“This Beer Festival Has a Theatre Problem!”: The Evolution and Rebranding of the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival

Abstract

The Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival was founded in 1981 on the premise that a nonadjudicated, first-come first-served structure combined with bare minimum administrative and financial backing could offer artists and companies a degree of creative freedom not previously seen in Canada. This first festival sold about 7,500 tickets to its forty-five different productions (Brown 88). In 2011, the Edmonton Fringe celebrated its thirtieth anniversary; this iteration of the festival sold 104,142 tickets to its 140 indoor shows (Nicholls, “Fringe Director Exits”). Brian Batchelor examines and traces the first thirty years of the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival through the concept of branding. In particular, he considers how the Edmonton Fringe differentiates itself from other forms of Edmontonian and Canadian theatre; how the Fringe functions as a festival within Edmonton’s arts ecology and urban imaginaries to influence the city’s civic brand, and to attract funding and sponsorships; and how artists within the festival brand themselves and their theatrical products. Batchelor then locates and describes the festival’s beer tents as spaces that illustrate how the Fringe itself has become a theatre ecology colonized by globalized capitalism, producing a creative and economic model that ultimately promotes not just a safer, commercial(ized), and non-innovative theatrical aesthetic but also in fact affirms a neoliberal, entrepreneurial form of theatre practice.