The Edinburgh Festival Fringe
It began in 1947 when eight theatre companies turned up uninvited to a festival that hadn't booked them. Now it's the biggest arts party on the planet.
Published
Quick Facts
- Where
- Edinburgh, centred on the Old Town, the Royal Mile and the university area
- First held
- 1947, alongside the first Edinburgh International Festival
- When
- Three to four weeks every August
- Open access
- No selection committee: any performer with a venue can take part
- Record year
- 3,841 shows in 2019
- Only cancellation
- 2020, the first time it didn't run
- Famous springboards
- Fleabag (2013) and generations of Cambridge Footlights comedians
- Fringe Society
- Founded 1958 to offer shared information and ticketing to all participants
The gatecrashers of 1947
The Edinburgh International Festival was dreamed up after the Second World War to heal Europe through music and drama, with Rudolf Bing as its driving force. Eight companies, mostly from Scotland and England, weren't invited. They came anyway and staged shows on the edges of the official programme. The name arrived a little later. In 1948 the playwright and journalist Robert Kemp wrote of a more private enterprise going on "round the fringe" of the official drama. The label stuck, and the gatecrashers became the main event. The Fringe Society was set up in 1958 to give everyone the same basic services, such as a printed programme and a box office. It has never chosen who gets in.
No gatekeepers, no rules
The whole thing runs on one principle: if you can find a room and fill it, you're in. Nobody vets the acts. That's why a polished transfer from a national theatre can sit next to a student troupe performing in a borrowed room above a pub. The result is staggering scale. In 2019 the Fringe listed 3,841 different shows, in hundreds of venues. Church halls, university lecture theatres, basements and pubs all become stages. The big names of the circuit, such as the Pleasance, Assembly, Gilded Balloon and Underbelly, started as scrappy hosts and became institutions. Underbelly's giant purple upside-down cow, the Udderbelly, became a landmark of its own.
How people actually do the Fringe
Nobody sees everything, so people develop tactics. Flyering is the first: the Royal Mile fills with performers in costume pressing leaflets into your hands, and many a ticket is sold by a charming stranger rather than a review. Punters often mix a big-name comedian with a total gamble. A show you picked at random at 11 am in a tiny room is half the fun. Fringe Sunday in Holyrood Park used to offer free outdoor samples of performers' work. It was last held in 2008 and discontinued in 2009. The Free Fringe is another way in. Peter Buckley Hill started it in 1996 on a pay-what-you-want basis, with the audience putting money in a bucket on the way out. It has since grown into a major strand of the festival.
The launchpad and the graveyard
Beyond the Fringe, the 1960 revue by Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore, is still a landmark of British satire. Here's the twist: it premiered at the official International Festival in 1960, not the Fringe, though it was born of the same Edinburgh August energy. The Cambridge Footlights have long used the Fringe as a showcase, and generations of comedians have built careers in August. The comedy prize, once the Perrier and now the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, has launched many a headline act. In 2013 Phoebe Waller-Bridge brought a one-woman show called Fleabag to the Fringe; it later became a television phenomenon. For every success there are acts playing to three people and a sleepy bartender. Performers talk about "the Fringe" as both the best and the most punishing month of their year.
Festival rivalries and the city itself
The Fringe is only one of the August festivals. The International Festival, the Book Festival, the Military Tattoo and others all run in the same weeks. The official festival was once the grand, high-culture relative, and the Fringe the cheeky younger one. Today the Fringe dwarfs it in the number of shows. It transforms Edinburgh. Locals either flee the city or learn to navigate the Royal Mile crowds sideways. The population swells, the Old Town hums until the small hours, and every doorway seems to have a poster. It has never stopped for anything except the pandemic. In 2020 it was cancelled for the first time in its history, and it came back stronger.
Notable people
- Rudolf Bing
- Robert Kemp
- Peter Buckley Hill
- Alan Bennett
- Peter Cook
- Jonathan Miller
- Dudley Moore
- Phoebe Waller-Bridge
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