The 29th Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival
August 12 – 22, 2010
With a thank you to everyone who made the
2010 Festival such a success
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It’s time to tell the world about our FringeAugust 24, 2010 |
Chris Gibbs, a British comedian based in Toronto, has become a star on the Fringe circuit. His one-man shows are funny and thoughtful, a winning combination, with personal details peppered through a narrative. His latest work is about being a new father, and on Friday he drew a sellout crowd into the TransAlta Arts Barns’ dusty cabaret hall. At the end of the show, which went spectacularly well, he praised the festival, the city and most of all, its audiences.
“What you do here is astonishing,” Gibbs said. “No one is better than the Edmonton Fringe. Sure, Edinburgh, but unless you have 10,000 pounds to waste for the hope of a 20-second spot on BBC 2, there's no point. For art, for theatre, this is it.”
I have just spent a year as a tourist, a city gawker, which allowed me to see my hometown, my province and my country somewhat more objectively than usual. Gibbs is right: This is it.
Some of my subscriptions continued as I lived abroad, and I was pleased to see Travel Alberta advertising in magazines like The New Yorker. It has a specialized clientele; 83 per cent of subscribers have a post-secondary degree and 88 per cent have a valid passport. Readers spend an average of 77 minutes on each issue, which has a strong cultural focus.
Travel Alberta sells the mountains in The New Yorker, which is wise. They sell Calgary as Alberta's city experience. Calgary has the Stampede, which is a large, marketable festival (everyone loves cowboys), with a cumulative attendance of just over a million people. It's difficult to sell Capital Ex to American readers, as state fairs are common in the summer, and it's impossible to sell the Indy back to the people who invented it. Americans also invented cowboys, and you can't sell urban sophistication in provincial cities to New Yorkers, but Travel Alberta executives must know and mourn these facts in the dark, secret corners of their suites in Calgary.
The Fringe has a cumulative attendance of 500,000. It was the first in North America and it remains the second-largest in the world. Unlike the Edinburgh Fringe, which is the largest, the Edmonton Fringe is mostly concentrated in Old Strathcona. Unlike other Fringes on this continent, there is a circus atmosphere about the festival that spreads into the neighbourhood and arguably defines it.
Nothing that happens in Edmonton is more urban, more sophisticated, more unlike Calgary and more marketable (everyone loves a clown with obsessive-compulsive disorder and no pants) than the Fringe. There is a Fringe in New York, and when Edmonton's Teatro La Quindicina showed up a few years ago, the New York Times admitted, on the front page of their Sunday arts section, that they were hosting a master (Stewart Lemoine) from the golden city of the Fringe (Edmonton).
Fellow columnist Paula Simons has written eloquently about the way Travel Alberta positions Edmonton (Red Deer 2), and nothing about this is going to change. For media buyers, Edmonton is and will always be that city where overweight men with poor grammar wear dress shoes, dark socks and Bermuda shorts to work.
On the Edmonton Economic Development Corp. website, potential visitors to the city can choose from “festivals and special events packages.” They include the Honda Indy Edmonton, Capital Ex, the Canadian Finals Rodeo and the Grey Cup. All worthy events, but what do they say about Edmonton in 2010? The EEDC, in concert with Travel Alberta, did host five media groups from abroad this year at the Fringe Festival, including Percy von Lipinski, who shoots iReports for CNN.
If the Edmonton Fringe became a launching point, a place to workshop brave new theatrical work, we wouldn't have to entice media with free meals and hotel rooms. The BYOV system (bring your own venue, programmed by independent producers) is already moving quite naturally in this direction. A substantial cash prize for the best new work, sponsored by EEDC and Travel Alberta, could be the modest Edmonton version of that 20-second spot on BBC 2, and could draw fine companies from across the continent and around the world to compete with local talent.
In an interview with The Journal on Sunday, Julian Mayne, executive director of Fringe Theatre Adventures, said “with the festival nearly 30 years old, coming up, it would be great to have the city investing a bit more. Creating festival gates, for example, on either end of 83rd Ave.”
