The History
The original Fringe Festival started in 1947 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Artists rejected by the Edinburgh Arts Festival put on shows on the outskirts of town, and this impromptu festival on the fringe became bigger than the original, eventually producing famous work like Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag. Fringe became a global movement with more than 250 such festivals held around the world celebrating the idea that just about anyone can put on a theater show with a little help.
Survival
According to Minnesota Fringe executive director Dawn Bentley, COVID-19 brought this global network even closer together. Bentley worked as a microbiologist studying communicable diseases before getting into arts organization.
“Perfect background for experimental theater,” she jokes.
But it wasn’t funny in 2020 when COVID-19 forced the festival online: All the lost ticket sales almost resulted in bankruptcy after more than two decades. Bentley and her community raised more than $100,000 that year, enough to come back with a hybrid model in 2021 and fully in person in 2022, but they lost nearly half their audience.
The Players
The Fringe will be putting on 101 shows this year across 16 venues, with a majority located in the West Bank.
“We’re really leaning into our neighborhood this year,” Bentley says.
In addition to raising money for the players, your Fringe button will get you deals at West Bank businesses and restaurants such as Afro Deli and Hard Times Cafe. The festival’s inclusive lottery system allows theater artists of any level of experience the chance to become the next Stoppard or Waller-Bridge, with the festival providing the budgetary and technical help to realize their vision.
“There’s no curating the festival,” Bentley says. “We’re providing a platform and an opportunity for them to tell the story they want to tell.”
The Fringe Festival returns August 3-13.