Misplaced Pages

#613386

26-572: The award is named after Brian McCarthy, a young comedian, actor, and fringe comedy producer killed in a car accident in 1987 aged 23. He had previously studied drama at Rusden College , was one of the early practitioners of improv in Melbourne , and ran fringe comedy events at a pub in Collingwood to provide a platform for young comedians. He was a performer at the inaugural Melbourne Comedy Festival in 1987. The Brian McCarthy Memorial Trust

52-549: A common organising group that handles ticketing, scheduling, and some overall promotion (such as a program including all performers). Each production pays a set fee to this group, which usually includes their stage time as well as the organizational elements. The organising group and/or the venues often rely on a large pool of volunteers. Ticket pricing varies between festivals. At UK fringe festivals, groups can decide their own ticket prices, and some sell tickets at fixed rates in one or two tiers, or in groups of 5 or 10. Although it

78-429: A fringe theatre show permit audiences to attend multiple shows in a single evening. Performers sometimes billet in the homes of local residents, further reducing their costs. Off-Off-Broadway Off-off-Broadway theaters are smaller New York City theaters than Broadway and off-Broadway theaters, and usually have fewer than 100 seats. The off-off-Broadway movement began in 1958 as part of

104-735: A new theatre in 1969. In 1969, Haynes created the Arts Lab in London , but it only lasted for two years. Peter Brook along with another American Charles Marowitz opened the Open Space Theatre on Tottenham Court Road in London in 1968. Young British writers, after the May 1968 events in France , wrote agitprop plays, including David Hare , Howard Brenton , David Edgar . Meanwhile, in

130-434: A response to perceived commercialism of the professional theatre scene and as an experimental or avant-garde movement of drama and theatre. Over time, some off-off-Broadway productions have moved away from the movement's early experimental spirit. The off-off-Broadway movement began in 1958 as a "complete rejection of commercial theatre". Michael Smith gives credit for the term's coinage to Jerry Tallmer in 1960. Among

156-603: Is theatre that is produced outside of the main theatre institutions, and that is often small-scale and non-traditional in style or subject matter. The term comes from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe . In London , the fringe are small-scale theatres, many of them located above pubs, and the equivalent to New York's Off-Off-Broadway theatres and Europe's "free theatre" groups. In unjuried theatre festivals, also known as fringe festivals or open-access festivals , all submissions are accepted, and sometimes

182-744: Is the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club , Jerzy Grotowski 's Theatre of 13 Rows, and Józef Szajna 's Studio Theatre in Warsaw. The Adelaide Fringe in Adelaide , South Australia, now second-largest annual arts festival in the world (after Edinburgh Fringe), started in 1960 as an adjunct to the main Adelaide Festival of Arts . Haynes, while at the helm of the Traverse, was receiving state support and even got

208-507: Is the method used to choose participants. Typically, conventional festivals use a jury selection process, whereas many fringe festivals do not use a jury process in their selection criteria, hence the descriptor unjuried or open-access. There are exceptions to this; some fringe festivals (e.g., New York International Fringe Festival ) do employ a jury-based selection process. All performers are welcome to apply, regardless of their professional or amateur status. No restrictions are made as to

234-437: Is unusual for the organising group to choose any winners of the festival, other organisations often make their own judgements of festival entries . Productions can be reviewed by newspapers or publications specific to the festival, and awards may be given by certain organisations. Awards or favourable reviews can increase the tickets sales of productions or lead to extra dates being added . The limitations and opportunities that

260-602: The Bush Theatre and King's Head Theatre , both of whom survived the crash. 7:84 and Red Ladder Theatre Company were some of the surviving touring fringe groups. Fringe theatres were attractive to people in the 1960s due to their adventurousness but became less wild in the 1970s while the standards of production rose. In 1982, the first fringe festival in North America was started in Edmonton , Alberta. It

286-634: The Drama Desk Awards began evaluating such productions with the same criteria as it used for Broadway and off-Broadway productions. Since 2005, the New York Innovative Theatre Awards (NYIT Awards or IT Awards) have annually honored individuals and organizations that have achieved artistic excellence in off-off-Broadway theatre. The term indie theatre , or independent theatre, was suggested as an alternative for "off-off Broadway" by playwright Kirk Bromley during

SECTION 10

#1732787628614

312-546: The "characteristics of off-Broadway, which had gradually moved toward reshaping itself in the image of Broadway, though often producing works that were unsuitable for commercial theatre." An off-off-Broadway production that features members of the Actors' Equity Association may be an Equity Showcase production intended to allow actors to be seen by potential future employers. Equity maintains union rules about working in such productions, including restrictions on price of tickets,

338-738: The 1960s, similar to the United States' Off-Off-Broadway theatres and Europe's "free theatre" groups. The term came into use in the late 1950s, and the show Beyond the Fringe premiered in Edinburgh in 1960, before transferring to Broadway and is the West End . One of the early innovators in fringe theatre was an American bookseller, James Haynes , who in 1963 created the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. Also noted in this period

364-479: The United States, experimental theatre was growing due to the political protest of the Vietnam War . The Living Theatre , founded by Julian Beck , is considered the leader of the " flower power " and "hippie" movement. By the early 1970s, many fringe theatres began to receive small subsidies. After the 1973–74 stock market crash , many fringe companies were forced to close. New playwrights were established at

