Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Today marks the start of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival! The largest arts festival in the world takes place every August for three weeks in Scotland’s capital city.

Each year, thousands of performers take to the many stages to ensure that there is something for everyone’s taste. There’s everything from dance to musicals, from physical theatre to opera.

The festival dates back to 1947 when eight, uninvited theatre groups turned up to the Edinburgh International Festival. Despite not being ion the official program, they performed anyway and year after year, more people started to follow their example.  As a result of this, in 1959, the Fringe Society was formed to stop this growing trend.

Since then, the Fringe festival has become a mecca for performers of all kinds, and has helped develop the careers of comedians such as Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, Al Murray and Rich Hall.

Will you be there this year?

Image credit: Zoetnet