The Edinburgh Fringe festival is the world’s leading art festival. This festival was established in 1947 as an unconventional to the Edinburgh International Festival, it takes place in Scotland's capital during three weeks every August in combination with a number of other arts and intellectual festivals, collectively known as the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The Fringe mostly creates a center of attention events from the performing arts, particularly drama and comedy, although dance and music also figure notably. Theatre events can vary from the classics of ancient Greece, Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett, through to new works. However, there is no selection committee to approve the entries, so any type of event is possible in the Fringe festival. The organizers are for this Edinburgh Fringe festival is “The Festival Fringe Society” they publish the program, sell tickets and offer advice to performers from the Fringe office on the Royal Mile.

The Edinburgh Fringe is unique, breaking its own record every year as the largest arts festival on the planet (Guinness Book of Records). Each year it brings thousands of performances of hundreds of shows in nearly 300 venues across Scotland's capital city.

Hundreds of thousands of compacted posters are being torn down, venues are turning back into student unions, church halls and ordinary city squares, big tops are being stripped down and stored away and performers are no doubt slumped in bed recovering from their marathon efforts - the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world, is over for another year.

But what a year it was - over 2,000 individual show titles, spanning theatre, comedy, dance, music and just about every other art form you might think of, from giant, logistical challenges like Fuerzabruta or Ricky Gervais at Edinburgh Castle, to award-winning plays staged within transport containers for an audience of only 20 at a time.

The Fringe are reporting an incredible 1,697,293 tickets sold in 2007, an increase of over 10% on 2006 figures (with a 5% increase on ticketed shows in the same period). Strong sales were reported throughout the majority of Fringe venues, with Underbelly Pleasance, Gilded Balloon, The Stand and T on the Fringe reporting strong sales.

Jon Morgan, first-time Director of the Fringe, said: "Ultimately the Fringe is a self regulating festival. If audiences and artists continue to come to Edinburgh the festival will continue to grow, with 2007 being a good example of that."

The Edinburgh Fringe, of course, is traditionally the place for new talent to surface. 1927 theatre company, founded only in January, brought Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea to Edinburgh in 2007, with the performance receiving heaps of praise and winning virtually every award for which it was eligible. The show was presented with the The Carol Tambor Award during the final weekend, which means the talented cast take off to perform their original work in NY City."

So that (just about) is that for another year. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe will be back in August 2008 - watch this space for details."

Source: www.edinburgh-festivals.com

Some stuff you might not know about the 61st Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Fringe 2007 featured 31,000 performances of 2,050 shows in 250 venues

An estimated 18,626 performers were on stage at the Fringe in 2007.

Theatre made up 31% of the programme followed closely by Comedy with 30.5% Music was next with 17%, Children’s 5.5% Musicals & Opera totals, 5%. Dance & Physical Theatre weighed in at 4.5% Exhibitions is 3.5% and finally Events 3%.

40% (815) of the shows were World Premiers and from the remaining 60% of the programme 236 of the shows were European premieres and 93 are UK premieres.

304 shows at the Fringe were absolutely free .

In 2007 there were 6 new awards available to performers. This is in addition to the 15 that were up for grabs in 2006.

At the Fringe in 2007 53,284 tickets were bought in its first week of ticket sales.

1.6 Million tickets (1,697,293) were sold during the 2007 Fringe smashing all arts festival records.

The Fringe sells 118% more tickets than it did only 10 years ago (776,560 in 1997, 1,531,606 in 2006).

The Fringe has a 75% market share of all attendance at Edinburgh’s year-round festivals and annually generates around £75 million for the Edinburgh and Scottish economy.

Source: www.edfringe.com