WATCH ABOVE: Brian Paisley had no idea how big and how iconic the Edmonton International Fringe Festival would be when he wrote the outline for it in 1982.
EDMONTON — It was spring 1982 in Edmonton. The temperature was hovering between -4°C and 20°C. The Oilers had just set an NHL record with 417 goals, with Wayne Gretzky scoring 92 of those. The province was in an economic recession and playwright Brian Paisley was madly penning the outline for what would come to be the oldest and largest alternative theatre festival in North America: the Edmonton International Fringe Festival.
The City of Edmonton had cut the grant funding for the annual Shakespeare production in the summer. So, the company behind the production cancelled the show, and desperately looked for a way to keep Edmonton’s now unemployed theatre community busy, and ultimately, fed.
“All of a sudden we had a vacuum,” Paisley says. “I wrote down a page and half just describing the Fringe, and they said, ‘Oh, yeah, that sounds OK, go and do it.’ I got a cheque and away I went, and the rest, as they say…”
It started small. Paisley, who’s now in his late 60s and lives in Victoria, didn’t have enough funds to create a full-blown festival, so instead he booked a number of empty spaces in Old Strathcona, hired technical production staff, then went about calling people he knew in the industry who had nothing to do, and who maybe had a few plays in their back pocket.
“I thought we’d get about 20 or so, and I got 45. Word spread. Viral, I suppose, in those days.”
The next problem was getting an audience to come out and buy tickets. But that didn’t turn out to be a problem at all. Seven thousand five hundred tickets were sold that first year—a number Paisley attributes to the fact it was summer and the legislature was in recess.
“Here’s all of a sudden this theatre festival with all these weird people—very strange shows and strange names—so we got, disproportionately perhaps, more publicity that first year than we anticipated,” Paisley says. “And it just rolled from there.”
The first festival was called “A Fringe Theatre Event.” “Return of the Fringe,” “Born to Fringe” and “Frankenfringe” followed, and before Paisley knew it, the festival was a summer staple. Now there are over 800 performers in more than 200 shows, and in 2014, over 118,000 tickets were sold.
Paisley’s notes for the alternative theatre festival were loosely inspired by the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which he had attended a few years earlier. But unlike Edinburgh, which asks its artist to find spaces to perform in, the Edmonton Fringe supplies the spaces, asking the artists to instead find people to fill the seats in those spaces—freeing them, Paisley says, to meet the audience.
“There’s nothing between you and audience. There’s no big theatre you have to dress up for. Just come down, see a performer, be there with them, and maybe even talk to them.”
Paisley stayed with the Edmonton Fringe into the mid 90s. But his career in the Fringe and the theatre world didn’t stop there. He helped start up Fringe Festivals across the country, including Winnipeg’s and Toronto’s. He’s also penned countless plays, film and television scripts.
In 2001, he received Edmonton’s City Excellence Award, in 2010 the Order of Canada and in 2012, the City of Edmonton named a neighbourhood after him—Paisley in the city’s southwest.
“That was quite funny, I thought it was a joke,” he says, admitting he’s never actually seen the area in person.
“In my usual artistic way, I went, ‘Am I getting paid for this?'”
Now, in the year 2015, the playwright looks back at 1982 as a pivotal point in his career evolution.
“Nobody, including myself, could have foreseen this 34 years later,” he says. “But the spirit is still there. When I look at the line up of shows and the kind of people who are involved…Well, they’re still crazy, they’re still doing absurdly ridiculous things, and the audience is still coming to see it.”
And his advice to Fringe artists looking to make a name for themselves in the harsh world of theatre?
“Keep doing it. Have faith. If you got the skill, you got the talent, and you have the energy to stay in theatre, you’re going to find a willing audience who are going to welcome you year after year. What you do with that is up to you.”
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