Theatre, as an art form, is one of the most expressive means of education and communication. However, the ability to participate in a wide variety of theatre is often limited by the availability of venues, money and audiences.

The North American Fringe Circuit overcomes these barriers by providing artists and the audiences a theatrical experience like no other in the world on an unjuried, first-come, first served/lottery basis.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CAFF

The first Fringe in Canada was the Edmonton Fringe Festival which was established in 1982. Hoping to provide a direct link between theatre artists and their audiences the festival adapted a simple formula that was created by the Edinburgh Fringe Festival over 50 years ago. The main principles were to provide all artists, emerging and established, with the opportunity to produce their play no matter the content, form or style, and to make the event as affordable and accessible as possible for the members of the community. The Edmonton Fringe aimed to have a wide variety of artists participate while empowering audiences with the ability to decide for themselves the truly great productions from the good, the bad and the gloriously disastrous.

With this artistic freedom, the Edmonton Fringe became an explosive and colourful collection of theatre artists and patrons. Performances ranged from the classics to new works and sketch comedies to dance. Audiences embraced this eclectic mix of theatre productions and attendance grew wildly. The tremendous success and growth of The Edmonton Fringe Festival soon led to the creation of Fringe Festivals right across Canada and the United States with each festival having their own unique and distinctive flavor yet all dedicated to the Fringe philosophy of accessible, inexpensive and fun theatre-going.

In 1990 numerous Fringe producers began to meet annually with their national counterparts to talk about their respective Fringe festivals, swap ideas and to share resources.
As the years went by there was growing concern that the ideals and principles that were originally inherent in a Fringe Festival (accessibility to all, a return of 100% of the box office proceeds back to the artists, selection of participants in a unjuried manner) were becoming more and more muddled by other theatre festivals that referred to themselves as being a “Fringe” but who chose not to abide by these principles.

In order to preserve these “Fringe” ideals and principles these producers came together to form the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals and created the four guiding CAFF principles that are still in place today:

1. Participants will be selected on a non-juried basis, through a first-come, first served process, a lottery, or other method approved by the Association
2. In order to ensure Criteria One (above), the audiences must have the option to pay a ticket price, 100% of which goes directly to the artists.
3. Fringe Festival producers have no control over the artistic content of each performance. The artistic freedom of the participants is unrestrained.
4. Festivals must provide an easily accessible opportunity for all audiences and all artists to participate in Fringe Festivals.

On September 26, 1994 the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals was officially registered as a non-profit organization with the following mandate:

* To safeguard the integrity of Fringe Festivals as outlined in the four minimum criteria
* To recognize that the health of all member Festivals is important to the Circuit and therefore the artists’ health as a whole
* To encourage communication and cooperation between member Festivals thereby fostering the continuity of our guiding principles.

In 1998 CAFF successfully applied to have the terms “Fringe” and “Fringe Festival” trademarked in Canada to ensure that any theatre festival in Canada who wishes to call themselves a “Fringe” would obtain membership in the association and agree to abide by both the CAFF mandate and the four guiding principles.