Sydney Fringe 2015 Has a Brand New Festival Village
Expect prohibition-style gin bars, masquerade horror installations and a huge focus on Erko.
The inner west officially gets all the Fringe fun. After hunkering down in Newtown last year, this year’s Sydney Fringe Festival has its sights set on Erskineville, with the suburb tapped as the home of this year’s official festival hub. This year they're calling it a Festival Village, so we expect big things from this home base for the month-long cultural marathon, the largest independent arts festival in NSW.
"This September, we are leaving the safety of our underground spaces and taking over shopfronts, streets and any space we can find," says festival director Kerri Glasscock. "With pop-ups and activations, we are giving local artists the opportunity to explore new ideas, new spaces and meet new audiences. The 2015 festival will be our biggest yet."
The news comes alongside our first glimpse at the 2015 program, which is set to include more than 300 performances across 50 different venues in five different main locales — Newtown, Erskineville, Marrickville, Redfern and Surry Hills. Erskineville's Festival Village will play host to the official opening night party, Fringe Ignite, on September 5, with a prohibition-themed gin bar run by Young Henrys and a 1920s-style speakeasy lounge. Throughout the festival, the suburb will also host a series of talks, performances, comedy shows and music presented by City of Sydney’s Late Night Libraries, with the Erskineville Town Hall playing home to a pair of performance spaces and the Coopers Festival Bar, from the folks at the Erskineville Hotel.
The surrounding suburbs will get their Fringe fill as well. Other festival highlights include a day of Indigenous art, music and performance in Redfern; a silent dinner party hosted by internationally renowned artist Honi Ryan at Marrickville Town Hall; a masquerade horror installation (whatever that means) in a warehouse; and a two-week partnership with the Chaser's Giant Dwarf theatre. The latter venue will play host to a "mini-festival within the Festival", featuring cabaret, comedy and an array of performers from fringes around the world.
The full Sydney Fringe Festival program is set to drop in August before the festival kicks off on September 1. In the meantime, you can find out more about the Fringe at the event website.
Image: Emerald City Sydney Fringe Festival hub 2013.
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