Ottawa Fringe Festival

About

Ottawa Fringe Festival: June 14–24, 2018

9th undercurrents festival: February 6–16, 2019

Story

// Ottawa Fringe Festival //

An open-access festival where 100% of ticket sales belong to the artists. A free market for the performing arts. Programming is selected by a lottery, not curators. Lottery aside, anyone is welcome to submit a Bring Your Own Venue show (BYOV) and have equal billing in the Fringe Festival program.

The Fringe has returned more than $1.62 million to artists since 1997.

// undercurrents festival //

Our curated winter festival shows the best contemporary theatre being created by Ottawa performers and visiting artists.

Since 2011, undercurrents has brought to stage 14 world premieres. Festival partner and founders GCTC hosted from 2011–2014.

Mission

The Ottawa Fringe Festival's mandate is to afford all artists the opportunity to produce their art—regardless of experience, content, form or style—and for the event to be affordable and accessible to the community. The result is a vibrant and exciting artistic environment in which countless artists have flourished.

The Ottawa Fringe Festival could well be the most inclusive in our national theatre ecology: any artist at any stage of their development can participate. Given the fact that a jury does not select Fringe performers, an artist’s success is based on the strength of their talents and ability to communicate their art. A certain sense of risk and adventure feels oh so right when lining up for a new show (with no ideas but those formed reading its program description). The first days of performances are especially exciting when word-of-mouth and reviews try quickly to establish the shows to see.

That’s the beauty of the Fringe. It’s an open forum where the “Best of Fest” is essentially decided by its patrons. Critics, reviews, and the audience have an evident influence here. Probably more so than any arts festival in town.