Talk:Fringe theatre

Merges

These two pages should not be merged.. It is not a Fringe Festival. The Fringe is a single concept of theater that has spread across the world. Just saying that we should merge other kinds of alternative theater isn't enough. The Fringe is an entity in its own. It's a way of running a festival where there are 150 performances over the course of 2 weeks. JUST alternative theater doesn't accomplish that.

• Seconded. Perhaps in England "Off West End" is synonymous with "fringe theatre," but that's in one country alone.
  • It is not a random country, it is one of the two main English speaking theatrical countries and contains one of the two primary cities for English language theatre. This article must be primarily concerned with English language usage of terms, as it is pointless to get into minutiae of differences in usage in other languages. Wimstead (talk) 01:08, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

See any publication of TIME OUT london for the difference between Off West End and fringe listings! They are 2 separate categories!

The article needs a major cleanup. Off West End is just a marketing concept and has no meaning within the English theatre, references to it need to removed. There needs to be a careful distinction made between Fringe Theatre, Fringe Theatre Festivals, and alternative theatre; there is no identity between them, but there are parallels, so perhaps a single article is appropriate. Kbthompson 09:14, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Off West End is purely a rip off of the New York term, it didn't even exist a few years ago. It was all called Fringe in Time Out when I lived in London. Wimstead (talk) 01:10, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Rewrite tag

I've added the rewrite tag. This article, and the changes that have been adamantly made to it (some of which utterly contradict what I thought I knew) is currently confusing me, and I've been to the theatre in London a few hundred times, including some.... whatever.... shows. Goodness knows what someone totally unfamiliar with the subject would make of it. It is obvious that usage has changed rapidly in recent years, so the article needs to explain how and when, but that certainly would not be easy information to source as it is all so vague and well, fringe, to the theatre world as a whole. Wimstead (talk) 01:14, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I am totally unfamiliar with the subject, and my impression is that the article is largely a collection of opinions from numerous proponents of various festivals, followed by a lengthly list of links to those festivals. There is very little meat, but plenty of unsupported claims about being the oldest, largest, most popular, etc., which fail to advance my understanding of this topic. I have tagged it as needing primary sources, and I also sprinkled cn's onto statements that appear to be based on opinion. Lambtron (talk) 14:06, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

List of festivals

While providing external links for the red link entries, I found a more comprehensive list of fringe festivals that might be mined for expanding the list on this page. Suggestion: keep the list alphabetical but sort by continent or otherwise? -- Deborahjay (talk) 07:08, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

There's no need to list every fringe festival known to mankind; there are plenty of notable ones that have WP articles, not to mention that listing externals would seem to be in conflict with WP:NOTDIR. Accordingly, I've removed the numerous extlinks. Lambtron (talk) 13:14, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Recent edits to "Elements of a typical fringe theatre production"

I've temporarily reverted the edits to this section because I think it needs some discussion first. The text I reverted it from was (additions in italics):

The limitations and opportunities that the Fringe festival format presents lead to some common features. Large festivals have many shows with Edinborough´s main festival showing over 3,500 events and a medium scale festivals showing upto 100 productions. Usualy prices for showing are cheap and sold in one general price or two tears, one for larger and or longer shows and another for shorter and or less popular ones. There is no correspondence with price to eventual popularity or quality (quality being a subjective and shunned concept at fringe festivals). Most festivals sell tickets in groups such as 5 or 10 shows with a substantial discount encouraging a well and thorougly attended festival.

Shows are typically technically sparse; they are commonly presented in shared venues, often with shared technicians and limited technical time, so sets and other technical theatre elements are kept simple. Venues themselves are often adapted from other uses.

Festivals have a large volunteer corpse and most have few paid staff.

Casts tend to be smaller than mainstream theatre; since many of the performing groups are traveling, and venues (and thus potential income) tend to be fairly small, expenses must usually be kept to a minimum. One-person shows are therefore quite common at Fringe festivals.

Fringe festival productions often showcase new scripts, especially ones on more obscure, edgy or unusual material. The lack of artistic vetting combined with relatively easy entry[citation needed] make risk-taking more feasible.

While most mainstream theatre shows are two or three acts long, taking two to three hours with intermissions, fringe shows tend to be closer to one hour, single-act productions. The typically lowered ticket prices of a fringe theatre show permit audiences to attend multiple shows in a single evening.

Most Anglo Saxon festivals are not jurried in any official way (meaning the organization is not associated with any juries or panels which would chose any winners or best performers). However the festivals may be indirectly jurried by an association which does their own awards (such as in Edinborough which has several awards given by several different associations) or by the media (such as in Vancouver where different newspapers each select their favourite or "pick" which may give extended playing time to such shows which also become popular if not sold out). Such awards are not sanctioned nor chosen by the organization of the festivals.

Censorship is rare and always controversial even when legally warranted.

There are two problems with this. Firstly, a lot of this text is about the format of the festival as a whole rather than elements of an actual fringe production. Secondly, a lot of the generalisations made in the text are uncited. This is fine if everyone agrees this is the case, but there are a lot of assertions here I don't agree with. There is certainly no such thing as a two-tier pricing structure in any of the UK Fringes I've been to (Edinburgh, Brighton, Buxton), nor have I seen any official block tickets of 5 or 10 shows. Quality being a shunned concept isn't true - Fringe festivals may not pre-select on quality but it is certainly encouraged amongst participants. And whilst the Edinburgh Fringe tends to leave awards to other organisations, I believe others (certainly Buxton) manage the awards themselves.

Thoughts?

Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 08:35, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Nice to see that someone is paying attention to this article. I was really just trying to add meat to it. Im glad that someone wants to make it a good article. For your reverts, probably most of them are fair, but Ill find references for some of them. Im also not sure that its nesesary to cut out something just because it describes the format as opposed to a typical format of a show. Perhaps there should be two sections then? Because Buxton handles their own awards doesnt change anything about the weasel word "most festivals" dont have jurries. What do you think?

Shabidoo | Talk 22:48, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I'll have a look at this tomorrow and try to find a way forwards with this. I think we'll need to split this information between elements of typical productions and elements of the actual festivals, but that is manageable. However, I'm tired and I want to go to bed. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 23:08, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay, sorry for the delay getting back this. Having had a good look at this, it looks like the information you have added is not so much about a typical fringe production, but the format of a typical fringe festival as a whole. Therefore, I think the best place for this information would be in the above section, Fringe theatre festival organization. I'll wait and see what you say, but I propose to merge the text you added into this section, minus any bits of duplicate information, with some tweaks to clarify what only applies to some fringe productions. Is that fine? Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 13:58, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Its your choice. Either make two sections on the organization of a festival and a typical production or one section. Upto you really. All that I added applies to Canadian fringe festivals, New York and what Ive read about in some in England (I dont know a lot about the rest of the UK). There are oh so little sources on Fringe theatre :(

Thanks for taking care of the info! Shabidoo | Talk 17:34, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I'll get to work tomorrow when I'm not quite so knackered. In the meantime, it would help if you could state which fringe festivals you know of that sell the tickets in price tiers or blocks of 5/10. Is it Canadian fringe festivals in general, or any particular ones you know of. (Word of mouth information is Wikipedia isn't brilliant but it's better than nothing provided it's not contentious.) Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 21:21, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I've now done a quick job on it. One of these days I may attempt to properly source this, but it should do for now. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 23:01, 7 December 2010 (UTC)