Sydney Fringe announces inaugural director

Kris Stewart, newly appointed Director of the new Sydney Fringe Festival. Photo: Tom Llewellyn Griffiths.  

Sydney is about to get a new festival, with the inaugural Sydney Fringe Festival – described as ‘a look underneath to the urban and the unconventional, a two week perv at what is happening next in our culture’ – to be held across Newtown, Enmore and Marrickville later this year.

A multi-discipline event showcasing the creativity of the numerous artists who live and create in the area, the Sydney Fringe Festival is the brainchild of an alliance of inner west businesses and venues, including Carriageworks, the Seymour Centre and the Enmore Theatre.

The inaugural festival will be curated by Festival Director Kris Stewart, a performing arts producer and director who is currently the resident director of the musical Wicked at the Capitol Theatre.

Stewart, who has recently returned to Australia after five years as the director of the New York Musical Theatre Festival, says unlike the Adelaide and Melbourne Fringe Festivals, the Sydney Fringe Festival will not be an open access arts event.

“The classic Fringe model is open access, but both the Dublin and the New York Fringe have ended up being curated, and probably for a similar reason to us,” he tells Arts Hub.

“Once we decided we wanted to refocus on a precinct, and have a really defined focus area that the festival is in, then realistically we had to curate it because there is a finite number of venues and spaces. So we are curating, because we didn’t really want the Fringe to sprawl across all of Sydney.”

The Sydney Fringe Festival also differs from older fringe festivals in that it has been established by an alliance of businesses, rather than by artists who felt excluded from an larger, more established festival.

“That’s not really, these days, what the Fringe is. I think when you’re talking about the Fringe nowadays, I think you’re talking about being on the fringe of popular culture, of contemporary culture; being on the edge, being forward looking. I think that’s what you’re on the fringe of, not literally being on the fringe of a big state-funded festival that rides into town and then leaves again,” Stewart says.

“I also think with open access festivals, it’s really easy for a couple of art forms to kind of co-opt it, and when that happens, the shape of the Fringe can get kind of lost. Sometimes when you go to an Edinburgh Fringe – which is a sensational event – it’s easy for some of the name comedians to have a much larger presence than I think you perhaps want.”

Stewart explains that the Sydney Fringe will use the act of curation to give artists and companies an opportunity to capitalize on the ideas behind their work.

“Really what we’re doing is giving artists the chance to present why they want to do what they do, why they think this is a valuable and important thing to do now, why they’ve been engaged and excited by the idea. That’s the sort of stuff we want to hear.”

While Stewart recognizes that there may be some suspicion from artists about the festival, given that it is being produced by a group of business people, he is emphatic that the venues behind the Sydney Fringe will be “very much at arms length with it”.

“And the main thing that I think is useful about it is that there’s no sense of, as happens at a lot of these festivals, of having to go to all the venues and try to convince them that this is a good idea, and being met with ‘well maybe, but this is what you have to pay, and you have to this and you have to do that’,” he says.

“All of the venues, and all of the businesses and arts organizations that exist in Newtown and Marrickville are already really excited and engaged by the idea of doing the Fringe, and I think that will really help it, especially in its first year or two of getting it off the ground, which is always going to be challenging.”

Rosie Fisher, one of the co-curators of Sydney’s independent performance arts festival Imperial Panda, has welcomed the arrival of the Sydney Fringe Festival on the scene.

“We want there to be as much diversity in Sydney as possible, and the more stuff that’s happening the better … so if the Fringe Festival means that there will be more exciting work and more local artists supported, we’re excited about that,” Fisher tells Arts Hub.

“And if it means that there will be more space freed up, more space made available for festivals like [Imperial Panda], then that’s a great thing.”

One challenge that may face the inaugural Sydney Fringe Festival is that its dates, September 10 – 26, directly clash with Brisbane’s Under the Radar (a curated festival celebrating independent, experimental and new theatrical works running from September 4 - 25) and to a lesser extent the Melbourne Fringe Festival (September 22 – October 10, 2010), which could potentially impact on artists’ opportunities to develop a festival touring circuit.

Stewart, however, does not see this as a problem.

“I think a lot of Fringe Festivals, about 95 percent, are made up of local artists, so our number one priority was serving those local artists, that 95 percent, and giving them a positive experience. So partly our timing was – Sydney being such a big city with so many other things on – there’s no point dodging an event in Brisbane or Melbourne but being smack-dab in the middle of an enormous event that’s happening at the same time in Sydney.

“And it may be hard in the first year for Under the Radar, but I think it’s going to be perfectly possible for artists to go from the Sydney Fringe to the Melbourne Fringe without an enormous problematic logistical challenge. We’ll find ways to help make that happen. And I think, long term, all of the Fringe Festivals like the opportunity of making sure that there’s a chance for shows to do as much of the circuit as possible.”

Artists wishing to submit program proposals for the Sydney Fringe can visit www.thesydneyfringe.com.au for more information, or email info@thesydneyfringe.com.au. Submissions close April 1, 2010.

Sydney Fringe Festival, September 10 – 26, 2010
www.thesydneyfringe.com.au