By Liz Nicholls, .ca
No one knows how this happens every year, a hiccup in the space-time continuum perhaps? But suddenly, mere minutes after Canada Day, it’s the biggest opening night of the season.
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The Fringe is back, with a 45th annual edition of our monster 11-day summer theatre binge, Edmonton’s wild grassroots experiment in handing over power to artists and the people. Tonight’s the night curtains go up on 60 of the 209 shows, in 38 Fringe venues.
It’s big — the oldest and biggest Fringe on the continent and the prototype for all the rest, in fact — but don’t let size put you in a panic. Be bold, be jazzed and spontaneous, take a chance. Artists, some 1,600 of them, are experimenting, and so can you. And you never know what unexpected expansion, or re-routing, of your tastes might happen; you never know what you really needed in your life — to make it more fun, or more exciting, or more interesting. Those kinds of discoveries are what the Fringe is for. What The Hell Was That?, a “musical cabaret” as billed, has a title you’ll hear, in many other contexts from audiences emerging from theatres across Old Strathcona, for the next 11 days. Discuss among your fellow fringers; that’s what the Fringe is for, too.
It’s probably not surprising that improv is so big at the Edmonton Fringe. The festival itself, was an improv in the deadmonton summer of 1982 when Brian Paisley got the bright but loony (sorry, bright AND loony) idea of inviting artists to “do whatever you want” at something called a Fringe Event — and then see what an audience might make of it. Well, it seems to have caught on. Last year’s edition sold 140,000-plus tickets to 223 indoor shows, and drew a crowd of more than 700,000 to Old Strathcona Fringe headquarters. And this year, the box office is smokin’: 56,010 advance tickets sold already (3200 ahead of 2025 at this point), and 47 performances are sold out, along with two whole runs, The Butter Chicken Odyssey and The Naked Philosopher.
Just for starters, have you had a chance to look at a selection of 13 intriguing prospects for your consideration here? And further possibilities here? There is no wrong way to fringe (except maybe to stay in the beer tent for 11 days, and never actually see a show). I used to know a fringer, a theatre publicist by trade, who would only go to shows from New Brunswick. No offence to N.B., but that does seem a little niche.
Anyhow stay tuned to .ca for reviews starting Thursday night. And is lucky to be joined this weekend by a guest reviewer, veteran arts journalist Fawnda Mithrush.
I’m really hoping you’ll be able to chip in a monthly sum to my ongoing Patreon campaign — every little bit helps — to support theatre coverage on this free (so far!) and independent site. It’s supported entirely by readers! The link is here.
Edmonton invented the verb: let the fringing begin.