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
Famous quotes containing the words fringe and/or theatre:
“In the Japanese
tongue of the
mind’s eye one
two syllable word
tells of
the fringe of rain....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Mankind’s common instinct for reality ... has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life’s supreme mystery is hidden. We tolerate no one who has no capacity whatever for it in any direction. On the other hand, no matter what a man’s frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever.”
—William James (1842–1910)