Fringe in the News!

July 8, 2026

Source: CBC Edmonton
Author: Amal Mohamud

Brian Paisley, the founder of the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival, has passed away at the age of 79. He died in Mexico on July 2 following a pneumonia-related illness.

[…]

“We lovingly have named Brian, ‘Father Fringe,’” said Murray Utas, artistic director for the Fringe Theatre in Edmonton. “As the human who brought this whole wild journey to us from the very beginning.”

July 5, 2026

Source: 12thNight.ca
Author: Liz Nicholls

The saddest of theatre news this weekend. Brian Paisley, the founder of the Edmonton Fringe (the prototype for fringes everywhere on the continent) has passed away in Mexico where he’s lived for many years, following a pneumonia-related illness.

And we have lost the wry, puckish visionary who had a bright idea, in 1982, that would change the face of theatre here, across the country and the continent. It put this hinterland city on the map, and kept our playwrights and actors and directors here and creating things in the theatre off-season.

June 29, 2026

Source: Edmonton Journal

June 29, 2026

Source: Radio-Canada
Author: Jules Bonnet

Du 13 au 23 août 2026, le festival Fringe d’Edmonton fêtera sa 45^e année d’existence. À cette occasion, le festival emblématique sera placé sous le thème « Fringe inoubliable ».

Le thème de cette année permet de célébrer ces moments qui deviennent des souvenirs et ces souvenirs qui deviennent des traditions, explique la directrice générale du festival, Megan Dart.

June 25, 2026

Source: Taproot Edmonton
Author: Stephanie Swensrude

Fringe Theatre’s Countries Shaped Like Stars rounds out [the outstanding production of a play] category, and also earned nominations for Murray Utas’s direction and the ensemble’s performance.

Fringe’s Tough Guy, a new play by Hayley Moorhouse, earned seven nominations — for best new play, director Brett Dahl’s choreography, Autumn Strom’s leading performance, lighting design, multimedia design, and the ensemble cast’s performance. The Sterlings also recognize shows from the annual Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival.

May 29, 2026

Source: EDify Edmonton
Author: Justin Bell

Megan Dart is excited to talk about the Fringe, any time of the year. The executive director of the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival is sharing her two decades of experience in the theatre industry with a small group of artists who are looking to improve their marketing skills and bring an audience to their art. In other words, “how to get butts into seats.”

March 11, 2026

Source: Taproot Edmonton
Author: Stephanie Swensrude

Launchpad consists of six workshops running from March 23 to 27. The sessions are open to all Fringe artists, from those who have never produced a show to established artists who want to learn a new skill, artistic director Murray Utas told Taproot.

“I think there’s value for whether you are walking into your first (production), to whether you’re tuning up to hit the road, and even if you’re a pro — you might be reinventing yourself,” he said.

February 21, 2026

Source: Edmonton Journal
Author: Justin Bell

Gwendolyn Magnificent and Bartholomew Spectacular are a pair of star-crossed lovers. They live on separate peninsulas and meet at a market on the mainland where Gwendolyn sells dragon fruit, nourishing the dragon fruit trees with her tears. Bartholomew loves dragon fruit.

They fall fast in love, the type of love that makes you giddy, makes you say silly things, makes you count down the hours until you next get to see the shining visage of your beloved. It’s not burning passions or wanton desire, but the type of love that gives you butterflies and makes your palms sweaty. It’s sweet, innocent love you can’t help but cheer for.

February 17, 2026

Source: 12thnight.ca
Author: Liz Nicholls

Nearly 15 years ago, in the chaotic excitement of reviewing Fringe shows, I found myself in a nondescript church basement in Strathcona: musty church basement smell, sullen lighting, inauspicious wooden church chairs.

What happened after that was an hour or so of pure theatrical magic, the kind you don’t forget. With only a ladder, water glasses, a whirly-wind, and a couple of lamps, Emily Pearlman and Nicolas Di Gaetano of Ottawa’s Mi Casa told an enchanting musical love story fairy tale. Like all musical love story fairy tales should, it started with ‘Once Upon a Time’….”

The show was Countries Shaped Like Stars. And I remember it as if it were yesterday.

February 11, 2026

Source: 12thnight.ca
Author: Liz Nicholls

At the Fringe, on the very night, you can see a sweet rom-com that starts in elderly tranquillity and works backwards, through big moments. Evie and Alfie: A Very British Love Story, a rom-com by and starring Brit-born Fringe stars Alex Dallas and Jimmy Hogg, returns here for one night only. Tickets: fringetheatre.ca. See 12thnight’s preview interview with the pair here.   

February 10, 2026

Source: 12thnight.ca
Author: Liz Nicholls

“Evie and Alfie, an older retired couple, sit in their house. Nothing happens for some time.”

That was the inspiration (and the initial stage direction), of Evie and Alfie: A Very British Love Story. The unusual romantic comedy created by, and starring, the Brit-born Toronto-based Fringe faves Alex Dallas (Sensible Footwear, Horseface) and Jimmy Hogg (The Potato King), returns to Edmonton as a theatrical Valentine for a single performance Feb. 14, as part of the Fringe Theatre season.

