Fringe Festival Research Articles

Creating Collective Identity: Geek Theatre, Fringe Festivals, and Fan Audiences

Fringe Festivals and Geek Theatre share a plethora of affinities: both have penchants for generating offbeat and experimental theatre as labors of love on shoestring budgets, attracting quirky subcultural audiences made up of theatregoers and newcomers alike, and creating a sense of community based on values of egalitarian access to self-expression. Geek Theatre manifests in an intersection between the affinity spaces of fandom and the live experience of staged theatre, facilitating a uniquely community-based affective experience in which artists and audiences share a common language and love for the geeky genres of their subject matter. The history of Geek Theatre is embedded in Fringe culture, which I argue is the perfect incubator for its campy aesthetic and dialogic relationship between production and fan audience.

Structures of U.S. Fringes: An Outline for Archivists

To archive and preserve materials connected to the most widespread and fastest-growing form of arts festival in the world, it is important to understand the breadth of the fringe festival phenomenon. The very concept of “Fringe Festival” is contested—ranging from the organic growth of performance venues “round the Fringe” of the original Edinburgh Festival to, decades later, the publication of the Canadian Association of Fringe Festival’s “Fringe Ideals.” This conceptual diversity is reflected in how Fringe Festivals are organized—with some being highly centralized and others operating with a decentralized structure of independent venues. This conceptual and managerial diversity has proven to be a strength. Fringes have been the fastest-growing and most widespread form of festival for decades now, precisely because of their adaptability. But a proper understanding of both the artistic endeavors at these festivals and how the festivals are understood and operated will allow that flexible growth to continue.

The San Francisco Fringe: An Interview with Christina Augello

Christina Augello founded the San Francisco Fringe Festival in 1992. It evolved to become one of the most prominent fringe festivals in the country. In this interview she discusses not only the SF Festival but also the issues involved in creating any indie theater—what indie theater is and the challenges we face producing it. She tells us, “We all serve artists—people who don’t have a lot of money.” An indie performer herself, she expresses the struggle we face working in this type of theater—from actors and audiences to marketing and touring visas. She discusses finances, reminding us, “The first motivation is the art itself.” Ms. Augello is an experienced and articulate expert on indie and fringe theater; this interview is an invaluable resource for fringe artists.

Dumpster Divers and Award-Winners: FRIGID on the Fringe of the Fringe

FRIGID NY was the second Fringe Festival to emerge in New York City, following the successful FringeNYC. Unlike FringeNYC, FRIGID adheres to the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals, which includes using a lottery system (rather than adjudication) and allows participating artists/companies to keep their box office. This paper presents an overview of FRIGID NY, contextualizing it within the history of the Off-Off Broadway and Indie Theatre movements, and provides a case study of a production at FRIGID NY, demonstrating that FRIGID NY is on the Fringe of the Fringe.

The Orlando Fringe: An Overview

This paper provides a brief overview of the Orlando Fringe, which started in 1992 with the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival, which is considered the longest-running Fringe theatre festival in the United States. The paper opens with a discussion of the origins and structure of Fringe festivals and then focuses on the history and organization of the Orlando Fringe, using a variety of sources, including an interview with former Executive Director George A. Wallace.

“The Lucky Fxxxers”: The Fringe Touring Performer as Embodied Theatre Archivist

This paper explores the concept of archiving fringe theatre from the perspective of the touring fringe performer, with particular attention to the Canadian Association for Fringe Festivals (CAFF) lottery and tour. Looking at the “uncurated, uncensored” model of CAFF Fringes, this paper explores the role of luck, contingency, and embodiment in archiving fringe theatre. By exploring the instability of archiving fringes and, indeed, theatre itself, this paper ultimately seeks to complicate both where and how we might archive the fringe. Through a mix of performance studies, qualitative interviews, and maybe even some poetry, Fitz-James makes an argument for embodied ways of archiving fringes and presents the fringe as a model for alternative performance archives.

