The roots of all fringe festivals around the world can be traced to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe which was founded in 1947 by a group of artists who hadn’t been invited to perform at the Edinburgh International Festival. They came up with the idea of an unjuried festival accessible to everyone, which has since spread across continents.
The Chicago Fringe Festival was created by Sarah Mikayla Brown, the former managing director of the Chicago-based Tantalus Theatre Group who has produced shows at the Minnesota Fringe Festival and FringeNYC. She wanted to bring that kind of “glorious chaos” to her hometown of Chicago and officially founded the Chicago Fringe Festival on December 30, 2008.
However, it took Brown and her team over a year to organize the first event. The inaugural Chicago Fringe Festival was held on September 1–5, 2010 in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. It featured 46 productions (50/50 local and non-local) at 8 unconventional venues for a total of 198 performances. After three years in Pilsen, the event moved to Jefferson Park where it has been held every year since.
Like most fringe festivals, CFF is based on several key principles. It is 100% unjuried (the participants are selected by a series of lotteries to ensure equal chances and diversity), 100% uncensored, and 100% of ticket revenue goes back to the performers. The main goals of the festival are to introduce wide audiences to works by young and bold artists and to engage non-traditional audiences.
The Chicago Fringe Festival features about 50 performance groups every year and offers affordable tickets ($10 each) to hour-long performances. All venues are located within walking distance to one another. The festival usually takes place in late August and early September, sometime around Labor Day. It is run entirely by volunteers.
Photo: chicagofringe.org
