Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Early years The Fringe started life when eight theatre companies turned up uninvited to the inaugural Edinburgh International Festival in 1947. With the International Festival using the city's major venues, these companies took over smaller, alternative venues for their productions. Seven performed in Edinburgh, and one undertook a version of the medieval morality play Everyman in Dunfermline Abbey, about 20 miles north, across the River Forth in Fife. These groups aimed to take advantage of the large assembled theatre crowds to showcase their own alternative theatre. Although at the time it was not recognised as such, this was the first Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This meant that two defining features of the future Fringe were established at the very beginning – the lack of official invitations to perform and the use of unconventional venues. Originally, these groups referred to themselves as the "Festival Adjuncts" and the Tokyo Shock Boys performed in 1994. The Fringe Club ceased operation in 2004, but various venues still provide "the Best of the Fest" and similar. A computerised booking system was first installed in the early 1990s, allowing tickets to be bought at a number of locations around the city. The internet began to have an impact in 2000 with the launch of the Fringe's official website, which sold more than half a million tickets online by 2005. The following year, a Half Price Ticket Tent, run in association with Metro newspaper, started offering special ticket prices for different shows each day. This sold 45,000 tickets in its first year. In 2008, the Fringe faced its biggest crisis so far when the computerised ticketing system failed. The events surrounding the failed box office software led to the resignation of Fringe Director Jon Morgan after only one full year in post. which it was forced to meet from its reserves, although other sources report this at £900,000. Comedy finally surpassed theatre as the biggest section of the programme in 2008, with 660 comedy entries to 599. their multi-space complex at the Royal College of Surgeons. In 2011, a new all-year-round multi-arts festival venue, containing ten performance spaces, opened in the former Royal (Dick) Veterinary School under the name Summerhall. In 2018, an initiative called Fringe of Colour was founded by Jess Brough in response to what they termed the "overwhelming whiteness" of the Edinburgh Festivals. The Fringe today In 2016, Shona McCarthy, who had led Derry's term as UK City of Culture, took over from Kath Mainland as Chief Executive. The Fringe returned in 2021 with fewer shows and restrictions due to COVID-19 pandemic. By 2024, the Fringe registered the second highest number of shows in its history, marking a return close to pre-pandemic levels. ==Venues==

Fringe venues come in all shapes and sizes, with use being made of nearly any viable space that is available, from regular theatres (e.g. the Traverse or Bedlam Theatre), function rooms (e.g. the Assembly Rooms), churches and church halls (e.g. the Quaker Meeting House, Paradise in Augustines), lecture theatres (including the notable George Square Theatre), conference centres, other university rooms and spaces, bars and pubs, temporary structures (The Famous Spiegeltent and the Udderbelly), schools, a public toilet, the back of a taxi, a double-decker bus and even in the audience's own homes. The groups that operate the venues are also diverse: some are commercial and others not-for-profit; some operate year-round, while others exist only to run venues at the Fringe. Some are local, others are based in London and elsewhere and transfer to Edinburgh for August. From the performers' perspective, the decision on where to perform is typically based on a mixture of cost, location (close proximity to the main Fringe hubs around the university is seen as an advantage), and the philosophy of the venue – some of whom specialise in amateur, school or college productions, some of whom are semi or wholly professional. In 2019, there were more than 3,800 shows registered in the programme, taking place in 322 different venues. The main venue operators can broadly be split into four groups: • The Big Four The model is a mixture of Paid and Free and enables performers to find a paying audience without risking large marketing spend. Phil Kay, Tom Binns and Miss Behave were among the first established acts to embrace this model along with Adrienne Truscott who won the Edinburgh Comedy Awards Panel Prize with a PWYW show. Adam Hess was nominated for best newcomer in 2015. Other promoters such as Just the Tonic, The Pleasance and C Venues have since introduced the model to some of their venues. In 2016, Gilded Balloon adopted PWYW for the Counting House, which had previously been a Free Festival venue, and has since returned to that model. There also continue to be single, independent venues, sometimes only hosting one show, sometimes only for a limited period. During the Fringe, the pedestrianised area of the High Street around St Giles' Cathedral and the Fringe Office becomes the focal point for theatre companies to hand out flyers, perform scenes from their shows, and attempt to sell tickets. These performances run alongside the Fringe Street Events which feature more than 200 street performers and thousands of buskers on the High Street and Mound Precinct. Many shows are "2 for 1" on the first Monday and Tuesday of the festival and different venues operate independent ticket offers throughout the festival. In February 2025, the Fringe Society acquired the former South Bridge Resource Centre in Infirmary Street for use as their permanent base. As well as administrative offices, the building would provide space for Fringe participants and also serve as Fringe Central during August. ==Shows==

