IndyFringe Theatre

As with other Fringe Festivals worldwide, our roots trace to the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland that began in 1947 when the Edinburgh International Festival was launched. It was seen as a post-war initiative to re-unite Europe through culture, and was so successful that it inspired more performers than available space.Well aware that there would be a good crowd and focused press interest, six Scottish companies and two English decided to turn up uninvited and fend for themselves. They camped out on the edges of the International Festival and performed all day long, attracting a lot of attention. The next year (1948) more companies showed up, and reporter Robert Kemp of the Evening News unknowingly coined the name that now describes one of the largest and most famous festivals in the world:

Round the fringe of the official Festival drama there seems to be a more private enterprise than before... I'm afraid some of us are not going to be often at home during the evenings.

Soon the Fringe Festival gained a large and loyal following, outstripping the mainstream festival.

The Fringe Festival concept migrated to Canada in the 1980s and today that country boasts Fringe Festivals from coast to coast - including the Edmonton Festival, the largest in North America, which annually draws more than half a million people. In the early 1990s, the Fringe concept was embraced in the United States, and today Fringe Festivals are annual events in cities including Philadelphia, Orlando, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Cincinnati. To date there are more than 20 active Fringe Festivals in North America.

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