Theatre, like film, is an art form dependant on audiences for their survival. If no one comes to a your shows the company won’t be around for very long. Theatres are constrained by their interpretation of audience expectations. For the most part, they believe they have to stay within certain boundaries or risk alienating customers.
If a company finds a formula that works to attract an audience, they will stick with it, even long past the point of it going stale. A summer stock theatre would never dream of performing anything more challenging than light musical comedies because history has shown them that’s what people want.
Even not-for-profit companies, which are supposedly the home of new and alternate theatre, who receive government funding, still depend on their box office for a healthy percentage of their revenues. They can only be as innovative as their audience will allow them to be.
Fringe performances have no such restraints. Either because they are one-off companies put together for that show alone, or small enough that overhead is not a consideration, their box office receipts are of less consequence. Most companies simply hope to cover the costs of being at the festival, and the travelling to get there.
It’s amazing what can be created when theatre people are given their heads. Like thoroughbred horses let loose on the backstretch, the explosion of energy is a wonder. Playwrights try out new works, performers push themselves past previous limits, and experimentation is the norm not the exception. Artistic and societal boundaries are not just pushed but end up broken in pieces on the floor.
Half of the fun of a fringe festival is not knowing anything about the work you are going to see. Even the most horrendous flop is redeemed by the fact it was a failed effort at something new and different. The sheer numbers of performances guarantees that you’ll see as many magnificent failures as successful experiments.
Theatre depends heavily on its relationship with the audience. For a performance to be able to take on a life beyond the proscenium arch, through what is known as the fourth wall of the stage, a connection must be made between actors and audience. Without that bond, it just becomes a hollow exercise of one group of people watching another, smaller, group of people doing something.
With the ever-increasing size of houses, the dependence on spectacle, and the need to, “play it safe”, the joining of actor and audience has become a rare occurrence. The immediacy that differentiates theatre from film is disappearing. A fringe festival is an opportunity to recapture that feeling.
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