The Taipei Fringe Festival will stage more than 400 performances this year at various venues around the city to bring the performing arts to the public, organizers said yesterday.
The festival, now in its sixth year, will be held from Aug. 31 to Sept. 15 at 27 venues across Taipei and showcase theater, music, dance, cross-disciplinary shows and other performances by 109 local and international groups, festival curator Betsy Lan (藍貝芝) said.
Most of the performances will take place at theaters, cafes and galleries, but the festival is adding hot spring hotels and an old paper mill to its list of venues this year, Lan said.
Among the international groups featured in the festival is the Hong Kong People’s Fringe Association, which will put on monologues, dance, experimental music and percussion performances, Lan said on the sidelines of an event to unveil ticket booths for the Taipei Fringe Festival and Taipei Arts Festival.
The fringe festival concept first emerged in 1947, when eight theater groups showed up uninvited to perform at the Edinburgh International Festival. More performers followed their example each year and the Festival Fringe Society was established in 1958.
The Taipei Arts Festival will run from Aug. 1 to Sept. 8 and feature an exhibition, as well as 10 dance, theater and circus performances by groups from Taiwan and abroad, the organizer said.
Among the performances are a theater piece that has a robot and a humanoid robot in its cast; a show that fuses Taiwanese, Henan and Beijing opera with rock music; and a circus show that blends contemporary circus stunts with traditional Quebecois music.
People can buy discounted tickets for the two festivals starting today at the booths unveiled yesterday.
The booths are at the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, the Red House in Ximending (西門町) and the Taipei Water Park visitor’s center.
Groups scheduled to perform at the festivals will stage live shows at the three ticket booths.
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