KEYBANK ROCHESTER FRINGE FESTIVAL to Announce Lineup of Ninth Annual Festival With Special Virtual Reveal

Organizers of the 2020 KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival will announce the entire lineup of their ninth annual festival (Tuesday, Sept. 15 - Saturday, Sept. 26) via a virtual BIG REVEAL on Tuesday, August 25 at 10:30 AM (ET). Shot at Rochester's Cheshire Audio Visual, it will be streamed on rochesterfringe.com. The approximately 20-minute press conference will be followed by live questions from media outlets only via Zoom (instructions will be provided prior to the event).

The virtual press conference will explain in more detail what the 2020 virtual Fringe - announced in June - will look like. All show details and tickets will be available starting at noon on August 25th via rochesterfringe.com.

"We love our performers and our audience members and we will do all that it takes to keep everyone safe and healthy this year, so that we can enjoy in-person festivals in future years," explains Festival Producer Erica Fee, who points out that - just as in the previous eight years - the 2020 Fringe will showcase regional, national, and international acts.

"Among other benefits, the arts provide a platform for voices to be heard and allow communities to address difficult issues," says Fee. "This is part of our non-profit's mission, and we needed to make sure that this platform exists this year in one way or another."

Fringe 2020 virtual show submissions closed on July 31, with the numbers of participants proving the need for such a platform.

Fee adds: "It's clear that artists are excited to explore the virtual possibilities of this year's Fringe, and we think that audiences will be as well."

The 12-day 2019 KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival featured more than 650 performances and events - over 200 of them free - and broke all previous attendance records with more than 100,000 visitors.

From its five-day debut in 2012, the 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 multi-arts festival in New York State. 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 programmed by the venues themselves. Renowned among the world's 200+ fringe festivals for its spectacular, outdoor, free events as well as its large number of free performances in general, Rochester's Fringe was also the first in North America to feature a Spiegeltent. From comedy to theatre, from music to dance, from visual art and film to spoken word, and from children's entertainment to multi-disciplinary collaborations, the festival's diversity also extends to venues that span the gamut from parked cars to grand theatres.

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 House 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 organization's overarching mission is to make arts readily accessible to audiences, as well as to provide a platform for artists to share their ideas and develop their skills, while stimulating downtown Rochester both culturally and economically.