New York City Fringe Begins April 1

Erez Ziv began managing and working as an Artistic Director in the late 90s.  Off-Off Broadway and Downtown Theater were near interchangeable terms, when he began.  Previously based in the East Village and Lower East Side, Indie Theater has gone all over New York City now.

Navigating government, technology, and newfound complications of providing theater via streaming media, Erez prepares for the 2026 New York City Fringe.

MARCINA ZACCARIA: Erez, why don’t you tell me about your journey?

EREZ ZIV: I was the Managing Director of Horse Trade, and I resisted the title of Artistic Director for many, many years.  I took it on only as a necessity because people did not understand an arts organization without an Artistic Director.  The FRIGID New York Festival was founded in 2007 and we presented it every year in February at The Kraine Theater and The Red Room on East 4th Street and UNDER St. Marks at 94 St. Marks Place.

And then the pandemic came and broke everything, including the New York International Fringe Festival which never came back.  After a couple of years, we decided to rebrand our festival as the New York City Fringe Festival, since it has been a registered Fringe Festival since its founding in 2007.  It became confusing having a FRIGID Festival and a FRIGID company, and since the other Fringe was not coming back, we just rebranded our Festival.

We moved it to April.

MZ: So, it’s technically Fringe NYC, is that accurate?

EZ: It’s New York City Fringe.  I don’t know that we can force everybody to say it the way we want it.  In 2023, we started we started referring to it with the word Fringe in the title or in in the wording before that. We had, you know, avoided using that term in general.

MZ: So, it sounds like, by 2024, it was really back.

EZ: By 2024, it was officially rebranded.

MZ: So, have you gone with a non curated model – pulling names out of hat for selecting the plays.  Why?

EZ: We have been doing the non-curated model since 2007.  That is when we started our FRIGID Festival, it was based on the Canadian rules, and in Canada, you can’t call yourself Fringe if you don’t follow a few simple rules.

100% of the box office goes to the artist.  The picking of the shows has to be some random method – either first come first serve or lottery or some kind of combination.  It has to be accessible both to the artists and to the public.

MZ: So, it has to follow Fringe rules.  But, is there any other reason, why, Erez.  Tell me, from your gut, from your soul, can you say why?

EZ: Random chance was good enough to create the universe. It is ridiculous to think that it’s not enough to curate a Festival.  I would stack up our good to bad ratio against any network season, any Hollywood studio, any program season.  It’s impossible to look at a script six months out and know what you’re going to have on stage.  It’s just not possible.  I’ve helped curate too many Festivals to know that what we read has nothing to do with what ends up on stage, so this method is has been tested since 2007, and we have had some amazing shows come through here.

MZ: In which theatre spaces will the artists be performing this year?

EZ: So, we’re going to be at The Rat in Dumbo, the wild project and UNDER Saint Marks in the East Village, the Chain Theatre in both the studio space and the mainstage in Midtown.  Those are the five venues with 15 shows in each venue.  There are 75 shows.  It’s over 330 performances altogether.

MZ: What have you done to keep the quality of production strong with the limited amount of time within the limited budget?

EZ: So, there has been an amazing development in the last few years technologically and the things that we can do with lighting now, we wouldn’t have been able to dream of doing 20 years ago.  We can install now one lighting unit in each venue that moves to wherever you want it to move.  That takes the place of what used to be you know fully focusable units that somebody had to jump up on a ladder.  So, what we’re doing is streaming.  We’re streaming all the shows that want to stream from the Festival in our regular season.  At this point, we have an audience of about 15% to 20% that is coming to see the shows through their screens.

MZ: That’s a big change.

EZ: It is a huge change.

MZ: What about the range of artists that you produce?

EZ: It’s a wide range and every year, and this year, the Festival is more than twice as big as it was when we started.  We started with 30 shows.  We were 30 shows for you know 15 years, and now we’re at 75.  So, as a result, I know the individual shows less, but I know that there is a wide variety of shows from one-person shows to musicals.  We’ve had an opera in the festival almost every year, there’s dance things.  It’s quite an interesting variety of things.  It used to be a lot more one-person shows, but that seems to have changed a little bit.