390-646: The final night of MICF each year. The lineup for the show is kept secret by tradition. McCarthy's favourite song, " I Heard It Through the Grapevine ", is traditionally performed by the closing act of every Moosehead Award benefit show. In the past (2006–2010?) the award also received sponsorship from The Comedy Channel . The award is open to emerging working comedians who are Australian permanent residents and currently performing to small audiences. The selection committee changes each year, and comprises managers, producers, festival programming staff, and comedians. To

416-698: The first venues for what would soon be called "off-off-Broadway" theatre were coffeehouses in Greenwich Village , particularly the Caffe Cino at 31 Cornelia Street, operated by the eccentric Joe Cino , who early on took a liking to actors and playwrights and agreed to let them stage plays there without bothering to read the plays first, or to even find out much about the content. This DIY aesthetic also led to creative acts of object repurposing by playwrights and directors, who cobbled together sets from materials scavenged from local streets. Also integral to

442-529: The fringe festival format presents lead to some common features. Shows are not judged or juried. Depending on the popularity, some fringe festivals may use a lottery system to determine which shows are selected. Shows are typically technically sparse. They are commonly presented in shared venues, often with shared technicians and limited technical time, so sets and other technical theatre elements are kept simple. Venues may be adapted from other uses. Casts tend to be smaller than mainstream theatre; since many of

468-529: The length of the run, and rehearsal times. Professional actors' participation in showcase productions is frequent and comprises the bulk of stage work for the majority of New York actors. There has been an ongoing movement to revise the Equity Showcase Code, which many in the community find overly restrictive and detrimental to the creation of New York theatre. In 1964, off-off-Broadway productions were made eligible for Obie Awards , and in 1974,

494-502: The mass gathering at the festival. In 1948, Robert Kemp , a Scottish journalist and playwright, described the situation, "Round the fringe of official Festival drama, there seems to be more private enterprise than before ... I am afraid some of us are not going to be at home during the evenings!". Edinburgh Festival Fringe was founded under the name "Festival Adjuncts", in 1947 . The fringe movement in Britain has been said to start in

520-535: The nature, style or theme of the performance, though some festivals have children's areas with appropriate content limitations. Festivals may have too many applicants for the number of available spaces; in this case, applicants are chosen based on an unrelated criterion, such as order of application or a random draw. The number of performances varies among different fringe festivals. Larger festivals may have thousands of performances (e.g., Edinburgh's 2013 festival had 45,464 performances). Fringe festivals typically have

546-530: The participating acts may be chosen by lottery, in contrast to juried festivals in which acts are selected based on their artistic qualities. Unjuried festivals (such as the Edinburgh Festival Fringe , Edmonton Fringe Festival , Adelaide Fringe , and Fringe World ) permit artists to perform a wide variety of works. In 1947, eight theatre companies showed up at the Edinburgh International Festival , hoping to gain recognition from

SECTION 20

#1732787628614

572-646: The performing groups are traveling, and venues (and thus potential income) tend to be fairly small, expenses must usually be kept to a minimum. One-person shows are therefore quite common at fringe festivals. Fringe festival productions often showcase new scripts, especially ones on more obscure, edgy, or unusual material. The lack of artistic vetting combined with relatively easy entry make risk-taking more feasible. While most mainstream theatre shows are two or three acts long, taking two to three hours with intermissions, fringe shows tend to be closer to one-hour, single-act productions. The typically lowered ticket prices of

598-611: The rise of off-off-Broadway were Ellen Stewart at La MaMa , and Al Carmines at Judson Poets Theatre , located at Judson Memorial Church . Other theaters of note that presented many plays were Theatre Genesis , New York Theatre Ensemble, The Old Reliable, The Dove Company, The Playwrights Workshop, and Workshop of the Players Art. At its coalescence, off-off-Broadway was known for its experimental nature. Brooks McNamara wrote that over time, off-off-Broadway work lost some of its experimental spirit, instead beginning to imitate

624-707: The winner of a Moosehead, the Brian McCarthy Memorial Trust pays the MICF registration fee, the first A$ 3,000 of their venue rental, up to A$ 2,500 for creative support around the show, and up to A$ 2,000 towards accommodation costs if the recipient lives outside of Melbourne. The Mooseheads alumni include Judith Lucy , Lano & Woodley , Tom Ballard , Laura Davis, David Quirk , Kate McLennan , Hannah Gadsby , Anthony Morgan , Dave O'Neil , Alan Brough , and Corinne Grant . Other past recipients include: Fringe theatre Fringe theatre

650-782: Was established in 1987 by friends of McCarthy, and is the source of the Moosehead grant, which is issued to Australian comedians wishing to premiere new works as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF). The Trust aims to support working comedians, whose shows are "innovative, unusual, and often ill-advised". The awards are known as the Mooseheads because Moosehead beer was McCarthy's favourite. Each year benefit performances (Moosehead Awards Benefit) are held in Melbourne on

676-635: Was then a theatre component of the larger Summerfest but evolved to become a stand-alone event, the Edmonton International Fringe Festival , one of the largest annual arts events in Canada and still the largest fringe in North America by attendance. The oldest fringe festival in the United States is Orlando , FL, founded in 1992. There are more fringe festivals in North America than any other continent. One distinction between fringe festivals and conventional arts festivals

#613386