Socio-Cultural Recovery of the Border in Nicosia: Buffer Fringe Festival over Its Boundaries

The reproduction of space along the border in post-conflict divided cities is an important issue in relation to urban resilience. Nicosia, widely known as the last divided capital city in Europe, is the capital city of Turkish Cypriots in the north and Greek Cypriots in the south. The Buffer Zone was formalized in 1974 as an emergency measure against inter-communal clashes. Further, the walled city of Nicosia was bisected, and thus urban and social unity became a relic of the past. In addition, the city center became the edge of the two bisected halves. The Nicosia Master Plan (NMP) was initiated by professionals on both sides. Moreover, it was in the first planning attempt that Nicosia was considered as a whole. The NMP was the first self-reliant quest that was developed for the purpose of finding a solution that could operate without having to wait for a political consensus. The Ledra Palace crossing opened in 2003 as the first opening on the border that ran across the United Nations (UN)-controlled Buffer Zone in Nicosia. Such a crossing possessed a symbolic meaning; the two communities feel as if they are socially united, and it encouraged NGOs and artists to step forward and allow the border to be perceived not as a boundary but as a shared space. The Buffer Fringe Festival is one of the recent cultural organizations that was held along the divide of Nicosia and it is also the festival scrutinized in this paper. This festival was designed to explore the boundary as a phenomenon experienced in daily life; furthermore, discussions were had regarding how the Buffer Fringe actors and artists perceived the festival as a peace-making tool. Together with visual and verbal records, the analysis conducted in this paper is based on qualitative data within a theoretical framework concerning body–space connections. In this paper, the aim is to emphasize how festivals can function beyond the limits of borders, provide an arena for connecting people, and exemplifies how one can interpret the spatial transformation of a space within the context of post-conflict divided cities.

NOTICES

NOTICES

Complicating Care

Care remains an essential feature of transformative feminist and gender politics—including performance (Hamington & Rosenow, 2019). This article takes as its starting point feminist “ethics of care” scholarship that is grounded in the Cavelian theme of the “vulnerability of ordinary life” (Ferrarese, 2016; Garlough, 2013) and builds on performance studies work engaged by issues of oppression, human rights, and vulnerability (Becker et al., 2021; Bertrand, 2020; Dolan, 2010). Exploring care and performance from both scholarly and applied perspectives, it complicates the conceptual relationship between “vulnerability” and “crisis” to better understand the limits and potential of care in performance activism. Two research examples illustrate how caring practices, during interrelated global crises, have been addressed in local performances in the midwestern United States. The first explores elders’ experiences of vulnerability, isolation, and loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on local Wisconsin Raging Grannies performers, as they reimagine vulnerability as “call for caring response-ability” through community performance activism that critiques “privileged irresponsibility” (Tronto, 1998, 2013). The second considers experiences of vulnerability and isolation through the documentary-style theatre project GenderTalks (2020) by Orion Risk. This ongoing work united transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people from Wisconsin and Iowa in candid virtual dialogues about gender during COVID-19 social distancing. A virtual play from the transcripts was performed in US fringe festivals. The GenderTalks project provides important insights about care’s potential in performances to create opportunities for interconnection and social critique (D’Urso, Rosenberg, and Winget, 2021). Both performance contexts illustrate the impossibility of detangling care “from its messy worldliness” (de la Bellacasa, 2017) and how care becomes increasingly complicated and valuable in interrelated moments of crisis. This work centers ways that vulnerability can be reimagined through performance as a powerful political resource, as well as means of rejuvenation and social connection.

‘Sharing our voices’—Taking a learning disability history project online during a pandemic

