Why American magazine Playbill doesn’t want to miss out on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
There’s a certain sense of pride that comes with being among the first on a new trend - to be one of its discoverers - one of its “setters” even.
In our last article with The Scotsman, Playbill introduced ourselves. We told you who we are: America’s premiere theatre news site and in-house programme for all Broadway theatres.
Now, we’d like to tell you why we’re here.
The short answer is Edinburgh Festival Fringe. But there’s a bit more to it.
We felt like we were missing out.
When a new show arrives on Broadway, it’s often begun somewhere else.
It will sometimes have an out-of-town try-out in Boston or Washington, D.C.
Or it might get its legs in one of New York City’s smaller Off-Broadway venues.
Many productions come over after a hit West End run.
And boy do Broadway fans love to brag if they were the small handful of theatregoers who saw a Tony Award-winning show before it came to Broadway.
I must admit I even have a T-shirt that states, about no show in particular, “I Saw It Off-Broadway”.
A recent example of this kind of good-natured braggadocio might be seeing the juggernaut Hamilton in its small run downtown at The Public Theatre before it landed at the 1,700 seat St. James Theatre on Broadway and ticket prices (if you could even get one!) skyrocketed.
Edinburgh Festival Fringe has long been known to foster some of the theatre’s most creative and daring storytelling.
And we’ve been seeing the world, including American producers, at large take more and more notice of it.
Shows that play Fringe have popped up everywhere.
They’re on the West End and at BBC Amazon Studios. And there are three shows that began in Edinburgh currently running on Broadway: Ian Shaw’s behind-the-scenes Jaws comedy, The Shark Is Broken; Jewish comedian Alex Edelman’s solo stand-up about the time he ended up at a white nationalist’s meeting, Just For Us; and the Toby Marlow-Lucy Moss pop musical about the wives of Henry VIII, SIX.
The entire Playbill team is here to experience the Fringe.
We are here to get in on the ground floor, so to speak.
To experience all the weird and wonderful things that Fringe has to offer.
To discover theatre’s important stories in their earliest forms. And to provide a familiar face to American artists making their debuts abroad.
As we prepare to arrive next year with the Playbill FringeShip - which will serve as a floating hotel in Leith for the 2024 festival - our entire edit team want to take in as much of Fringe as we possibly can.
And I can't wait to make a T-shirt that says “I Saw It At Fringe”.
To follow Playbill’s experiences at the Fringe, click here.