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The Ottawa Fringe Festival is an annual fringe theatre festival in Ottawa. The festival was inaugurated in 1997. The festival takes place for ten days each June. Performances are held indoors and out.
Performances all take place in downtown Ottawa. Two of the regular stages are located at the University of Ottawa, including Studio Léonard-Beaulne and Academic Hall. Three others are located at Arts Court: Arts Court Theatre, Arts Court Library and Ottawa Dance Directive (ODD Box). The venues are all within walking distance of one another.
Throughout the festival, a courtyard is set up just outside Arts Court to provide refreshment and a location for mingling with the artists.
Most Fringe performances are plays, and most last an hour or less. Since 2009, a limited number of 90-minute spots have been available. The content of the plays varies since acceptance to the festival is by lottery, and the shows are not juried. Because Ottawa is a bilingual city, both English and French productions are presented at the Fringe, though a small number of productions in past years have been bilingual.
Each patron must purchase a $3 Fringe Pin, which grants entry for the duration of the festival. Most performances are ticketed events, and require the purchase of a ticket on top of the Fringe Pin. Visitors aren't permitted entrance to ticketed performance unless they are wearing a Fringe Pin.
Tickets generally cost $12. For those attending multiple shows, discounted admission is available in the form of five- and ten-show passes, for $45 and $99 respectively. In keeping with the core mandate of the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals, one hundred percent of the proceeds from ticket sales go to the performers.
The Fringe seeks to minimize its impact on the artistic decisions of its performers. Thus the festival allocates its limited stage time by lottery, with a certain percentage put aside for local, Canadian, and international troupes. Each winning troupe will get to perform its show in the same venue at different times, from a little after noon to midnight, over several days. The rotation of time slots helps to even out the audience-dampening effects of performing late at night or when most people are at work.
Since anyone able to meet an application fee can apply to perform at the Fringe, and berths are awarded by lottery, the quality of the shows can vary widely.
The Ottawa Fringe has spawned at least one international success. Ottawa playwright and actor Pierre Brault's one person show, Blood on the Moon, tells of the trial, (perhaps wrongful) conviction, and execution of Patrick J. Whelan for D'Arcy McGee's murder. After its successful Fringe run, Brault performed Blood on the Moon at the National Arts Centre, toured the show across Canada, and even brought it to Ireland. [1]
Canada's contemporary theatre reflects a rich diversity of regional and cultural identities. Since the late 1960s, there has been a concerted effort to develop the voice of the 'Canadian playwright', which is reflected in the nationally focused programming of many of the country's theatres. Within this 'Canadian voice' are a plurality of perspectives - that of the First Nations, new immigrants, French Canadians, sexual minorities, etc. - and a multitude of theatre companies have been created to specifically service and support these voices.
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 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 its historian and former chairman of the board, Michael Dale.
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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.
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The Calgary Fringe Festival is an annual Fringe theatre festival in Calgary, Alberta.
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The N Crowd is a short form improv comedy troupe that has been performing weekly since April 2005. The troupes membership has fluctuated between 14 and 6 over the last 2 years. Currently there are 10 members performing weekly in Philadelphia. The troupe has received positive reviews in the Philadelphia Weekly,the Philly Style Magazine, and The City Paper. Interviews of N Crowd members have appeared in The Philly Metro and Phillyst.com.
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The Halifax Fringe Festival, formerly known as the Atlantic Fringe Festival, is held annually in late August and early September in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Since 1991, the festival has been a showcase for non-mainstream theatre. A wide variety of original plays, shows, and presentations are performed.
The Segal Centre for Performing Arts, formerly the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts, is a theatre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located at 5170 chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine, in the borough of Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.
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The Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals (CAFF) is an international body that promotes and safeguards the ideals and principles of fringe theatre in North America.
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