Fringe Festival Brings 'Eyeball Bursting' Shows To San Diego

This is KPBS Midday Edition. I'm Maureen Cavanaugh. The San Diego international Fringe Festival returns for its fourth year and continues to expand from its home base in downtown San Diego. Beth Accomando space with San Diego fringes founder, Kevin Charles Patterson about the festival's origins and the Sears offerings. Kevin, can you remind us of the origin of fringe? Fringe Festival starred in in Scotland in 1947. In 1947 they were having a theater Festival and there was a group of artists that were not included in programming. As a result, the artist said okay, if we are not able to participate in this main festival, we are going to create our own thing on the fringe of the festival. That is how it all happened, starting in 1947. How did it end up here in San Diego? In San Diego, it was the transitional place in life and I found out about Fringe Festival and went to Edinburgh, Scotland to meet with producers from other festivals, just to research and see what fringe was all about. That was in 2011, after meeting producers from around the world and seeing the impact that it has on their cities I thought, oh my gosh this will be something that will be amazing for our city. I think now, having a Fringe Festival we are filling a void, a void that we've had for a little while in our city, with platforms for alternative arts. Now, with the Fringe Festival, we've got this platform for a full range of arts that otherwise might not be seen. At a time when it seems like it's harder and harder to get funding for the arts, they are getting cut from school programs, why is it important to do something like fringe? I think that one of the most important things is that we are helping nurture new works, that otherwise the mockup -- might not be seen. One of the biggest things with the Fringe Festival is that we provide a new platform in major city that enables artists to have their own voice, with their own works and no one on our team is able to choose what is good is what -- and what is not. The first artists, the first 50 artists have a crew and a venue and shared marketing, this makes this platform unique to our city and very valuable, for creating new works. You have expanded to more venues, how many different venues are there this year and how many performances will there be? Laster we had five fringe managed venues and that was 2015, 2016 we got a call from diversionary theater that said they'd like to jump in and be a part of the mix. With diversionary being an established theater and our city we thought that would be another nice portfolio holder for the artist and then the only owes it -- not only is it a nice place for the artist, another edition for the festival is Rosewood five, a film soundstage, this year instead of a bring your own venue, we said let's go ahead and bring that venue on as a fringe managed venue. The difference with bringing your own and a fringed -- fringe managed is we will manage everything so artists don't have to worry. We will provide staff and technicians, all things that can be cost prohibitive if artists do it on their own. The bring your own venue is responsible for everything, we will add you to the program, but you have to take care of all of your stuff. Give us a sense of what the Brett in terms of the number of performances and our people coming from around the world? As I go through the list of registered artists, this year we are at over 100 registered artists, there are still more to be added. When I say 100 registered artists, they are doing five shows each, that brings us to 500 total performances. For our city, an event that has 500 performances and 18 different venues, total, that is huge. Something else that's just, so flattering and such an honor, is to have all of these guest artists from around the world. We have artists from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Mexico, the United States, Ireland, Wales, England, Italy, Japan, it's incredible and then we have artists from across United States, Washington DC, Massachusetts, New York, Florida, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, all main, there could be more I'm so sorry if I missed you New Mexico. For you, what's exciting about putting this on? What do you look forward to as someone who's a performer? I think, one of the most cool elements for me, it seemed -- seemed all these people come from around the world, meeting our local art -- artists starting to network then to see the possibility of cross-pollination with artists from other countries working with our local artist. It's so exciting. It's also such a compliment, to hear the artists say that when the Fringe Festival is going on it feels like they're going back to summer camp, they get to be with all their friends. It's the one time of year where all these people are all together in one place. Another thing that's fun for me, is to be adventurous and some of the artists, yes I've seen the descriptions of their shows and I'm fairly familiar, but I still don't really know what it's going to be. You go in and see the show in your like what a treasure! It's the adventure along the way. It's been true for a lot of the research I've done, just bumping into something that's so magical and fantastic I did want to sidetrack, something that's very special for me that we have happening. Recognizing Jeffrey slice who has been a huge supporter, he passed away. We lost him. The family made a decision to rename the Jeffrey off-Broadway to thank him. The performance space was a big project for him. That report by KPBS arts reporter Beth Accomando, the Fringe Festival kicks off 11 days of what it calls, eyeball bursting shows on Thursday, June 28, you can look for best video preview later this week on KPBS evening edition. Be sure to watch tonight at 5 and 6:30 on KPBS TV and join us again tomorrow for KPBS Midday Edition at noon. If you ever miss a show check out the midday edges and podcast at tran 29/podcast. I'm Maureen Cavanaugh. Thank you for listening.