The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the world's largest arts festival, which in 2018 spanned 25 days and featured more than 55,000 performances of 3,548 different shows in 317 venues. Established in 1947 as an alternative to the Edinburgh International Festival, it takes place annually in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the month of August. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has become a world-leading celebration of arts and culture, surpassed only by the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup in terms of global ticketed events. As an event it "has done more to place Edinburgh in the forefront of world cities than anything else".
The Adelaide Fringe, formerly Adelaide Fringe Festival, is the world's second-largest annual arts festival, held in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. Between mid-February and mid-March each year, it features more than 7,000 artists from around Australia and the world. Over 1,300 events are staged in hundreds of venues, which include work in a huge variety of performing and visual art forms. The Fringe begins with free opening night celebrations, and other free events occur alongside ticketed events for the duration of the festival.
The Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF) is the largest stand-alone comedy festival and the second-largest international comedy festival in the world. Established in 1987, it takes place annually in Melbourne over four weeks, typically starting in March and running through to April. The Melbourne Town Hall has served as the festival hub since the early 1990s, but performances are held in many venues throughout the city.
Henry Naylor is a British comedy writer, director and performer.
Bedlam Theatre is a fully operational, 90 seat theatre housed in a former Neogothic church at the foot of George IV Bridge in central Edinburgh. It is owned by the University of Edinburgh, and notable for being the oldest student-run theatre in Britain. During the summer, Bedlam Fringe is run as a separate enterprise, Bedlam being a long-standing Edinburgh Fringe venue.
The National Theatre of Scotland, established in 2006, is the national theatre company of Scotland. The company has no theatre building of its own; instead it tours work to theatres, village halls, schools and site-specific locations, both at home and internationally.
The Traverse Theatre is a theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was founded in 1963 by John Calder, John Malcolm, Jim Haynes and Richard Demarco seeking to extend the spirit of the Festival throughout the year.
Thomas William Basden is an English actor and comedy writer, and a member of the British four-man sketch group Cowards. He has written and performed extensively for comedy shows on the BBC and Channel 4 and often collaborates in two-man shows with fellow Cowards member Tim Key.
Chris Cox is a mentalist magician – a self-proclaimed "mind reader who can't read minds". On television he stars in "Chris Cox's Mind Blowing Magic" on CBBC & BBC iPlayer and is "The Geek" in the award winning Killer Magic on BBC Three. He also stars in touring stage show The Illusionists and in the West End in Impossible. He is the only mind reader in history to play Broadway, London's West End and Sydney Opera House. In his radio career Chris was the writer and producer for Matt Edmondson on BBC Radio 1; the assistant producer on The Chris Moyles Show.
ThreeWeeks is a magazine that covers the Edinburgh Festivals in August.
Hannah Gadsby is an Australian comedian, writer, actress and television presenter. She rose to prominence after winning the national final of the Raw Comedy competition for new comedians in 2006 and since toured internationally as well as on television and radio.
Frisky & Mannish is a British musical comedy double act, created and performed by singer Laura Corcoran and pianist-singer Matthew Floyd Jones. Known for their pop music parodies, the duo have toured the fringe festival and comedy festival circuits in the United Kingdom and Australia, and appeared on a number of British television and radio programmes. The act's name derives from two incidental characters mentioned in one couplet of Byron's Don Juan: "Lady Fitz-Frisky, and Miss Maevia Mannish, / Both longed extremely to be sung in Spanish"
Alan Harris is a Welsh playwright.
Broadway Baby is a British online review guide which launched in 2004. It was the most prolific reviewing publication at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 2012 to 2017. It contains reviews of music, comedy, theatre and dance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Brighton Fringe, Camden Fringe and year-round in London and Central Scotland. Formerly, a printed version was also published.
Fourth Monkey Actor Training Company is both a repertory theatre company, and an actor training provider and drama school for young actors.
Aunty Donna are an Australian absurdist comedy group from Melbourne. The group consists of Mark Samual Bonanno, Broden Kelly and Zachary Ruane as writers and performers, director/writer Sam Lingham, filmmaker Max Miller, and composer Tom Armstrong. Adrian Dean and Joe Kosky were also former performing members who left to pursue careers in law and musical theatre respectively. The group has performed at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Melbourne Fringe Festival. As of January 13, 2020, they have amassed over 274,012 subscribers and over 52,044,217 views on their YouTube channel.
Scott Kyle is a Scottish actor, best known for his roles as Ross in Outlander, Clancy in The Angels' Share, and Corporal Stu Pearson in the film Kilo Two Bravo. Kyle received the 2010 Stage Awards Best Actor Award for his role in the play Singin' I'm No A Billy He's A Tim.
Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour is a play based on the 1998 novel The Sopranos by Alan Warner, adapted for the stage by Lee Hall. It received its world premiere at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in August 2015, before embarking on a short UK tour. The play is a co-production between the National Theatre of Scotland and Live Theatre. The production ran at London's National Theatre in August 2016 and is scheduled to transfer to the West End's Duke of York's Theatre in May 2017.
Kiri Louise Pritchard-McLean is a Welsh comedian. Born in Gloucester, she was raised on a farm on Anglesey, Wales. She has performed for several consecutive years at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and won two Chortle Awards.
Holden Street Theatres (HST) is a South Australian performing arts theatre complex in Hindmarsh, an inner-western suburb of Adelaide. It is housed in the heritage-listed All Saints' Anglican Church complex. The complex includes three performance spaces: The Studio, The Arch and The Bar.
