If Edinburgh Fringe Can’t Change, Should We Still Support It? - CircusTalk

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If Edinburgh Fringe Can’t Change, Should We Still Support It?

Should we support Edinburgh Fringe this year? With increasing tensions about a festival built on the back of exploitation and lacking accessibility, when is the right time to make a stand, asks Lyn Gardner in The Stage. 

Where do you draw the line? As an individual? As an arts organisation, as an industry? When do you start seeing yourself as part of the problem – through your collusion in something you love and have a long relationship with, but recognise as increasingly problematic? Over the past few weeks, I’ve been having off-the-record conversations with theatremakers, producers and theatre leaders about the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

The first tickets are now on sale and, barring a terrible catastrophe, it looks increasingly likely that the 75th edition of the Edinburgh Fringe will go ahead this summer. But along with stories about the companies which, after two long, Covid-affected years, are planning to return, there are stories about how old employment practices remain rife – especially the unwillingness of venues to pay a living wage and their reliance on volunteers.Has so little changed since the 2019 festival, even after the Fringe Society chief executive Shona McCarthy’s pronouncements that the 2022 festival would be “the best version of itself”?” … Read the Full Length Article in The Stage

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