Idea File: The Traveling Fringe Show

From time to time, we will post articles from our “idea file”. These are for initiatives that have not been given the green light, as they say; its purpose is to to throw out big ideas and start kicking them around.

Have your own idea? Email us at [email protected]

Here’s our first idea from the file:

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Los Angeles is a big, big place which poses a problem for a festival such as ours. We have decided to make the Fringe as compact as possible our first year – centering the action in Hollywood and branching out from there (NoHo, East Hollywood, etc). This isn’t at all based on Hollywood-centricity, it’s based on general practicality.

Here’s our reasoning:

• We’d like to place the bulk of the festival venues within walking/easy-public-transport from one another. The beauty of the Metro Red Line, the general walkability of Hollywood, and a few trams added for good measure may make this a reality.
• There are natural concentrations of theatres, galleries, and potential found spaces in Central Hollywood, NoHo, and East Hollywood – very good for Fringes.
• Hollywood is a major tourist center – we will do whatever possible to pull those on vacation into the Fringe.
• Hollywood is a world-known brand name and a powerful attraction to artists beyond the city’s borders
• The general area is about as “Central” as you can get in the sprawl that is LA, making traveling here generally more convenient to most.

…all pretty good reasons to center the Festival around a small subset of LA neighborhoods. At the same time, we don’t want to leave anyone out of the fun; quite the opposite: We want to include as much of the community as possible.

Time for some abstract thinking and it was our newest board member John Mitchell who had this brainstorm: Center the Fringe in Hollywood, as planned with two weeks of fun, madness, and art. As a gift to venues outside of Hollywood (and all the people that live there), take the Fringe on the road for a third week – presenting “Best of Fringe” performances in venues located our LA – potentially including Santa Monica, Beverley Hills, Downtown, and beyond.

A potential negative, I suppose: People in those places won’t attend the Fringe proper, thus diminishing ticket sales – this will be something that will require some sensitivity, for sure.

Not sure if this is a “first year” thing, it’s certainly an idea worth considering.

Keep the ideas coming…

Ben