October 31, 2025

Source: Edify Edmonton
Author: Areeha Mahal

Why She’s Top 40:

Advancing preventative health care while strengthening our theatre community

Age: 35

Job Title: Market Development Manager for Alberta Blue Cross and Board Chair of Edmonton Fringe Theatre

By day, Elizabeth Hammell is shaping preventative health initiatives at Alberta Blue Cross. By night, she’s cheering on performers at North America’s largest and longest-running Fringe Festival. At first glance, the worlds seem far apart. But Hammell thrives where structure meets creativity and strategy dances with imagination.

November 1, 2025

Source: 12thnight.ca
Author: Liz Nicholls

In Tough Guy, an exhilarating new play by Hayley Moorhouse, a queer up-and-coming filmmaker tries to justify turning their camera on their friends, survivors of a shooting in queer nightclub mere days before, and reeling from the death of one of their circle.

Emerson (Autumn Strom) has arrived back home too late for the funeral (“I lost track of time”). Their artistic concept, in progress, is a film capture of “queer joy,” something visceral and powerful (also words in the Emerson lexicon). They’re arguing for the idea of art, self-expression, the compelling need to put the queer story out there in the world and thereby restore “agency” to the queer experience. And their friends, shattered in various ways, aren’t buying.

October 29, 2025

Source: Edify Edmonton
Author: Caitlin Hart

From winter light-ups and food fests to theatre, art and 1940s swing — here’s how to make the most of Edmonton in November.

Toughen Up

October 28 to November 8
Tough Guy, a new play by local playwright Hayley Moorhouse, follows a group of friends navigating the aftermath of a shooting at a queer nightclub. See this complex exploration of grief, healing and joy at Fringe Theatre Arts Barns.

October 28rd, 2025

Source: 12thnight.ca
Author: Liz Nicholls

Do you remember where you were when you heard …?

There are moments in life when you know your answer will be instantly available in your memory, forever. Hayley Moorhouse, whose new play Tough Guy premieres Thursday in a Persistent Myth production directed by Brett Dahl (part of the Edmonton Fringe Theatre season), distinctly remembers driving to work one morning in 2016, listening to the radio. En route the news came on: a horrific mass shooting in Pulse, a queer nightclub in Orlando. “I’m not normally a big emotional kinda guy,” says Moorhouse, who indeed has a brisk, articulate sort of thoughtfulness and good humour in conversation. But they found themself “sobbing so hard I couldn’t see and had to pull over. It hit me so hard.”

October 23rd, 2025

Source: CTV News
Author: Adrienne Lee

The Fringe Theatre is opening its 2025-2026 season with an award-winning stage production next week.

Tough Guy by Hayley Moorhouse will kick off the theatre season next Tuesday at the Backstage Theatre at the Fringe Theatre Arts Barns. It explores themes of tragedy and “queer joy” as the story follows a group of friends after a traumatic shooting at a queer nightclub, according to the theatre’s news release on Thursday.

October 22nd, 2025

Source: Edify Edmonton
Author: Zachary Ayotte

How do we make art about trauma? The question is age old, and the answer, ever evolving, is often best expressed by the art itself — the paintings, movies, novels and performances that try to communicate how a traumatic event can change a person’s life.

It’s in this vein that Tough Guy, the new play running from October 28 to November 8 at Fringe Theatre Adventures, opens on the funeral of someone killed in a mass shooting at a queer nightclub. From there, it follows a group of friends, many of them also survivors of the shooting, as they try to process a collective trauma — together and alone — and grapple with irreversible loss.

July 30th, 2025

Gerald Osborn has a soft spot for festival goers who get sucked into bad Fringe shows, or at least for people who get stuck attending dud after dud. After all, he’s been working at the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival since 1989 and is a prolific playwright, putting on 19 shows over the years. He’s also the official Fringe Historian.

June 24th, 2025

The Edmonton International Fringe Festival is in its 44th year. Each year the Festival brings drama and laughs to our city with almost 220 theatre productions, in 40 venues, featuring performances by more than 1,600 artists.

April 9th, 2025

While the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival has grown its monthly donors from 34 to 535 since launching its Sustain Fringe campaign one year ago, officials say it still needs to find more.

March 27th, 2025

Edmonton’s proximity to the vast, untouched wilderness of Northern Canada places it right on urbanism’s final frontier. The city is an approximately three-hour drive from the entrance to the expansive Jasper National Park and the Canadian Rockies; yet, you don’t have to leave Alberta’s capital to find crowd-free, tree-lined trails and an abundance of wildlife.

March 6, 2025

Edmonton is known as ‘Festival City’, holding more than 50 events every year. But perhaps the most famous is its Fringe. North America’s largest and oldest Fringe Festival sees the streets of Old Strathcona transformed by a flurry of pop-up performances.

February 20th, 2025

Gerald Osborn, the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival’s first official historian, told Taproot that he always lies that he was at the first festival in 1982.

A cornerstone of Edmonton’s cultural identity, the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival is the largest and longest-running Fringe Festival in North America—and in 2024, it delivered one of its most dynamic and impactful years yet. 

December 18, 2024

There’s no better time to connect with Edmonton’s artsy side than in August, when the International Fringe Festival takes over the city. The 11-day event fills the town with live shows in parks, theaters and even on the streets.

The assumption is that audiences are only interested in what they know and that art is only worth producing if it is guaranteed to draw in a massive audience. There is one place that rejects this notion, proving original ideas are endlessly entertaining and worth producing: the Edmonton Fringe Festival.

Festival of the Year: Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival

Established in 1982, the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival is North America’s largest and longest-running festival of its kind, offering a platform for artists to present unjuried and uncensored performances.