Camden Fringe Festival – London’s answer to Edinburgh – begins today.
The month-long festival, which takes place at over 20 venues in and around Islington, boasts over 300 acts. Events include improvisations, operas, cabaret acts, sketch comedies, musicals, stand-up shows, dance performances, poetry readings, Q&A sessions and even mind illusion shows.
Camden Fringe has been running for nearly two decades, with founders Zena Barrie and Michelle Flower (who ran Camden’s Etcetera Theatre from 2004 until 2012) still organising the acclaimed festival 17 years after its debut. Their idea was to create a more relaxed alternative to high stakes Edinburgh, and a space where performers have plenty of freedom to try out their ideas. Now Camden is a staple in London’s arts calendar.
Here’s everything to know about this year’s festival.
When is Camden Fringe?
It’s on right now: the Camden Fringe launched today, and will run until August 27. Happily, there are events on every single day, and tickets cost somewhere between £5 and £20.
Each act can decide how many performances they want to put on, and at how many venues.
To help narrow down the sheer number of different offerings taking place during this year’s 17th edition, you can filter the acts by venue, or by genre here.
What is it?
Camden Fringe is a less expensive, more relaxed version of Edinburgh Fringe, which runs at exactly the same time in the year as the mammoth festival. Back in 2008, The Guardian described Camden Fringe as “a David” that “has emerged to challenge the Edinburgh Goliath.”
Camden is particularly exciting because of its diversity: getting to Edinburgh Fringe can be an expensive business, and Camden has become a home for all of the incredible artists that can’t always make the leap to the Scottish capital. With “anyone and everyone” invited to apply, award-winning professionals, newbies, and everyone in between make up the varied line-up.
What, and who, can you expect to see?
The festival boasts a huge range of acts, some of which are still starting out. Experimental, exciting, hilarious, weird, moving, thought-provoking... there’s usually something in the line-up for everyone.
This year’s programme includes interactive dance performances that reject diet culture, spoken word performances that are delivered as stream of consciousness, psychedelic bubble shows, black comedies about the class system, and plays about gaslighting, manipulation, and alien musicals. There’s even Cricket & The Freebugs, a children’s musical packed full of soul and funk music.
You can look through this year’s programme, here.
What have the critics said?
Over the last 17 years, Camden has built a reputation for being one of London’s best art festivals. The Standard described it as, “a really fabulous alternative to Edinburgh Fringe... the Camden festival gives you some gems from the odder end of the performance spectrum.”
