take two subways and a 10-minute walk to a festival bar? Why not go to the bar down the block? It's a festival every day in New York City—that is the problem. There's a truth to the fact that festivals work best in small cities."

But many of the Fringe's current crop of participants actively disagree. Playwright William August Schulenberg, whose Riding the Bull will play at CSV Cultural Center, loves the Fringe for the sense of community it offers. "It's not just getting my work seen," he says. "There are eight other shows [where] I know someone who's in them, and I'm so excited to go from one show to the next." As for the monetary arrangements, he says: "Having done some producing on my own, I know how expensive things are. It seems more than fair to me. If we were to do this play without the Fringe's help, it would cost much more." Jody Person, who will stage To Be Loved at the Theaters at 45 Bleecker, agrees. "Self-producing is simply becoming unaffordable in NYC," she says. "Even in Brooklyn and Long Island City! While Fringe isn't free, it's the only framework I know of in New York where a performance can be created for under $2,000 and be slated to run only five or six times and still find an audience." Even Gantner expresses awe at the financial arrangements, particularly the participation fee of $550. "That," he says, "is an amazing deal."

The Village Voice Spring 2008 Education Supplement

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The New York International Fringe Festival, or
FringeNYC, is a Fringe theater festival and one of\
the largest multi-arts events in North America.
 It takes place over the course of two weeks every
August, spread across several neighborhoods in
downtown New York City, notably the
 Lower East Side, the East Village, and
 Greenwich Village.

Unlike most Fringe festivals, FringeNYC uses a
jury-based selection process[1]. Around 220 shows,
 out of a much larger pool of applicants,
are selected for inclusion each year.

The festival was founded in 1997 by Aaron Beall,
 John Clancy, Jonathan Harris, and
(current Artistic Director) Elena K. Holy,
and is produced by The Present Company.

Notable shows that premiered at FringeNYC
include Urinetown, Dog Sees God, the musical
adaptation of Debbie Does Dallas and
the American English-language premiere of
The Black Rider

FringeNYC includes many component events,
such as FringeU (educational events),
 FringeART (art events), and
FringeJR (children's events).

NY International Fringe Festival
www.fringenyc.org
520 8th Ave New York, NY 10018
(212) 279-4455
Get directions
More information »
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The New York International Fringe Festival: Shows @ FringeNYC
The New York International Fringe Festival is a production of The Present Company contact: webmaster@fringenyc.org | tel: (01) 212.279.4488 ...
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The official Store of The New York International Fringe Festival.
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The New York International Fringe Festival, or FringeNYC, is a Fringe theater festival and one of the largest multi-arts events in North America. ...
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OFFOFFOFF theater festival NEW YORK FRINGE FESTIVAL play

The Fringe Festival is the year's best chance to see bold, creative, not-ready-for-Broadway theater ranging from brilliant to bizarre — and sometimes both. ...
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News about New York International Fringe Festival. Commentary and archival information about New York International Fringe Festival from The New York Times.
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New York International Fringe Festival 2007 -- FringeNYC Invades ...

The 2007 New York International Fringe Festival features 13 days of experimental and cutting-edge performances by up-and-coming artists.
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At the Clamorous New York Fringe Festival, Silence Draws Attention ...

Billy is a different kind of mime: his wordless routines leave his audience speechless.
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As the team behind the play “The Infliction of Cruelty” discovered, the New York International Fringe Festival is a learning experience for everyone.
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The Fringe Festival: Avant Garde Theater Hits New York
 
Melena Ryzik of The Times attends the opening night party of the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival., Video on demand from the New York Times.
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Race & Culture: Reviews: Fringe Festival. TONY reviews some of the Fringe festival’s race-themed offerings. Article in Time Out New York: Theater.
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Program overview

There are so many things going on in Fringe Land, sometimes it can be difficult to know where you fit!

The Fringe Program
The Fringe accepts registrations across all art forms and when you register your event you will need to nominate which program you wish to be registered under. The Fringe Program is the collection of registered events. The Fringe Guide however, is the physical program where the details about the registered events are listed (see bottom of this page for more information). There are four main programs you can register for:

• Performing Arts & Events Program
• Visual Arts Program
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) Arts Program
• FUSE Program

The Youth and Education Program will return as part of Adelaide Fringe 2008.

Each event the Fringe produces a range of special events, which artists can register to be part of. These include:

• Opening Night Party clearly the biggest night of the year, and the night to see and be seen
• Family Events suitable for children of all ages

The Fringe Guide
The Fringe Guide is the one publication which lists every registered artist's show, along with a full calendar of events and maps, and will be in the back pocket of every Fringe punter

The Adelaide Fringe Festival is an arts festival held annually in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. The event is Australia's largest arts event and the second-largest fringe festival in the world. ^[1]