Notable shows '' Many notable original shows originated at the Fringe and it has helped establish the careers of many writers and performers, including Rowan Atkinson, Steven Berkoff, Jo Brand, Billy Connolly, Ben Elton, Eddie Izzard, Stephen Fry, Stewart Lee, Tim Minchin, and Tadeusz Kantor. In 1960, Alan Bennett, Dudley Moore, Peter Cook and Jonathan Miller performed at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Beyond the Fringe, introducing a new wave of British satire and heralding a change in attitudes towards politicians and the establishment. Ironically, this show was put together by the Edinburgh International Festival as a rebuff to the emerging Fringe. But its title alone helped publicise "the Fringe", especially when it went on to London's West End and New York's Broadway for the next 12 months. The Tattoo set-up at Edinburgh Castle served as the 6,000-seat venue for a one-off performance by Ricky Gervais of his stand-up show Fame in 2007. Gervais was accused of greed Phoebe Waller-Bridge was later announced as President of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society in 2021. Hannah Gadsby's show Nanette won the 2017 Edinburgh Comedy Award and was credited with challenging stand-up comedy convention. It subsequently developed a worldwide audience via Netflix. In 2017, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss's musical Six debuted at the Fringe, ahead of a national tour. The show would later go to the West End, then Broadway in 2020. ==People==

performing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Veteran performers Arthur Smith, Paul Merton, Barry Cryer and Richard Herring are among the comedians who have performed at more Edinburgh Fringe festivals than anyone else. Arthur Smith has performed regularly at the Festival for more than 40 years (since 1977); Paul Merton has been performing regularly at the festival since 1985. Barry Cryer performed at about 25 Edinburgh Fringes (since the 90s) and Richard Herring has performed at 25 Fringes (since 1987). Nicholas Parsons attended the very first Fringe as a 23-year-old in 1947 and hosted his long-standing Happy Hour show until his death, aged 96. Officials and administrators Jonathan Miller became chair in 1983, followed by Elizabeth Smith, Baroness Smith (widow of former Labour Leader John Smith). The current chair is Benny Higgins, who succeeded Professor Sir Timothy O'Shea in 2021. The first full-time Fringe chief was John Milligan, who had worked for the Arts Council and been a researcher with BBC Scotland. He left in 1976 to run the Craigmillar Festival, and was succeeded by Alistair Moffat, who had been involved in running the first St Andrews Festival in 1971 and had organised a small festival in his hometown of Kelso in 1972. Moffat left in 1981 to become Head of Arts at Scottish Television. He was replaced by Michael Dale, who had worked with Moffat at the St Andrews Festival and was recommended to apply by him. He had worked at the Cambridge Arts Theatre and Young Vic. Dale departed in 1986 to become Head of Events for the Glasgow Garden Festival and was succeeded by his deputy, Mhairi Mackenzie-Robinson, who left in 1993 to pursue a career in business. Hilary Strong served in the position until 1999, when she then became director of the Greenwich Theatre. She was followed by Paul Gudgin (2000–2007), Jon Morgan (2007–2008) and Kath Mainland (2008–2016). In November 2015, Mainland announced her decision to step down as Chief Executive to take on the role of executive director of the Melbourne Festival, and in early 2016 it was announced that her successor would be Shona McCarthy, who had headed up the 2013 Derry-Londonderry UK City of Culture. She took up the position in March 2016, and held it for nine years until March 2025; she was succeeded the following month by Tony Lankester. Promoters and artistic directors The Fringe has made the careers of many on the artistic and organisational side of the Fringe. William Burdett-Coutt, Karen Koren, Anthony Alderson and Charlie Wood and Ed Bartlam, the directors of the so-called "Big Four" venues have become well known on the cultural scene. ==Ethos==

