Sydney Fringe Festival Announces New Parramatta Road Creative Precinct

Sydney Fringe Festival is back for its seventh year this September and, true to form, they'll be breathing new life into Sydney's neglected spaces. The largest independent arts festival in NSW is expanding its program yet again, with a new creative precinct called 'Off Broadway' set to see pop-up spaces, performances and street activations taking over previously unused shopfronts and business spaces down Parramatta Road.

The festival's 'call to party' theme is an amped up version of last year's inner west Festival Village. Sydney Fringe CEO and festival director Kerri Glasscock is promising a "reawakening (of) old haunts" and a "reviving (of) long forgotten venues." It's a brilliant partnership between Fringe and the Inner West Council, considering all that sadly unused space you spy every time you're stuck in Parramatta Road's god awful traffic.

Launching in the heart of the festival (running September 1-30), the Off Broadway precinct will open on the weekend of September 10-11. But it's not the only part of Sydney to be taken over. As part of the program, Fringe is bringing back last year's wildly popular silent dinner party to the Paddington Town Hall on Saturday, September 24, which set the record in 2015 for the world's largest silent dinner party. The two-hour dinner gives guests the chance to be part of a 'living artwork' and is hosted in eight countries worldwide.

This year, Fringe will span more than 300 productions in over 50 venues, spread across five cultural villages. With the intention of highlighting Sydney's vibrant, non-mainstream culture, the program spans theatre, music, comedy, visual art, film, dance, circus, literature and poetry. This year, we're seeing a more specific commitment to the local community in support of both small business and our fledgling nighttime economy. We're psyched to see this new, upcycled precinct in action.

Sydney Fringe Festival 2016 will run from September 1 – 30, with the launch of 'Off Broadway' on September 10. The full program will be announced on 1 August 2016. Check the Sydney Fringe website for details and updates.