The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is an arts festival associated with the Edinburgh Festival. It takes place in the city of Edinburgh over five weeks during August, and is the largest arts festival in the world.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, more usually called the Edinburgh Fringe, was started in 1947, the same year that the Edinburgh Festival was started. Eight theatre companies decided to take advantage of the crowds of theatregoers expected to attend the Festival by putting on unofficial performances of their own. Since then the Fringe has outgrown the official Festival, and now has its own staff and coordinating organisation, which sells more than a million tickets each year.
The Fringe is focussed almost exclusively on the performing arts, particularly theatre and comedy. Fringe material can be anything from Shakespeare to the truly experimental. Some Fringe venues are established professional theatres and regularly sell hundreds of tickets to a performance; others are converted church halls or even living rooms, and attract single-digit audiences.
The prestigious Perrier Comedy Awards are announced at the festival.
The Edinburgh Fringe has inspired a world-wide circuit of festivals in many Canadian, American, Australian and European cities. Fringe theatre festivals are distinguished by their unjuried selection process, allowing artists to produce a wide variety of interesting works.
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