The Fringe is an open access festival. The role of the Fringe Society is solely to facilitate the festival, concentrating mainly on the challenging logistics of organising such a large event. Alistair Moffat (Fringe administrator 1976–1981) summarised the role of the Society when he said, "As a direct result of the wishes of the participants, the Society had been set up to help the performers that come to Edinburgh and to promote them collectively to the public. It did not come together so that groups could be invited, or in some way artistically vetted. What was performed and how it was done was left entirely to each Fringe group". This approach is now sometimes referred to as an unjuried festival, open access arts festival or a fringe festival. Over the years, this approach has led to adverse criticism about the quality of the Fringe. Much of this criticism comes from individual arts critics in national newspapers, hard-line aficionados of the Edinburgh International Festival, and occasionally from the Edinburgh International Festival itself. The Fringe's own position on this debate may be summed up by Michael Dale (Fringe Administrator 1982–1986) in his book Sore Throats & Overdrafts, "No-one can say what the quality will be like overall. It does not much matter, actually, for that is not the point of the Fringe ... The Fringe is a forum for ideas and achievement unique in the UK, and in the whole world ... Where else could all this be attempted, let alone work?". Views from the middle ground of this perennial debate point out that the Fringe is not complete artistic anarchy. Some venues do influence or decide on the content of their programme, such as the Traverse and Aurora Nova, who used to run their own venue but are now just a production group. The Fringe itself at times sprouts a fringe. While the festival is unjuried, participating in the Fringe requires registration, payment of a registration fee, and use of a Fringe venue. For example, the 2008 registration fee was £289.05. Thus some artists perform outside the auspices of the Fringe, either individually or as part of a festival or in association with a venue, either outdoors or in non-Fringe venues. Started by Deborah Pearson in 2007, and continuing in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, under the co-directorship of Andy Field and Pearson, a primary "Fringe of the Fringe" festival was held, In 2022, the festival's 75th anniversary year, the Fringe Society consulted with stakeholders from across the festival – from artists to venues, residents to government bodies – to create a shared vision and set of values. The vision was "to give anyone a stage and everyone a seat". Rooted in equality and inclusiveness, it was designed inspire all Fringe stakeholders to pull in the same direction. Three values were also established to guide the behaviours and decisions of everyone involved with the Fringe. The Fringe Society said they would "live by them, champion them and uphold them where necessary". The three values are: • Celebrate performing arts • Be open to all • Look out for each other ==Influence==

The concept of fringe theatre has been copied around the world. The largest and most celebrated of these spawned festivals are Adelaide Fringe (established 1960 and second biggest in the world), National Arts Festival in Machanda, formerly Grahamstown, South Africa (1973), and Edmonton International Fringe Festival (1982). The number of such events continues to grow, particularly in the US and Canada. (In the case of Edinburgh, the Fringe is an addition to the Festival proper, being officially known as the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Where there is no pre-existing Festival to be added to, such as New York International Fringe Festival (est. 1997), the word comes before the word "festival".) In August 2016, the Adelaide Fringe began an official partnership with Edinburgh Fringe. In the field of drama, the Edinburgh Fringe has premièred several plays and musicals, most notably Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard (1966), Moscow Stations (1994), which starred Tom Courtenay, and most recently Six the Musical by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss (2017). Over the years, it has attracted a number of companies that have made repeated visits to the Fringe, and in doing so helped to set high artistic standards. They have included: the London Club Theatre Group (1950s), 7:84 Scotland (1970s), the Children's Music Theatre, later the National Youth Music Theatre under Jeremy James Taylor, the National Student Theatre Company (from the 1970s), Communicado (1980s and 1990s), Red Shift (1990s), Grid Iron and Fitchburg State University. The Fringe is also the staging ground of the American High School Theatre Festival. In the field of comedy, the Fringe has provided a platform that has allowed the careers of many performers to bloom. In the 1960s, various members of the Monty Python team appeared in student productions, as subsequently did Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson, the latter three with the 1981 Cambridge Footlights. Atkinson was at Oxford. Notable companies in the 1980s have included Complicite and the National Theatre of Brent. More recent comedy performers to have been "discovered" include Rory Bremner, Fascinating Aïda, Reduced Shakespeare Company, Steve Coogan, Jenny Eclair, The League of Gentlemen, Flight of the Conchords, Al Murray and Rich Hall. Many performers have spoken highly of the Fringe, and the effect it has had on their career. Magician Paul Daniels first appeared at the Fringe in the twilight of his career in 2013, and commented: "I've become Edinburgh's publicity agent. I tell everybody, 'You've got to be in it. ==Controversies==