AbstractThis paper reviews the challenges faced by a team at the Grace Eyre Foundation in running a coproduced oral history project during the pandemic. It examines the benefits and challenges of working online, comparing this to face‐to‐face approaches.For over 100 years, the Grace Eyre Foundation has provided support to people with learning disabilities and/or autism across Sussex. Its founder, Grace Eyre Woodhead, was a pioneer—from around 1896 until her death in 1936, she advocated supporting people with learning disabilities in the community rather than in large, isolated institutions.With Heritage Lottery funding awarded in 2019, ‘Sharing Our Voices’ set out to: create a digital, oral history collection of people who had lived in Shared Lives arrangements since the 1950s. create a digital archive of the life and work of Grace Eyre Woodhead. devise a play inspired by the experience of exploring these histories, to be performed as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival 2021.This article: Describes how the Project Team adapted to continue the project during the 2020–2021 lockdowns. Discusses the opportunities, and limitations, of training people using online technologies. Demonstrates the opportunities, and limitations, of conducting oral history interviews online. Concludes that while online technologies are useful, enabling oral history work to continue under restrictions, there are limits to what can be achieved. We set out some of our learning here but it is hard to see how working online could ever fully replace the benefits of meeting face to face.

A hefty dose of lemons: the importance of rituals for audiences and performers at the online Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2020

ABSTRACT When the pandemic began to affect the performance world, both festival artists and producers started to adopt creative approaches to moving their work online. In the study presented here, we focus on the 2020 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which offered a unique opportunity to understand how performers coped with the enforced switch to digital. Underpinning the Fringe Festival ethos is the attitude of experimentation, and we propose that there is much to learn from the response of performers and producers to this unprecedented situation. As one interviewee put it; ‘we got given a hefty dose of lemons, and the point of all of this was, just go and make lemonade and see what happens’ (Yvette). In this article, we focus on the challenge of managing the audience experience in the digital space, particularly before and after a performance. We note that familiar rituals play a key role for physical audiences and we position this idea within the Trajectories Framework, identifying coherent journeys through a user experience (Benford and Giannachi 2011. Performing Mixed Reality. The MIT Press. ISBN:978-0-262-01576-9), in order to frame it with digital audiences in mind. We provide recommendations regarding aspects for performers and producers to address as online and digital becomes an increasingly accepted part of the festival landscape.

‘This is My Life’

Scottish music teacher Kirsty Young's autobiographical piece, LipSync (Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 2019) dealt with Young's life shortening illness cystic fibrosis (CF), where the lungs are filled with mucus, and their capacity incrementally damaged. Portraying the interludes of hospitalization familiar to CF sufferers, and at the two-metre safe distance that they are required to keep from each other because of the danger of cross-infection, Young and non-CF suffering actor Ailsa Davidson performed snatches of Billy Joel's hit pop song, ‘My Life’ (1978), at different speeds and in different moods, affectively and temporally measuring the progress of Young's failing breath. This article explores the prescience of Lipsync in using song to express human capacities for care and survival, developing a musical dramaturgy of care with Cumbernauld Theatre, and in so doing exposing the precarity of bodies normally ‘disavowed’ in the economically-driven political field (Butler 2015). It reflects on singers’ ‘disidentification’ from the suffocating conditions of dominant culture (Muñoz 1999; Chambers-Letson 2018), and draws on the work of Martin O'Brien (2016, 2020) with regard to the experience of the embodied self from the perspective of a person with CF in relation to social and material environments The article suggests that when air is in short supply, or when breath is disrupted, existing embodied knowledge of the orderings of the world is brought to attention. Breathing in such knowledge, it argues, can reposition listeners accustomed to experiencing song as a site of pleasure, leading to more acute perception of the uneven distribution of vital resources.

Beyond the hype

The paper explores art and the city beyond the ‘hype’ of large cultural investment, urban creative titles and cultural place branding programmes. It emphasises the importance of exploring the neglected perspective of the role that everyday culture can play in cities, especially in moments of crisis. It investigates Athens and the economic crisis that affected urban life in the last decade to consider the impact this has had on everyday cultural practices, arts institutions and the experience of the city. Drawing on de Certeau’s concept of everyday practice and using the case study of Athens Fringe Festival, we highlight how ordinary artistic practice and everyday creativity in the city can shape new patterns of cultural participation, urban dialogue and, possibly, cultural citizenship, in a moment of crisis. The paper concludes by arguing for the need to re-orient academic scholarship and future research agendas on art and the city towards everyday creative practice, moving beyond conventional city marketing and institutional, cultural regeneration discourses and strategies.

