Here’s a list of the Award Winners from Sunday’s Closing Night Event. Thank you all for coming and congratulations to the winners!

Fringe Freaks (Community-Voted Awards):

• Top of the Fringe: Lost Moon Radio
• Fringe First (Best World Premiere): RISE
• Best International Show: Richard Parker
• Best One-Person Show: Texas Loves Lyla!
• Best in Theatre: Red Bastard
• Best in Comedy: Lost Moon Radio
• Best in Cabaret & Variety: Carpe Noctem
• Best in Musicals & Opera: Doomsday Cabaret
• Best in Dance & Physical Theatre: Four Clowns: That Beautiful Laugh

Sponsored Awards:

• Footlights: Fool & The Red Queen, Red Bastard
• Theatre Unleashed: Reconstruction
• The LAFPI: Art of Acting Studio, Complex Theatres, Arena Stage at Theatre of Arts, ComedySportz, Celebration Theatre, Renberg Theatre, Underground Theatre, Hudson Theatre, Fringe Blackbox at Theatre of NOTE.
• Bitter Lemons: Button Wagon, Red Bastard.

HFF12 prom is on! Consider yourself cordially invited!

On Wednesday night (after our #HFF12 Tweet-up at 7:30pm) we’re going back to school at Fringe Central Station for the first ever Hollywood Fringe Prom. We’ll have the corsages, the photo booth and the spiked punch. You just need to get your best prom outfit on and find a (really hot) date to slow dance with. Oh and there is that matter of who will be your HFF12 prom King and Queen!

There will be a dance party downstairs, karaoke upstairs and making out in the corners. So relive your prom without all those awkward people from highschool you may not have liked.

Details- 9pm – 2am at Fringe Central Station.
Official Hashtag: #HFF12Prom.
Dress: We’d love it if you could dress fancy.

Also, we do need some help decidingProm King and Queen. Please email [email protected] your nominations for our official vote. Winners will be crowned the night of HFF12 Prom.

We will be marching in the LA PRIDE Parade on Sunday June 10. We will have a marching group of 50 people, and still have slots available for those interested in participating. The event begins with meeting and lining up at 10:00 am and is usually completed by about 2 pm. It takes place in West Hollywood and is a huge visibility opportunity – approximately 400,000 people attend LA PRIDE, and we’ll be dancing down the parade route for them for the second year.

Last year’s event was a blast – a great bonding event for all who participated, and a great opportunity for participants to pass out Hollywood Fringe Guides and postcards for their own shows. Participants are welcome and INVITED to dress up in costume, as crazy and wild as possible. We would also love a few excited volunteers interested in donning the famous FREAK suits for the parade – guaranteed to be the most popular people there.

The theme for this year’s LA PRIDE is …and proud of it! It’s the perfect theme for us – the Hollywood Fringe Freaks – to go and celebrate ourselves, our art, and our festival. Fringe Freaks and proud of it!

I hope you’ll join us on Sunday! Send an e-mail to [email protected] and we’ll see you there.

Meghan

With HFF12 around the corner, it’s time to talk about what you new Fringers can do with your show marketing in the final few weeks to increase the visibility of your show in the fringe and larger Los Angeles Theatre community.

1. Write a Press Release. You may not be a PR person professionally, but if
you’re producing a show you MUST write a press release. Post it to the Fringe site. Pursue reviewers you want to see your show and send it to them. Spread it as far and as wide as you can.

2. Go to everything you can and bring cards. Show up to the opening party, hang out at Fringe Central Station, meet up with other Fringers to hang out, and go see shows. Do these things and bring your show cards or business cards. Network within the community to increase your audience and get to know some of the great people that make up both Hollywood Fringe staff as well as Participants, Actors, Producers, etc. Even at non-Fringe related events you should have cards on you. You never know who will want the information.

3. Tweet, Facebook. If you don’t have a Twitter account and/or Facebook
account – you should. For Facebook, create an event or a fan page around
your show with the information you need to get out and share that. On
Twitter you can create a personal account or a show account – both are
totally okay. Follow @HollywoodFringe for news, and check out the #HFF12
community hashtag. If you don’t know Twitter, do the tutorial when you sign up – it’s great. (Bonus Hashtag: #LATHTR)

4. Do more than blast information. Doing all these things can be great for
visibility, but you need to make people want to talk about your show or share a tweet, which is often the hardest part. Consider giving a discount to participants, raffling off tickets to your twitter followers, or including a charity donation from your show profits if it makes sense. Doing these things will set you apart from other shows that are just trying to sell tickets.

These are just a few basic ways to help improve the reach of your marketing plan and you will see many veteran fringers already doing these things. Don’t be afraid to think out of the box with your marketing so long as you’re not making your message confusing.

Rachel Stoll Armstrong,
Social Media Manager