Subject matter The freedom to put on any show has led periodically to controversy when individual tastes in sexual explicitness or religion have been contravened. This has brought some into conflict with local city councillors. There have been occasional performing groups that have deliberately tried to provoke controversy as a means of advertising their shows, and this has led to censorship of sexual explicitness in such shows. Organisers continued to defend the festival's role as an open platform when they contacted controversial YouTuber Mark Meechan to request that he clarify the fact that he had not been banned, which ran contrary to the punch line of one of his jokes. Ticket prices In the mid-1990s, only the occasional top show charged £10 per seat, while the average price was £5–£7; in 2006, prices were frequently more than £10, and reached £20 for the first time in 2006, for a one-hour show. Reasons people put forward for the increases include: increasing costs of hiring large venues, theatre licences and related costs—and the price of accommodation, which is expensive for performers as well as for audiences. In the early 21st century, two organisations — the Free Fringe and The Laughing Horse Free Edinburgh Fringe Festival — introduced free entry shows that collect donations at the end of each performance. 22 shows came under this banner in 2005, growing rapidly to more than 600 in 2011. There was also the "pay what you can" model of the Forest Fringe, and "Pay What You Want" as introduced by Bob Slayer's Heroes of Fringe discussed above. Costs to performers Putting on a show at the Fringe with the big venues can be costly to performers, Costs to venues Putting on shows is costly to venues as well, due to theatre licence fees which by 2009 had risen 800% in the preceding three years, and were eight times as high as fees in English cities, starting at £824 for a venue of up to 200 people and rising to £2,472 for a venue of up to 5,000 people. These fees have been cited as punitive to smaller venues and site-specific performances by such figures as Julian Caddy, which, between 2003 and 2009, featured venues including Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh Medical School and site-specific shows in such venues as Inchcolm Island and a swimming pool at the Apex International Hotel. Pay-To-Play In 2012, there was criticism of the increasing commercialism of the Pay-To-Play fringe venues who charge acts to perform in advance of the Fringe. In many cases venue costs such as: venue rents / guarantees, compulsory marketing and various deductions mean that performers are being charged more than they can make back in ticket sales. Stewart Lee stated in The Guardian: "For decades, the Fringe has been a utopia for artists and performers – but now profit-obsessed promoters are tearing it to pieces." Heroes of Fringe (Previously called The Alternative Fringe) was set up by Bob Slayer as a statement against Pay-To-Play venues. Some Fringe commentators agree that the Fringe will have to change and that the independent promoters are leading that change. Domination by comedy The comedy section has grown over recent decades to become the biggest section of the programme. The 2008 Fringe marked the first time that comedy has made up the largest category of entertainment. This has led to criticism that it has changed the nature of the Fringe, and separated it from its roots. Richard Demarco has complained of "an infestation of stand-up comics... an epidemic for which there is no cure", which "overwhelms the possibility of serious theatre". The campaign received support from the City of Edinburgh Council and Unite the Union, among others. In February 2019, Shona McCarthy, chief executive of the Fringe Society, stated that "producers and promoters were being unfairly vilified [by the campaign]". ==Reviews and awards==

