A Festival of Festivals

A few issues we have been discussing at Fringe HQ have been scalability, focus, and diversity.

A wise person might point out that these three qualities rarely co-exist. Indeed, tis true…we have a working plan to make this work.

Our fringe festival in Hollywood won’t be one individual festival, it will be a “Festival of Festivals”™. The details have yet to be worked out, here is a glimmer into our minds (queue thoughtful background music)…

We will divide the festival into individual components: A new play festival, a comedy festival, a music festival, a 10-minute play festival. Then we add a catch-all festival…call it the “Fringe Experience” festival…that would collect all the interesting acts and projects that make fringes so much fun (Commedia, Burlesque, Mime, Performance Art, Figure Skating Rabbits). Each would operate under the banner of the Hollywood Fringe, each would operate under a different set of governing rules.

For example: The new play festival may allow for performances up to 90 minutes long. The Fringe Experience festival might cap out at 30 minutes.

We are all such great lovers of art, we would put all of these in the same pot on year one. As we are also sane, rational business folk, we are also concerned with biting off more than we can chew in our first year (perish the thought). As such, we will be introducing new festivals as time and success stalk us.

Thus the Fringe will be:

Diverse: Each festival would highlight a unique form of art

Scalable: We can add new festivals as the Fringe expands

Focussed: Each festival will focus like a laser on its own idiom

…a golden star to me for using the word idiom in a sentence.

Some thoughts to chew on, obviously we have yet to make our big announcement on the festivals to be included in Summer 2010. That must wait for another post.