The Atlanta Fringe Festival indirectly takes its name from a remark by Scottish playwright and journalist Robert Kemp. In 1947, the inaugural Edinburgh International Festival of the Arts attracted uninvited theater companies, who began producing unaffiliated work around the city. When the practice continued the next year, Kemp remarked, “Round the fringe of official festival drama, there seems to be more private enterprise than before.… I am afraid some us are not going to be at home during the evenings!”
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival organized officially in the 1950s and today qualifies as one of the world’s largest arts festivals; last year’s event features more than 2,000 shows from 47 countries. The Atlanta Fringe Festival, which continues through Sunday, is among 21 members of the U.S. Association of Fringe Festivals. “Fringe” in this context isn’t a franchise so much as an anything-goes philosophy of public performance outside the mainstream.
“I like to see groups taking themselves out of their comfort zones,” says Fringe Atlanta executive director Diana Brown, co-founder of Twinhead Theatre. “I saw some shows at last year’s festival and thought, ‘Oh, you could’ve done that anywhere. But we also had a group that changed their show a little bit every time, based on audience feedback, so it was a better show at the end of the festival than it was at the beginning.”
Brown cites #Innerology, this year’s Twinhead Theatre production, as an example of risky creativity within the festival format. “Some of my colleagues wanted to do a musical, but I thought, ‘We can do that any time and have an easy time selling it,” she says. “Instead, we’re doing a show about a cult, with a concept that’s very participatory. #Innerology taps into our improv roots, lets us stretch and challenge ourselves. I don’t know if we could’ve sold a cult show on our own.”
Like many fringe fests, the Atlanta event programs its lineup based on a lottery system. “Some festivals have a panel selection process and one of the requirements is how ‘fringe-y’ the show is,” says Brown. “But how would you judge that, unless it’s Much Ado About Nothing? A show might be very fringe-y for one theater and not fringe-y for another.”
Atlanta Fringe requires both application and production fees from lottery winners, which, Brown believes, weeds out artistic dilettantes. “If you’re just going to do something ridiculous, you won’t be willing to pay. If you get picked in the lottery, you’re going to have to invest up front and put your money where your mouth is. That eliminates the people who aren’t serious,” she says, adding, “the lottery means it’s not just the artist taking the risk, but the audience.”
Brown is optimistic about this year’s fest. “Last year we learned so much,” she says. “This time last year I was a nervous wreck, but now I know how it’s going to go. Artists who’d been to other festivals felt like Atlanta was into it. If it hadn’t been like that, if it felt like the city didn’t want it, we wouldn’t have done it again.”
Titles from the year’s lineup convey its grab-bag nature and include Hip-Hop Is Alive: The Play from New Orleans’ DaVida Chanel Productions; Apocalypse Clown! by Seattle’s Xanadoo Ink; It’s My Penis, and I’ll Cry If I Want To by Chicago artist Jamie Black; and Feel the Power of the Dork Side from Doctor Pete Productions in Atlanta. The fest features an installation from Atlanta’s Object Group as well as comedy, drama, solo performances, dance, puppetry, improv and circus acts from such troupes as Thimblerig Circus, also an Atlanta group.
People who can’t attend productions in person can taste Fringe madness via computer through Fringe Radio, unique among global fests. It will feature 30 online radio plays that range from storytelling to full-staged drama, available free through the Atlanta Fringe website through June 16.
Brown suggests that intrigued but indecisive audiences attend the festival’s free preview party at 8 p.m. Wednesday at 7 Stages. “You can see three minutes of every show, and most companies are showing their best, to convince you to see the whole thing.”
As a “sampler platter,” the preview party gives adventurous theatergoers a way to hedge their bets but still take a chance.
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Pictured in the slide show is “The Face on the Barroom Floor” by Marble City Opera of Knoxville, Tenn.