Sources of reviews For many groups at the Fringe, the ultimate goal is a favourable review—which, apart from the welcome kudos, may help minimise financial losses from putting on the show. Edinburgh based newspaper The Scotsman has been integral to the Fringe since the start, and has become known for its comprehensive festival coverage in August. Originally, it aimed to review every show on the Fringe. In 2012, the most prolific reviewers were Broadway Baby which published more than 1900 reviews, ThreeWeeks, which published 1000 reviews during August, and The Scotsman with 826 reviews. The List published 480 reviews. up from 4,300 from 83 different publications in 2014. Awards holding his Herald Angel There are a growing number of awards for Fringe shows, particularly in the field of drama: • The Scotsman introduced the prestigious Fringe First awards in 1973. These awards were established by Scotsman arts editor Allen Wright to encourage new theatre writing, and are given only to new plays (or new translations), and several are awarded for each of the three weeks of the Fringe – usually by a celebrity at a prestigious ceremony. • Herald Angels and Archangels are awarded by the team of arts writers of The Herald to performers or shows deemed worthy of recognition. Similar to Fringe Firsts, they are given each week of the Fringe. • The Stage has awarded the Stage Awards for Acting Excellence since 1995. Around a dozen awards are given out each year, including a Special Award, given for the first time in 2014. Winners of the Special Award to date include Chris Goode (2014) and Pip Utton (2015). • Total Theatre has presented its Total Theatre Awards for excellence in the field of physical and visual theatre since 1997. The categories under which these awards are given vary from year to year. A notable addition in 2007 was the inclusion of a Wild Card award chosen by the festival-going public. • Amnesty International introduced the Amnesty Freedom of Expression Award in 2002. • The Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award for best drama was introduced in 2004. To be eligible for this award a show must have received a four or five star rating in The Scotsman and must not have previously played in New York, as the prize is to put the show on in New York. • The ThreeWeeks Editors' Awards was introduced in 2005 and are given to the ten things that have most excited the ThreeWeeks editors each year. • The Bobby was launched by Broadway Baby in 2011 and are given to the best shows of the festival as decided by the Broadway Baby judging panel. In 2012 a second type of Bobby was launched called the Technical Bobby, awarded for technical achievement at the Fringe, such as lighting or set design. • The Edinburgh Musical Theatre Awards were introduced in 2007 by Musical Theatre Matters, to encourage the writing and production of new musicals on the Fringe. • The Perrier Awards for Comedy came into existence in 1981 when the award was won by the Cambridge Footlights. (Two further award categories have since been added.) Perrier, the mineral water manufacturer ended its long association in 2006 and was succeeded by the Scottish-based company Intelligent Finance. In 2009 IF also withdrew and could not be replaced for 2010, so the awards were temporarily being funded by promoter Nica Burns and rebranded as the Edinburgh Comedy awards, or "Eddies". As of 2024, DLT Entertainment sponsors The Donald and Eleanor Taffner Best Comedy Show and The DLT Entertainment Best Newcomer Award while The Victoria Wood Foundation sponsors The Panel Prize. • The Malcolm Hardee Awards have three categories - Comic Originality, Cunning Stunt and Act Most Likely To Make A Million Quid They were presented originally for ten years, 2008–2017 and again from 2019, when they were taken over by the British Comedy Guide. An initial one-off Malcolm Hardee Award had been made at the Fringe in 2005, the year of Hardee's death, to American musical comic Reggie Watts. • Each year since 2009, the Funniest Joke of the Fringe is awarded, along with a list of the top 10. This award is currently sponsored by the TV channel U&Dave. • The Brighton Fringe Award for Excellence has been awarded at Edinburgh Festival Fringe since 2011, in association with Richard Jordan and awarded at the Scotsman Awards ceremony. ==Statistics==

The first Fringe featured eight companies performing in five venues. By 1959, there were 19 companies; by 1969, 57; by 1979, 324. In 1981, there were 494, and the growth of the festival began to slow. But by 1999, there were more than 600 companies giving 15,000 performances and in 2010, 1,900 giving 40,000. Statistics for 2011 Edinburgh Festival Fringe concluded that it was the largest on record: there were more than 40,000 performances of more than 2,500 different shows in 258 venues. Ticket sales amounted to around 1.8 million. There are now 12 full-time members of staff. Of the shows, theatre had been the largest genre in terms of number of shows until 2008, when it was overtaken by comedy, which has been the major growth area over the past 20 years. At the 2015 Fringe comedy was the biggest artform by number of shows, followed by theatre. The exact breakdown was: 34% comedy, 27% theatre, 14% music, 5% children's shows, 4% each cabaret/variety, dance/circus/physical theatre, spoken word, events, 3% musicals/opera, 2% exhibitions. The 2015 Fringe issued an estimated 2,298,090 tickets for 50,459 performances of 3,314 shows in 313 venues over 25 days; the 2016 Fringe issued an estimated 2,475,143 tickets for 50,266 performances of 3,269 shows; and the 2017 Fringe 2,696,884 tickets for 53,232 performances of 3,398 shows. In addition to ticketed, programmed events, the Fringe Street Events is run each day of the festival, primarily on the Royal Mile and at the Mound Precinct. == See also ==