Asheville Fringe

ASHEVILLE FRINGE ARTS FESTIVAL

Asheville Fringe is a small, scrappy, annual, multiple-venue performing arts festival that provides artists with opportunities to explore the edges of their work, to collaborate across genres and to bring new and innovative performances to culturally adventurous audiences. Founded in 2002, Asheville Fringe has been keeping a wonderful combination of local and out of town artists come together to make this spring festival light up Asheville!

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Festival Overview

Type of Festival

We typically have between 8-14 venues, including a big purple school bus serving as mobile venue, plus many locations with free performances.

About our Audience

Our Asheville Fringe audiences are varied in age from young adult to seniors. Most of our programming is for more mature audiences although we sometimes offer a few all ages-shows, depending on the applications we get.

Festival Stats

Our festival sells around 2500 tickets to more than 1200 patrons over the long weekend. Asheville Fringe gives 50% of ticket sales back to artists, and the festival returns the production fee of $35 if tickets sales are less than that.
The festival shows are priced at $16 per show except for our purple school bus shows (very popular) which are priced at $20.

Artist Information

How Artists are Accepted

Asheville Fringe opens the call for artist applications in late spring and then closes the application process in early fall. Our adjudication committee then reviews all the applications and provides artists with the opportunity to share additional information about their work, to aid the committee in deciding if the work can be presented in the festival. Once selected, artists are notified of the venue chosen and times to present their work during the festival.

Benefits of Applying

Asheville Fringe offers billeting to all out-of-town selected artists, working with local individuals to house them. Asheville Fringe offers standby festival passes to artists, as well as and four comp tickets to their own shows. Asheville Fringe presents a collection of awards to the artists at the close of the festival.
We offer a limited amount of marketing for every accepted piece, and we supply both a venue manager and tech person for every show.

Costs and Deals

There is no application fee for applying artists for the Asheville Fringe. There is a $35 Participation Fee for selected festival artists. Asheville Fringe gives 50% of ticket sales back to artists. The remaining ticket revenues are applied to costs of producing the festival. Asheville Fringe covers the cost of technicians and venue staff. Beyond basic sound and lights, each venue is unique in what equipment is available for artists, the festival takes artists' technical need into account when placing artists in venues for festival.

Tech Information

Asheville Fringe usually has at least two traditional "black box" theaters (one with marley floors) available as performance venues, but the festival has several "non-traditional" spaces that used for performances, such as a purple school bus mobile venue and several galleries.

Performance Schedule

The maximum length of most shows is one hour, but the festival has several combined shows of performances of thirty minutes or less. The festival has featured showcases of dance/movement/multimedia work that have been shorter than 10 minutes. Short pieces often end up on the bus tour, or at after parties.

Other

Asheville Fringe considers artist development as part of its mission - to help artist explore the edges of their artistic expression. As a result of that mission, the festival collaborates with many first-time performers and premieres many new and original pieces. The festival seeks to provide opportunities for new voices and stories.

ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

ASHEVILLE FRINGE ARTS FESTIVAL
20 Commerce Street
Asheville, NC 28801

Asheville is a community that enjoys and occasionally supports original work and artists with unique viewpoints. Asheville audiences explore and revel in the weird and different. But it is a small town in the mountains of Western North Carolina.