Vanessa Peruda in All the Rage. Press photo.

MZ: How do you feel about that?

EZ: I like the variety.  I like, you know, being able to look at the Google Calendar and see what’s going on today.  There’s something for everyone.  There’s comedy, there’s drama, there’s music – there’s so many things on any given day.

MZ: How many titles do you think were sent in?

EZ: The number of applications coming in has grown, as well, so while we had more shows in the Festival this year than on any other year, the odds of getting in, especially at UNDER Saint Marks, were not great.  There were a lot more applications than spots.  We had some venues that had better odds.  Because we’re now doing the lottery by venue, people choose the venue that they want, and they go into the lottery for that venue.

Portia and Ellen. Sarah Hartley and Heather Seltzer. Photo Credit: Kathryn Cooper for ByHart.

MZ: So, what’s your role this year in 2026 with community organizations, including FAB NYC?

EZ: So, community is a complicated word.  In 1998, when we started, the community was all on the Lower East Side.

Also, at the time the artists were here.  The percentage of artists lived, you know, in our neighborhood.  Today, it’s almost nonexistent because no artist can afford to live in East Village.  FAB is a wonderful organizer for the Lower East Side, and it’s done wonderful things for the Lower East Side.  And so, the League of Independent Theaters was a wonderful thing, and I was on the Founding Board of that organization, and it did wonderful work to keep people together.

MZ: Can you share with people who do not know the mission of the League of Independent Theater?

EZ: We went over the specific wording of that mission for weeks and weeks.  In many long meetings, the word “off off-Broadway” was a big part of that conversation.  John Clancy from the Fringe and Martin Denton was on the Board.  It was a wonderful Board of people to have these conversations with.  Overall, the mission is to invite the people of Indie Theater, the artists, the venues you know, the support staff.  There’s a lot of us.  There’s really nobody advocating for us, doing our thing.  There’s people advocating for large organizations.  They get paid to do that, but there’s nobody doing it for the people that can’t afford to pay themselves.  Indie Space did that very well.

MZ: It was always a challenge and a joy to do theater in these great spaces that seemed very centralized in the East Village.  But, what’s new?  As someone who has been a Manager and an Artist, how does it feel to go into this year, 2026?

EZ: There are a lot more cats to herd, the way the Festival is now.  As of last week, we still didn’t have images from more than 10 of the 75 shows in the Festival. When it was a 30 show Festival, all we needed to run it was our regular year round staff, this year we had to hire on about two dozen additional staff members for the month of April.

Martin Dockery in 1 Small Lie. Press Photo.

MZ: If you were to tell someone from Canada or from London, Scotland, how does the how does the New York Fringe measure up to other Fringe Festivals, what would you say?

EZ: We are the best. It’s a very different Festival from other Festivals and the thing about Fringe Festivals, they exist all over the world and they’re all very affected by their community.  They are all very different from place to place. So, like you know in Scotland, it’s just an enormous, giant thing and Edinburgh that everybody goes to, and nobody expects to walk away with any money.  They expect to dump a lot of money there, and have a good time, and maybe get their show picked up by somebody. In Montreal, you’re just expecting to go have a party. In Edmonton and Winnipeg, you’re expecting to go get to work and walk away with a lot of money. In Orlando, there’s a spring break feeling, they do make good money in Orlando. In New York, if you’re local it’s a great deal for renting a space, like, if you’re going to try to do four performances of your show anywhere in New York City anytime of the year.  It’s going to end up being a much more expensive endeavor than doing the Festival and you’ll get a lot less attention.  So, doing the Festival here in the City, it gives you a much better chance of being noticed by press being noticed by people, and being noticed by theater industry, if that is the thing that you’re looking for.

MZ: Is there anything else that you want to say about the about the Fringe, about 2026, and where you are now?

EZ: Since you’re based outside of New York, we are streaming most of our shows and during the Festival.  During the year, we’re at about 15 plus percent audience, but during the Festival, it grows to 20 to 25 and we would love to grow it more.

So, if you’re not in town and you want to see a show in the New York City Fringe Festival, log on.  Most of the shows are available that way, and you’ll hear the audience.  It sounds like you’re in the room.  It feels like you’re in the room.