Fringe theatre is theatre that is not of the mainstream. The term comes from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which name comes from Robert Kemp, who described the unofficial companies performing at the same time as the second Edinburgh International Festival (1948) as a ‘fringe’, writing: ‘Round the fringe of official Festival drama, there seems to be more private enterprise than before’. The term has since been adopted by the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and thence by alternative theatres and alternative theatre festivals.
In London, the Fringe is the term given to small scale theatres, many of them located above pubs, and the equivalent to New York's Off-Broadway or Off-Off-Broadway theatres.
There are also many unjuried theatre festivals which are often called fringe festivals. These festivals, such as the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Adelaide Fringe Festival, permit artists to perform a wide variety of works.
Read more about Fringe Theatre: History of Fringe Theatre Festivals, Fringe Theatre Festival Organization, Elements of A Typical Fringe Theatre Production, List of Fringe Festivals
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“Glorious bouquets and storms of applause ... are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys. But to move an audience in such a role, to hear in the applause that unmistakable note which breaks through good theatre manners and comes from the heart, is to feel that you have won through to life itself. Such pleasure does not vanish with the fall of the curtain, but becomes part of one’s own life.”
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