Breaking Ground

This text is an interview by Chris Dupuis with Benj Gallander, Greg Holmgren, Robert Sherwood, Ben Stadelmann, and Carol Pauker, the founders of the SummerWorks Festival. The team first assembled after being unable to secure slots at the Toronto Fringe Festival, with the idea of starting an alternative summer theatre event that would offer space to artists unable to get into the Fringe. They discuss the first conversations around launching the event through its early years, including the challenges of starting from scratch and running the project collectively and the various triumphs and failures they experienced. They outline changes in the selection process, the move from a first come, first served, model to a lottery system similar to the Fringe, and the gradual introduction of curation through the Parallel Lab initiative. Finally, they discuss how the festival shaped them personally and the event’s lasting impacts on the Toronto theatre sector. The text also includes references the late eighties Toronto theatre scene, including Tomson Highway, Hillar Littoja, and Buddies in Bad Times.

“The Fantasy of Queerness”: A Conversation with Roger Q. Mason about Lavender Men: An Emancipation Play and Making a Queer of Color Creative Life in Theater and Performance

Research Article| October 01 2020 “The Fantasy of Queerness”: A Conversation with Roger Q. Mason about Lavender Men: An Emancipation Play and Making a Queer of Color Creative Life in Theater and Performance Eric Darnell Pritchard Eric Darnell Pritchard Eric Darnell Pritchard is an award-winning writer, cultural critic, and the Endowed Brown Chair in English Literacy at the University of Arkansas. They are also faculty at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. Pritchard is author of Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy (Southern Illinois University Press, 2016) and editor of “Sartorial Politics, Intersectionality, and Queer Worldmaking,” a special issue of QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking (Michigan State University Press, 2017). Pritchard’s writings on fashion, popular culture, literacy, rhetoric, and pedagogies have been published in multiple venues including the International Journal of Fashion Studies, Harvard Educational Review, Visual Anthropology, Literacy in Composition Studies, Public Books, Ebony.com, ARTFORUM, and The Funambulist: Clothing Politics Issue 1 and Issue 2. They are currently completing two books: a biography of 1980s international fashion superstar Patrick Kelly and a historical ethnography of Black queer feminist literacy activism.Roger Q. Mason is an award-winning writer, performer and educator known for using history’s lens to highlight the biases that separate rather than unite us. Mason’s playwriting has been seen on Broadway at Circle in the Square (Circle Reading Series); Off/Off-Off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop, New Group, American Theatre of Actors, Flea Theatre, and Access Theater; and regionally at McCarter Theatre, Victory Gardens, Chicago Dramatists, Steep Theatre, Serenbe Playhouse, EST/LA, Son of Semele, and Skylight Theatre. He/ they are the recipient of the Chuck Rowland Pioneer Award, the Hollywood Fringe Festival Encore Producers Award, and a finalist for the Lark Playwright’s Week and the Screencraft Play Award. Mason’s films have screened at Outshine Film Festival and the Pan African Film Festival. They’ve been recognized by the AT&T Film Award and Atlanta International Film Festival. He/they hold degrees from Princeton University, Middlebury College, and Northwestern University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking (2020) 7 (3): 63–101. https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.7.3.0063 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Eric Darnell Pritchard; “The Fantasy of Queerness”: A Conversation with Roger Q. Mason about Lavender Men: An Emancipation Play and Making a Queer of Color Creative Life in Theater and Performance. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 1 October 2020; 7 (3): 63–101. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.7.3.0063 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressQED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2020 Michigan State University2020 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Composer and Broadway Pianist Invites Listeners ‘Inside His Head’

Composer and Broadway Pianist Invites Listeners ‘Inside His Head’

Improv, Shakespeare, and Drag: A Conversation with Impromptu Shakespeare

This interview took place during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (August 2017), where Impromptu Shakespeare has been performing since 2013. An improvised theatre group, Impromptu Shakespeare weaves in one new ‘Shakespeare’ play at every show. The conversation was led by Marina Cano, as part of her research on improvised Shakespeare and improvised Jane Austen. It involved Impromptu actors Ailis Duff and Rebecca MacMillan, and touched upon matters of improvisation, methodology, adaptation, Shakespeare on stage, and gender-blind performance. Marina Cano is a Research Associate at the University of Limerick, Ireland. She is the author of Jane Austen and Performance (Palgrave 2017) and the co-editor of Jane Austen and William Shakespeare: A Love Affair in Literature, Film, and Performance (Palgrave 2019).

