Fringe 2025 - Let's Get This Thing Started

There is something uniquely fun for me about poking around the Minnesota Fringe Festival website right away in the early days of July each year.

 It's constantly evolving.  They're putting the finishing touches on the schedule because people drop out and new people are slotted in.  (While I was perusing the listings and breaking them down by various categories just now, a new title popped up that wasn't there when I started clicking through the site earlier this afternoon, for instance.) (Also, right after I posted this the first time, a show changed its title and shifted in the alphabetical listings on me, but I found it again :)

I've already printed out schedules that will quickly become out of date.  And rather than be annoyed by the fact that I'm inevitably going to be scratching out some show names and writing in others, I actually find that oddly enjoyable.  The festival is a living, breathing thing that keeps mutating in unexpected ways, sometimes even after its opened and is up and running.  Keeps me on my toes, and from getting too confident that I know everything there is to know, because no one ever does.

Artists update their show images on the website from that thing they just threw together to satisfy the deadline to that more refined idea they finally completed so they could do their publicity properly.  I find that amusing to watch, and often strangely informative as well.

One marvels at the shows that pop up in multiple categories that seem to have little or no crossover (such as, how can something be a sci fi, dance, improv, horror, comedy clowning show with puppets? I don't know but I think I'm interested in finding out)

It's just as fun to run across the few dozen returning favorites you recognize from Fringes past as it is to have your mind boggled by all the new artists you've never heard of and their wild ideas for shows lasting less than an hour each.

So the sifting has begun (after all, one can only see so many shows, even if one takes no breaks and sees a show in every slot, there's only 55(?) things you can see [math is not my friend but I think I added that up right], and way more shows than that from which to choose so...)

Thirty days and counting, with a couple of preview nights before we get to opening.

Time to trot out a new Top 10/Top 20, plus a rundown of the reliables both old and new that are taking the stage yet again this year.

What are you looking forward to?

Let's dive in, shall we?

 

Here’s some handy links to my Fringe Top 10, Top 11 to 20 and Returning Favorites lists for this year, as well as all the coverage of this year’s Minnesota Fringe Festival.