Fringe: to be on the edge; the most extreme parts of an activity...
And this is where the Fringe Festival of the 1998 Festival of Arts promises to take you!
As the outreach arm of the Festival of Arts, the Fringe Festival is a platform and showcase for the new and the young. If you go to the “core” Festival for the big names, you come to the Fringe for the shocks and surprises.
This year, the surprises are plenty: Ankara fuse and experiment with the sounds of the East and West and the newly founded Tri-Arts bring life to poetry on our subway walls through dance and drama. From Asia in Theatre Research Centre comes The Rest is Silence, a collaboration with Mime Unlimited which looks at the meaning of communication in modern society.
Or take a surreal look at the world through the eyes of foreign groups such as Japan's Yayoi Theatre Movement, the British one-man act Lesley Ross with Diary of a Welshcake, Australia’s Strange Fruit and Theatre Physical.
For the first time, the Fringe zooms in on the new arts precinct at Waterloo Street with Arts Alive at Waterloo Street. Here, you will experience anything from Chinese Opera to contemporary dance.
Music lovers too have a surprise in store. A group of amateur pianists will be playing the piano non-stop for 12 hours at Raffles City Shopping Centre in a fund-raiser Piano Marathon.
The Fringe, indeed, is for the young too with the popular Fringe For Kids at The Substation. This year’s line-up promises exciting workshops and comedians. For those who just cannot get enough of the arts, there is a special Late Night Series with a series of performances that range from toe-tapping, through thought provoking, to humorous. The Animation Fiesta too is a must!
Most importantly, however, the visible presence of amateur and school groups in the Fringe is surely a sign of the passion of the arts in Singapore of the 1990s.
So, with performances at shopping centres, MRT stations and parks, the Fringe Festival is all set to gear you up for the month of Arts. With over 600 activities this year, the Fringe is the place where things imagined become reality.
(Source: National Arts Council Programme)