How the Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival Started
In 2008 four of the Edinburgh Fringe’s best known venues; The Assembly Rooms, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance and Underbelly joined together to form “The Edinburgh Comedy Festival”. Many felt that this was a nonsensical idea as comedy has been a huge part of the fringe for decades – these four venues didn’t invent it after all. They joined together for financial reasons which are perhaps understandable because each of them is after all a business. However, many performers and punters feel that it was a move that contradicted the spirit of the fringe and made it even harder for those not at the big venues to get an audience. The Fringe isn’t meant to be about helping incredibly established acts become even bigger, it’s meant to be about acts on the fringes being given a chance to perform. Isn’t it? In short some people feel that the move made the fringe more mainstream. So we want to know about and promote those comedy shows which are not in the main four venues. There are some fantastic initiatives which counteract the gradual commercialising of the fringe and these include; The Free Fringe, The Five Pound Fringe, Forest Fringe, and venues such as Spaceuk and The Stand. There are loads more, so go and explore and let us know about them!