FRINGE BENEFITS Solo and Fringe Festivals Can – and Your Theatre Career by Derek Davidson and Karen Sabo
Remember when fringe festivals were so, well … fringe-y? Maybe you recall first hearing about the grandparent of these events, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. To those whose tastes run outside the mainstream, Broadway is cool, and off-Broadway is cooler, but Edinburgh Fringe is the epitome of cool. Since the birth of the Edinburgh Festival in 1947, the fringe scene has exploded, especially in North America, which currently hosts more fringe festivals than any other continent. The popularity of these festivals reflects their fulfillment of a need that mainstream theatre often does not meet. For many in the audience, fringe is synonymous with experimental, edgy. Audiences don’t attend a fringe festival to see another production of The Odd Couple (unless the entire cast is naked and on roller skates). For artists of all types – writers, directors, designers, dancers, actors, singers, musicians, magicians, acrobats – fringe festivals represent opportunity: opportunity to test new work, to expand their repertoires, to experiment with new styles or modes of performance, to push themselves into undiscovered artistic country, or (for many) just to be seen.