It's a marvellous idea among other marvellous ideas, of financial and spiritual investment. Lawyers might not wear clown noses and comically enormous shoes on Jasper Avenue 10 days per year, but judging by this year's robust ticket sales (+93,000), more and more Edmontonians are feeling a sense of ownership of the festival and, best of all, going to theatre.
The Fringe is entering its 30s. It's safe to invite our friends.
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Fringe Hold-overs |
August 25 – 29, 2010
All the brilliance of the Fringe can’t be confined to 11 days!
Missed out on seeing that great Fringe show? Fringe Theatre Adventures will hold over several select performances at the TransAlta Arts Barns from August 25th through August 29th.
View held over shows & ticket info »
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Festival Events » |
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View complete listings of shows: |
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Your $6 Festival Program Guide can be purchased from: |
Souvenir Booth [located in lobby of TransAlta Arts Barns]
Information booths on-site | Map of Festival site 
- Edmonton and area Safeway locations »
[plus one location in Calgary]
| 8720 – 156 Street | Edmonton, AB |
| 576 Riverbend Square | Edmonton, AB |
| 2331 – 66 Street | Edmonton, AB |
| 8118 – 118 Avenue | Edmonton, AB |
| 11410 – 104 Avenue | Edmonton, AB |
| 500 Manning Crossing | Edmonton, AB |
| 9710 – 170 Street | Edmonton, AB |
| 600, 6655 – 178 Street | Edmonton, AB |
| 12950 – 137 Avenue | Edmonton, AB |
| 601, 111 Ave. & Groat Road | Edmonton, AB |
| 200, 9499 – 137 Avenue | Edmonton, AB |
| 1062, 5004 – 98 Avenue | Edmonton, AB |
| 10930 – 82 Avenue | Edmonton, AB |
| #185, 8330 – 82 Avenue | Edmonton, AB |
| 2534 Guardian Road | Edmonton, AB |
| 3210 – 118 Avenue | Edmonton, AB |
| 111 Street & 51 Avenue | Edmonton, AB |
| 15007 Stony Plain Road | Edmonton, AB |
| 38 Avenue & Millwoods Road | Edmonton, AB |
| 2304 – 109 Street | Edmonton, AB |
| 9450 – 86 Avenue | Ft. Sask, AB |
| 6112 – 50 Street | Leduc, AB |
| 985 Fir Street | Sherwood Park, AB |
| 2020 Sherwood Drive | Sherwood Park, AB |
| 94 Mcleod Avenue | Spruce Grove, AB |
| 395 St. Albert Road | St. Albert, AB |
| 300 – 2 Hebert Road | St. Albert, AB |
| 4202 Southpark Drive | Stony Plain, AB |
| 813 – 11 Ave SW | Calgary, AB |
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Festival tickets » and passes* can be purchased: |
- Online
- In person at Fringe Theatre Adventures Central Box Office
Located in lobby of TransAlta Arts Barns
10330 – 84 Avenue | Edmonton, Alberta T6E 2G9
Box Office hours » | Map of Festival site » 
Satellite Festival Box Offices | Map of Festival site - By phone: 780-409-1910 | Box Office hours »
*August 4 Public Service Annoucement: PASSES ARE SOLD OUT
Frequent Fringer and Double Fringer passes for the 2010 Edmonton Fringe are all gone, marking the first time in Festival history passes have sold out in less than 24 hours. Single tickets are also selling in record numbers, with more than 1000 sold on day one of sales; in 2009, just less than 650 tickets sold on the Box Office’s opening day.
View photos from the
2010 Fringe Theatre Festival
Fringe Theatre Festival
featured on Vacations Canada TV
EDMONTON STORIES
Writer, producer and director
Aaron Langvand writes about the impact the Fringe Theatre Festival
has had on his career: edmontonstories.ca 
WE'LL SHOW YOU OURS
Video clips from artists and friends
of the 2009 Festival
