{"id":128056,"date":"2013-05-04T11:00:41","date_gmt":"2013-05-04T05:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=128056"},"modified":"2013-05-04T11:00:41","modified_gmt":"2013-05-04T05:30:41","slug":"the-fringe-is-risky-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/the-fringe-is-risky-business\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Fringe is risky business\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Beyond<\/a>
Beyond the periphery<\/strong> A performance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nEDITED EXCERPTS<\/strong>
\nHow did the Edinburgh Festival Fringe become the world\u2019s largest arts festival?<\/strong>
\nIn 1947, the Edinburgh International Festival started as a cultural intervention to bring people together after World War II. Eight theatre companies were pleased with the festival happening in Edinburgh, but annoyed at not being invited to take part. They realised that there would be an audience and media eager to see them perform. So they decided to stage their work anyway. That\u2019s how the Fringe started. Now, we have young performers doing something new and big artists putting up works of greater scale. Fringe has everything \u2014 art, comedy, music, opera, children\u2019s shows, cabarets. My organisation supports those who want to be part of it, but does not decide who they are and what will they do.
\nHow have you maintained Fringe as an alternative to the Edinburgh International Festival?<\/strong>
\nWe support it for whatever it is. I guess the Fringe is an alternative to the Festival, and the Festival is the alternative to Fringe. It\u2019s avant-garde, cutting edge work, and we support that. There are 12 festivals in Edinburgh each year, and seven happen in the summer. My peers who run other festivals are curators and art directors; they have different ways of organising their festivals. We deliberately don\u2019t. The look of our venues is very different. They are temporary structures created especially for the works. The International Festival is held in big, year-round venues. Fringe performers have to be entrepreneurial, which makes them different.
\nFringe is an unjuried festival. What are the logistics of planning and selection?<\/strong>
\nThe only line we draw is for the performances listed in the programme, because we have to go to the printers. But our registrations remain open even after that. There is an unending appetite for an artist to take part, to look for alternative space. At the end of each Fringe, in November and December, we compile a list of all these spaces and then interested companies make their decisions. We talk them through the process, the auctions and give necessary advice.
\nDo issues of quality crop up?<\/strong>
\nWe have been asked that if there is no curation overall, why would it be any good. I could argue the opposite is true. As an artist, you\u2019re making this huge commitment to do a show for a month in front of a live audience. You don\u2019t do that unless you know your work is good. I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s all fantastic. But there is a huge range that allows artists to take risks. In 1999, Delhi-based playwright Roysten Abel produced Othello: A Play in Black and White<\/em> and won the Fringe First Award. He interacted with several people. On the back of that he toured the show for 10 years. It\u2019s a risky business but the rewards are greater.
\nSince you have taken over as the CEO, audience numbers have grown massively. How have you managed that?<\/strong>
\nWe just have to plan well. The number of participating companies has increased from the low-2000s to the mid-2000s. In terms of audience, I\u2019m pleased that it\u2019s grown because that\u2019s our job. The festival is a vast, daunting environment, but also a lovely social event. The audience is keen, loyal and eager to discover the next big thing. Wherever you are, you\u2019re talking about what you\u2019ve seen, what\u2019s turning out to be the best show, and you\u2019re the first person to see it.
\nWhat\u2019s a day like at the Fringe?<\/strong>
\nA typical day will be long, exhausting, exhilarating and will contain something you didn\u2019t expect. Performances are happening all the time. The venues are all open. Half of our audience comes from Edinburgh and Scotland; the rest from other parts of the UK and 15 percent from overseas. It\u2019s not a huge percentage, but it\u2019s 15 percent of a massive number of people.
\naradhna@tehelka.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conceived as an alternative to the Edinburgh International Festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe has, over the years, spread its wings to become the world\u2019s biggest arts festival. Its refusal to bar any interested artist, big or small, has made it a platform to discover new talent and launch careers. Travelling in India to meet performance artists, Kath Mainland, CEO of Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, tells Aradhna Wal what it takes to run a show on such a gigantic scale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":128088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21],"tags":[7051,7600,7601,7602],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128056"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}