Indianapolis Theatre Fringe Festival | |
---|---|
Status | Active |
Genre | Festival |
Frequency | Annually |
Inaugurated | 2005 |
Previous event | August 17–September 3, 2023 |
Website | indyfringe |
The Indianapolis Theatre Fringe Festival, nicknamed "IndyFringe," is a 10-day showcase of traditional and non-traditional theatre, dance, music, improvisation and a wide range of other performance and visual arts, performed and created by local, national and international artists. The festival features performances by 64 adult performance groups.
Based on the Fringe Festival that began in Edinburgh, Scotland, when rogue theater groups set up on the edges of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947, [1] IndyFringe's roots are found in Mayor Bart Peterson's Cultural Tourism Initiative in 2001. A group of experts and citizens met for "Theatre City Indianapolis 2012" and came up with the idea for an Indianapolis Theatre Fringe Festival. Central Indiana Community foundation donated seed money and IndyFringe was born. [2]
The first year for the festival was 2005. The festival drew 4,775 patrons in its inaugural year. In 2006, a substantial increase in publicity and media coverage resulted in attendance doubling, with 9,677 patrons. [3] In 2010, there were 11,214 attendees. [4]
The festival is typically presented in mid August. The 2017 festival is scheduled for August 17–27, 2017.
Performance groups are invited to apply for a place in the festival in November each year. Sixty-four groups perform on eight different stages. Approximately half of the groups are local and half are national and international.
Performances are presented at eight Indianapolis area venues: the Phoenix Theatre, ComedySportz Theatre, Theatre on the Square, IndyFringe Basile Theatre, Indy Eleven Theatre and the Fireman's Union Hall. All are located in the Massachusetts Avenue Arts and Cultural District Archived 2020-11-14 at the Wayback Machine within easy walking distance of one another.
A festival is an extraordinary event celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival constitutes typical cases of glocalization, as well as the high culture-low culture interrelationship. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the world's largest performance arts festival, which in 2019 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 different shows in 322 venues. Established in 1947 as an alternative to the Edinburgh International Festival, it takes place in Edinburgh every August. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has become a world-leading celebration of arts and culture, surpassed only by the Olympics and the 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" according to historian and former chairman of the board, Michael Dale.
Fringe theatre is theatre that is produced outside of the main theatre institutions, and that is often small-scale and non-traditional in style or subject matter. The term comes from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In London, the fringe are small-scale theatres, many of them located above pubs, and the equivalent to New York's Off-Off-Broadway theatres and Europe's "free theatre" groups.
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, but performances are held in many venues throughout the city.
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Richard Demarco CBE is a Scottish artist and promoter of the visual and performing arts.
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Underneath the Lintel is a play by Glen Berger that premièred in 2001. The sole character—the Librarian—embarks on a quest to find out who anonymously returned a library book that is 113 years overdue. A clue scribbled in the margin of the book and an unclaimed dry-cleaning ticket then take him on a mysterious adventure that spans the globe and the ages.
The Madam C. J. Walker Building, which houses the Madam Walker Legacy Center, was built in 1927 in the city of Indianapolis, in the U.S. state of Indiana, and as Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company, it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1991. The four-story, multi-purpose Walker Building was named in honor of Madam C. J. Walker, the African American hair care and beauty products entrepreneur who founded the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company, and designed by the Indianapolis architectural firm of Rubush & Hunter. The building served as the world headquarters for Walker's company, as well as entertainment, business, and commercial hub along Indiana Avenue for the city's African American community from the 1920s to the 1950s. The historic gathering place and venue for community events and arts and cultural programs were saved from demolition in the 1970s. The restored building, which includes African, Egyptian, and Moorish designs, is one of the few remaining African-Art Deco buildings in the United States. The Walker Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
Gallimaufry Performing Arts is a theater and dance company founded in 2004 in Laguna Beach, California by Steve Josephson, the current Executive Artistic Director.
Thomas Tuck is a British actor and comedian known for being one third of comedy troupe The Penny Dreadfuls and as a stand-up comedian. He was nominated for the Best Newcomer award at the 2011 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
The Capital Fringe Festival is a fringe theatre festival held in Washington, DC, United States, every July.
Chicago Fringe Festival was an annual performing arts festival showcasing traditional and non-traditional performances. CFF aimed to provide a space for artists to produce shows that would not otherwise be seen and a festival that was accessible to everyone.
The Suitcase Royale is a theatre-comedy ensemble from Melbourne, Australia, composed of Joseph O'Farrell, Miles O'Neil and Glen Walton. The trio employ a knocked-together aesthetic and play live rag'n'bone music to frame their self-coined "junkyard theatre".
The Leith Festival is an arts festival held in the Leith area of Edinburgh and takes place mainly in the EH6 and EH7 postcodes of Edinburgh which cover the old burgh of Leith. It is a community based festival that takes place annually. It is run by the Leith Festival Association. It had been previously run by Leith Festival Club. The Edinburgh Short Film Festival, LeithLate and Leith Jazz and Blues Festival also run along the same time as the Leith Festival.