Art Festivals
August 2014Edinburgh Fringe Festival
The Edinburgh Fringe is the world's largest arts festival, featuring over 18,000 performers and selling over 1.6 million tickets a year. It is an exuberant celebration of every kind of performing art from dance and theatre to mime, street theatre and comedy.
Every possible performance space in Edinburgh is taken over for the festival; visitors can enjoy round-the-clock performances and revel in the non-stop party atmosphere.
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival dates back to 1947 when eight theatre groups turned up uninvited to the Edinburgh International Festival. The Festival Fringe Society was founded in 1958.
In 2011 the 65th Fringe Festival issued a total of 1,877,119 tickets. Fringe 2011 featured 41,689 performances of 2,542 shows in 258 venues. An estimated 21,192 performers took to the stage in Fringe 2011, compared to 21,148 in 2014.
The Fringe is an open festival, which means that anyone can perform - the Festival Fringe Society does not invite anyone to perform or run any of the venues.Performances at the Fringe are closely scrutinised in the national press, and a number of prestigious awards are hotly contested.
The 2014?programme will soon be available on the Edinburgh Fringe Festival website- highlights of the 2013 festival included: productions of Avenue Q and Cabaret, comedy from Ardal O'Hanlon and Al Murray and for younger audiences, a production of Peter Pan.
