EDMONTON – A bear and the half-clad Bronte sisters, several red-nosed clowns and a half-lady/half cockroach were on hand, hanging with thesps in their civvies. Welcome, aliens and others, to the village that never sleeps, and knows how to project.
Amazingly, The Village of the Fringed, the 31st annual edition of Edmonton’s monster alternative summer theatre festival, is not just older, but bigger. Just after the Fringe’s annual media launch/marketplace, single tickets and the new Frequent Fringer festival passes went on sale Tuesday noon at the Fringe headquarters in the TransAlta Arts Barns – for in-the-flesh, online (fringetheatre.ca) and phone (780-409-1910) sales. And thus created the first Fringe queue of the season, 75 theatre-goers long.
Old Strathcona, the Fringe birthplace and ’hood, is poised to be invaded, Aug. 16 to 26, by artists of every stripe from across the country and around the globe who arrive for the oldest and biggest Fringe on the continent.
At the box office await tickets to some 1,800 performances of 215 (up from last year’s 182) unjuried, uncensored indoor shows. And they’re dispersed among the usual 11 official venues, programmed by lottery and provided and equipped by the Fringe itself – plus an unprecedented array of some 41 (up 10 from last year) BYOVs (bring-your-own-venues) in Old Strathcona and well beyond, acquired and outfitted by artists themselves.
In addition to the odd bona fide theatre (the Varscona, Walterdale, and La Cite francophone among them), Edmontonians will be fringing in cinemas both current and defunct, night clubs of the country, rock, or blues persuasion, bars, schools, lounges, churches, cafes, libraries, design studios, churches, hotels, retail outlets, a vaudeville tent, and a funeral parlour. The latter, incidentally, houses a show called A Wake.
Get daily National news
With all this showbiz bounty at your disposal, a $7 104-page Fringe program, replete with show info and schedules, is an essential of village life. They’re on sale at Edmonton-area Safeway stores (including Sherwood Park, St. Albert, Leduc, Stony Plain and Spruce Grove), Edmonton area Chapters, Indigo and Coles locations, as well as Greenwoods’ Bookshoppe, Audreys Books, Tix on the Square, and online at fringetheatre.ca.
One of the festival’s ticketing initiatives for 2012, replacing the passes of previous years, is a $110 Frequent Fringer Festival Pass, entitling its holder to 10 tickets, and a maximum of two per performance. Only 600 are available, limit of two per customer. This is a deal: Fringe artists set their own ticket price, to a $12.50 maximum. With an additional $2.50 per ticket (up 50 cents from last year) levied by the Fringe itself, fringe-goers can pay up to $15 a ticket for indoor shows – and they mostly do.
The other new venture, which takes its cue from the Edinburgh Fringe, is the Fringe Daily Discount Booth, beside the train tracks en route from the Arts Barns to the KidsFringe. In the spirit of free adventure commerce, artists may decide to offer tickets at a 50-per-cent discount, to performances that day, right up to showtime.
Last year, the Edmonton Fringe sold more than 104,000 tickets to shows, and attendance was pegged at about half a million. Getting tickets is easy, especially since the Fringe site is peppered with satellite box offices during the festival, never too far from the beer tent. Your only problem now is a surfeit of possibilities.
Comments