Evaluation of a novel anxiety and trauma intervention at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Anxiety and psychological trauma are common presentations in general practice and may lead to long-term prescribing and/or time-consuming talking therapies. To assess the efficacy and acceptability of short 'Gazetherapy' interventions. 'The Anxiety Experiment' was delivered as a show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival from 1-25 August 2019. Gazetherapy interventions were explained using props to describe polyvagal theory and cranial nerve and cerebellar/hippocampus anatomy and function. BabyGaze (reducing anxiety in the moment), da Vinci Gaze (attenuating stress), and Accessory Gaze (resolving simple trauma) were delivered to audiences of between six and 51 people during <10 minutes of the 50-minute presentation. Subjects were given a card bearing a QR code to link to an online survey containing validated short screening questionnaires: GAD-2 for probable anxiety disorder and PC-PTSD for probable post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Efficacy: 73 (9.8%) attendees completed the survey, of whom 39% screened positive for anxiety and 26% screened positive for PTSD. Those screening negative in both tests (52%) were designated a control group, with 36% of them feeling better after the presentation. Fifty-nine per cent of probable anxiety 'cases' and 68% of probable PTSD cases felt better after the presentation; none felt worse. Acceptability: 95% reported a 'definite' or 'probable' intent to use the techniques in the future, with 5% (all non-cases) stating that they probably would not. No responder said they would definitely not use the techniques. The acceptability and effectiveness of a new therapeutic approach were demonstrated by presenting them in a show at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Festival to Festival: Networked Relationships Between Fringe Festivals

This article aims to demonstrate the importance and value of collaboration between members of a formalized network of Fringe festivals. The research was informed by Castells (the network society, space of flows, and space of places) and Richards (network-centric eventfulness, pulsar and iterative events), as well as publications that critique their work. The article combines theoretical and conceptual frameworks with primary evidence, thus responding to prominent criticisms of the foundation texts. Primary research was focused around an innovative case study, utilizing two-mode social network analysis (SNA), documentary evidence, and interview data. The history and characteristics of the Fringe network in question were found to be influential in the nature and characteristics of its member festivals. A policy of collaboration is in the network's DNA, and was therefore inherited by those festivals established under its supervision (the majority of those in the network). This collaboration has taken the form of shared projects, integrated administrative and management functions, and coordinated touring opportunities between the festivals. The article finds that the network itself is now in a preeminent position in terms of its influence on the member festivals. This has positive implications for the network's overall efficiency and effectiveness. Further research may reveal additional benefits and disadvantages for the member festivals, and their various stakeholders. Replicating the research with other Fringe networks would also be revealing, as each such network has a number of unique characteristics. This is primarily an explorative article of value to critical event studies researchers, it complements existing applications of SNA techniques and approaches to events, and contains additional references to festival communities and places. The article also has practical value for Fringe festival producers in terms of strategic management and inter-Fringe collaborations.

Cuir Devotion: A Conversation

Abstract After watching Enzo Vasquez Toral's Cuir Devotion at the Memphis Fringe Festival in 2019, I was curious about the research and performance methodologies that built this humorous and moving hybrid solo piece that features a queer take on a Catholic patron-saint fiesta called the Tunantada in the Peruvian Central Andes. Creator Vasquez Toral is a performance studies scholar who researches the interplay of colonial legacies, Indigenous ways of knowing, and contemporary queer/trans epistemologies within the Tunantada through conventional ethnographic, auto-ethnographic and performance ethnographic modes. What follows is a transcript of our conversation about the creation, development, and goals of Cuir Devotion featuring Vasquez Toral and a surprise guest.