Cincy Fringe Festival

The Festival challenges our perceptions -- and our audiences' -- about what is Art.

The Cincinnati Fringe Festival continues its second season June 1-12, 2005. The Festival is a collaborative organization striving to provide opportunities and exposure to artists who are willing to take a risk. Our artists push the boundaries of the “norm” and continually experiment with style and content. During the festival local, regional, national and international artists invade downtown Cincinnati for 12 days of artistic celebration in both traditional and non-traditional spaces. These artists represent a variety of media including theatre, dance, music, poetry, visual art, film and everything between and beyond.

A Fringe History

As with other Fringe Festivals worldwide, our roots trace to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, which began 51 years ago when eight groups who, not invited to perform in the larger Edinburgh Festival of the Arts, staged their own "fringe" performances. Undaunted and determined, these companies created makeshift theatres on the outskirts - or "fringe" - of the established festival. Soon the Fringe Festival gained a large and loyal following, outstripping the mainstream festival.

The Fringe Festival concept migrated to Canada in the 1980s and today that country boasts Fringe Festivals from coast to coast - including the Edmonton Festival, the largest in North America, which annually draws more than half a million people. In the early 1990s, the fringe concept was embraced in the United States, and today Fringe Festivals are annual events in Philadelphia, Orlando, San Francisco, Minneapolis and New York. To date there are 20 active Fringe festivals in North America.

In 2003, the artistic community at large realized a need for such an event in Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, entering its 10th season, along with Cincinnati Fringe Festival founder Jason Bruffy, answered the need and stepped up to the challenge. Under the umbrella of the CSF Studio Series and with the direction of a dedicated committee, the Cincinnati Fringe Festival was born.