KeyBank Rochester Fringe Show Submissions Open Tonight

Starting today at 7 PM (EST), shows may apply to participate in the KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival via rochesterfringe.com through Tuesday, June 29.

The tenth annual festival - Tuesday, September 14 through Saturday, September 25 - will be a hybrid experience for the first time, featuring both safely enjoyed, in-person as well as online performances and events. Both types of shows will use the same free application process, with in-person submissions going directly to whichever venues shows choose. Applications for online shows - whether live-streamed or on-demand - will also be accepted. Detailed and up-to-date information and instructions will be available beginning at 7 PM at rochesterfringe.com.

At this time, several long-standing Fringe venues (Eastman School of Music, Geva Theatre Center's Fielding Stage, School of the Arts, and Blackfriars Theatre) do not plan to reopen until after September 2021 but are excited to return to the Fringe in 2022. Additionally, The Avyarium and Lyric Theatre have permanently closed their doors. However, the festival has expanded its footprint to include several new venues to which shows may apply: JCC Canalside Stage, Made on State, La Marketa (International Plaza), Theatre at Innovation Square (Xerox Auditorium), and The Spirit Room. Returning venues are MuCCC, Java's Café, Nox, Central Library, RoCo, Joseph Avenue Arts & Culture Alliance, and The Little and RIT City Art Space (RIT only). Additional venues that will not accept submissions this year but will present Fringe programming include RMSC's Strasenburgh Planetarium, Rochester Music Hall of Fame, George Eastman Museum, Garth Fagan Dance, and Writers & Books.

"We're grateful to all of our venues - especially in this topsy-turvy time - for understanding how important the arts are in re-invigorating community connections and how vital their partnerships with Fringe are in accomplishing that," says Founding Festival Producer Erica Fee. "We want to continue to provide them with new audiences and artists, and to support them however we can."

In addition, the festival has reduced show registration fees 25-50% this year, due to financial hardships caused by COVID-19 (see details at backstage.rochesterfringe.com/before-applying). The registration fee - due only after a show has applied, been accepted, and has settled on a deal with a venue - is not a source of revenue for Fringe. It is a necessary cost to support performances with marketing and PR, ticketing, vaccine checks for audiences, professional development workshops, and arts industry support.

"As a non-profit organization, we take our mission to provide a platform for artists while offering public access to the arts very seriously," adds Fee. "We're proud that we were able to create a Virtual Fringe last year that offered more than 170 online productions, and - while it won't look like 2019's pre-pandemic, record-breaking festival - we're truly excited to create a memorable tenth anniversary Fringe."

From its five-day debut in 2012, the 12-day KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival has become one of the fastest-growing and most-attended fringe festivals in the U.S. It is also the largest multidisciplinary performing arts festival in New York State. The 2019 Fringe featured more than 650 performances and events - over 200 of them free - in 25+ downtown venues and broke all previous attendance records with more than 100,000 visitors. As a bifurcated festival, it allows for a combination of headline entertainment curated by the non-profit Rochester Fringe Festival as well as an open-access portion based on the 74-year-old Edinburgh Fringe model.

Rochester Fringe Festival connects and empowers artists, audiences, venues, educational institutions, and the community to celebrate, explore, and inspire creativity via an annual, multi-genre arts festival. It was pioneered by several of Rochester's esteemed cultural institutions including Geva Theatre Center, the George Eastman Museum and Garth Fagan Dance; up-and-coming arts groups like PUSH Physical Theatre and Method Machine; and higher-education partners such as the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology. The not-for-profit organization's overarching mission is to provide a platform for artists to share their ideas and develop their skills while also offering unparalleled public access to the arts. It strives to be diverse and inclusive, and to stimulate downtown Rochester both culturally and economically.