International: How the Edmonton fringe took the elitism out of Canadian theatre

Not only was Edmonton the first North American fringe when it was launched back in 1982, but 33 years later it remains the largest and most lucrative festival on the North American fringe circuit.

What makes Alberta’s Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival special for performers is that founder Brian Paisley took the Edinburgh Fringe model and gave it a particular western Canadian spin.

By providing a venue, a spot in the programme, two technicians and front-of-house support, as well as returning 100% of the box office to the artist, Paisley created a level playing field for what has grown into a festival that now features around 200 shows, many of them new work.

As Vancouver playwright, actor and director TJ Dawe says: “The Canadian fringe model, which was founded in Edmonton, is so egalitarian and continues to be that. In 1994, when I was still a theatre student, I was cast in a play at Edmonton where I discovered a theatre scene quite unlike any other I’d ever experienced – certainly not in Victoria where I was at university, where the theatre scene was regional, brand-name and skewed to older audiences.”

Edmonton’s reputation is such that it offers Canadians a worthy alternative to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, says Dawe. “It just costs too much for us to go to Edinburgh unless you’re already famous and have some kind of financial backing, because that’s what you’re up against – comedians already on TV or international actors. In Edmonton, anybody can come up out of nowhere, get a lottery spot in the festival and get reviewed in the papers. They have a real chance of finding an audience and making some money.”

Edmonton is non-juried and non-curated, with participants selected from a yearly lottery for indoor and outdoor shows that include theatre for young audiences. For their entry fee of around $700 (£345), artists receive the services of two technicians, front-of-house assistance, and a listing in the programme. There is a $2.50 (£1.25) ‘capital replacement fee’ on each ticket sold that contributes towards festival operational costs.

A prominent feature of the Canadian model is the volunteer system. Edmonton, for example, is not left with the resources to take on paid staff because it hands back 100% to the artist, and this is where volunteers step in – to do the admin, run the venues, market and even put up lodgings for itinerant performers. This year, Edmonton is taking on more than 1,200 volunteers, who will contribute 35,000-plus unpaid hours to assist the 650,000 people expected to visit the fringe.

The scale was quite different back in 1982, when Paisley, artistic director of the Chinook Theatre, was given a grant of $50,000 by the city to put together a ‘fringe theatre event’. He found five venues in Old Strathcona, the hub for the city’s theatre and art community, and, although the event’s marketing in those pre-internet days consisted of just a print run of 200 posters, audiences of 7,500 attended 45 shows of wildly varying quality.

Attendance doubled the following year, and then, in 1984, things really took off, as Paisley recalls: “I remember looking out the window of the fringe offices I shared with two employees at 11 o’clock one morning, and there were a large number of people standing outside. The show didn’t start until 1pm and tickets only went on sale at 12pm. So there I am, at 10:30am and thinking, I wonder what they’re there for?”

They were there for British actor Michael Burrell, who had brought his solo show Hess to Edmonton, for the world premiere across the way of The Singer’s Tale featuring another Brit, Anna Barry, and down the street for Juggler on a Drum from Calgary’s experimental group One Yellow Rabbit.

By noon, the line for Hess was around the block and the same happened for the following performances as audiences also swelled for the other shows. “On the second or third Hess queue, the volunteer thing happened,” says Paisley, “when somebody came out of the queue and said, ‘Do you need some help?’, I said, ‘I guess I could use some.’ And they said, ‘I’ll get some people and help you out’.”

Paisley, who left in 1991, is proud that Edmonton has managed to retain the egalitarian, artist-first spirit he brought in those early years. “The festival still has the basics. It’s still for the artists, still for the artists meeting audiences, still for the artists taking chances. And the entire fringe circuit across the country is working like a charm. Sure it’s bigger, sure it’s more corporate; what can you do? You’ve got to get money. But you still get mad people doing crazy things – it’s still got that energy – and I don’t see that going away anytime soon.”

Indeed, as Judy Lawrence, a former director of the fringe who succeeded Paisley in 1991, remembers: “Paisley was a visionary, and crazy with it, and we need more people like that. He took the Edinburgh model and Canadianised it by making it a little more centralised.”

Edmonton has irrevocably altered the entire theatre scene in Canada and the US by changing the way playwrights tell stories, changing audience demographics for theatre and changing what we think of as a theatre venue. Most of all, it changed the relationship between theatre artists and audiences, because before there was such a thing as social media, there was… the fringe beer tent.

“That was seriously an integral part,” says Paisley, “because that’s where you met and talked with critics, actors, audience members – and people really appreciated that. It took away the kind of elitism that had been part of mainstream Canadian theatre for a long time.”

Meanwhile, Edmonton has become a fertile breeding ground for a generation of Canadian theatre artists, including Brad Fraser (Unidentified Human Remains), playwright Stewart Lemoine, Catalyst Theatre’s Jonathan Christenson (whose musical Nevermore was produced in London and twice had Off-Broadway runs in New York) – and Chris Craddock, whose most successful show, gay rap opera Bash’d, won a Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation award following a successful New York International Fringe Festival appearance back in 2007, which led to a three-month Off-Broadway run in 2008.

Craddock sees Edmonton as crucial to his development, saying: “I don’t think I would have had the same crucible to work on my skills. I wouldn’t have had the same experience I have now, in terms of writing plays, producing plays, getting them up, learning from the difficulties and successes of all that.

“In Edmonton, the cool thing to be was a playwright-performer rather than just being an actor, and I wanted to be like them. Because it was the fringe and the bar of entry was low, I could try.”

As British spoken word artist and longtime fringe veteran Jem Rolls puts it: “Whereas something like the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival is a friendly village, Edmonton is more like a company town where they know their theatre and they’re up for it. And the thing that fringe festivals have, which is hordes of people gagging for cheap, mass theatre, Edmonton has big time.”