Great Summer Theater Festivals - The Edmonton Fringe Theatre Festival

Walk down the street in Old Strathcona in the summer and you'll see crowds of university students, a few street vendors, and the usual traffic.

Walk down those same streets in late August and you will be treated to throngs of avid theater goers all searching for the next Fringe hit. The air will be redolent with savory scents and full of music that competes with the voices of the miraculously-multiplied vendors crying their wares.

Turn into the square behind Whyte Avenue, across from the library and just in front of the Old Bus Barns (now developed into a permanent farmers' market and theater complex), and you can watch any number of street performers, grab a coffee or soda, and enjoy exotic food from a wide variety of local restaurants that have booths at the Fringe.

Turn another corner and you can sit in the shade of one of many large beer tents while you peruse your multi-page festival guide and decide on the next show to take in. Or you can wander over to Stage Two while perusing the merchandise for sale in the booths that line the meandering walkway.

Open air stages abound, and the performances are as varied as any cosmopolite could wish. With a little luck, you'll see the Mud Bay Jugglers, an awesome group of masked, juggling, stilt-walkers from south of the border.

They look like animated burlap scarecrows, throwing all manner of knives, spears and clubs at each other while they amble through the streets, for all the world like so many fringed giraffes.

Then there's that absolutely crazed group of high-energy medieval loonies whot suborn audience members to perform fractured Shakespearean tales with them, much to the utter delight of the rest of the crowd.

Down another street, your progress is suddenly blocked by a band of drummers from somewhere in Africa.

Thrusting a pair of sticks into your hand, the drum master grins and leads you to small knot of equally bemused passers-by that have been dragooned, like you, into becoming part of the afternoon's entertainment.

Together you learn how to drum like the wind and the rain over the plains of Africa. Swept along with the rest of the crowd, you dance in the streets drumming and singing. Suddenly, you are no longer strangers.

Later that evening you find yourself sharing your day with everyone in the lineup for the next show, regaling them with prize "bits" from each of the performances you've seen that day.

Many of your fellows have similar tales and you excitedly trade tidbits, laughing and enjoying them all over again.

Some nights it really doesn't seem to matter what you see - Theater Sports, a fast-paced, often lethally funny improv game; the latest installment of the reigning live "Soap", a wild audience participation spoof; a gripping drama fresh from the pen of a new playwright - it's all good and it's all "Fringe".

Where, you might ask, did all this wonderful craziness come from? Fringe Festivals are renown worldwide as a venue for new plays; as a place where performers can spread their wings and take on the entertainment world...and if their show is a hit, they can pay the cast!

From its roots in Edinburgh, Scotland, the Fringe Festival model spread to North America where the creative use of existing non-theater spaces for putting on plays quickly grew from its first, modest beginnings to the hugely successful festival it is today.

The first Fringe theater event in Edmonton was produced in the summer of 1982 under the Artistic Directorship of Brian Paisley. The event made use of a number of existing theaters in the Old Strathcona area - The Walterdale Playhouse and the Catalyst Theater, conveniently located across the street from each other, the Varscona Theater - and many unlikely but serviceable structures such as the Orange Hall, Acacia Hall, King Edward Academy, the (now Arts Barn Theaters) then the Old Bus Barns, which were quickly converted into three theater spaces, the old Telus Building, and many more.

The first Fringe featured forty-seven productions in five venues over ten days. The plays were all scheduled between noon and midnight, and were attended by 7500 people.

Unlike the Edinburgh model which requires actors to find their own spaces, the Edmonton Fringe offers a venue, a set number of performances, and two technicians to set up and run lighting and sound, as well as front-of-house and ticketing services.

It was always a bit of a lottery to see if you would get a favorable time for your production. The organizers tried to ensure that children's plays and family entertainment was slotted into the earlier times, but that wasn't always possible. Still, that seemed to only add to the fun atmosphere that pervaded the whole crazy venture in its early years.

More than 1500 performers take part in the Fringe Festival Event every year, many newcomers, but also quite q few returning, perennial favorites like Teatro Quindacina, who can be counted on for a delightful musical spoof each year, Three Dead Trolls In A Baggy, a talented and zany improvisational theater group, and the master plotters of DieNasty, a long running live-action soap opera that has been delighting Fringe after-midnight audiences for years.

You could call the Edmonton Fringe the "Little Festival That Grew". Always known as a city that loves its festivals, Edmonton adores the Fringe.

Internationally recognized as one of the best, most successful fringe theater events in the world, and as one of Canada's foremost festivals, the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival attracts artists from across Canada and around the world, including performers from every province and territory in Canada as well as the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Poland, Australia, New Zealand, Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria, Israel, Taiwan, Japan, Africa and Central and South America.

By 1987, audience attendance had grown to more than 350,000, with 500 volunteers and 125 companies in ten venues. In 1999, the Fringe played host to 150 companies in thirteen venues with 100 volunteers and over 450,000 people visiting the site. The figures for attendance in 2009 showed ticket sales in excess of 92,000 for the various plays and performances, with over 550,000 people visiting the festival site.

If you're up this way next August, be sure to plan to take in a great event! Stroll though Old Strathcona. Buy the kids an Ice cream, and enjoy the street performers. Stop by one of the beer tents in an evening and queue up for a show or two.

Take in the sights and sounds of one of the best theater festivals in North America - come see the Edmonton Fringe Theater Festival!