ON THE FRINGE
“The Fringe must go on”, they state on their website. Stockholm Fringe Festival’s 11th edition might look a little different to previous incarnations, but this year’s hybrid festival is a welcome distraction from current events.
Do hard times, whether economic uncertainty, a global health scare or even war and mass destruction, diminish the importance of arts, culture and general enjoyment? Some might say “how could that possibly bear any importance amidst all this suffering?” But others would counter that difficult times are when it’s especially important to both make and consume art to help us cope with whatever crisis is brewing, and to keep our minds occupied with all the beauty, intrigue and mystique that art contains.
The great cultural spectacle that is the Stockholm Fringe Festival plays in to all this of course. And there was no way that some pandemic or pending economic collapse could derail their urge to direct stories, sights and sounds in our direction. This year’s edition is different naturally, but it’s still happening and that’s the most important thing.
We rounded up the three main culprits behind these five days of artistic freedom, and had them explain themselves.
This year’s Fringe offers challenges that you haven’t seen before, and the festival looks very different from previous editions. Please tell us what’s in store here.
Helena Bunker: The Fringe is normally fuelled by the freedom to explore and interact with a wild mix of performances. It is an artistic platform that welcomes all genres and audiences from the widest of social, ethnic and geographical backgrounds. So when the pandemic hit, the Fringe came face to face with an obstacle to its core ethos. But as we know, in resistance art flourishes, so we turned to our artists to see what they were able and willing to do within this new framework. This year’s festival is more of a definite homage to the need of art, and to all the brave artists who have re-invented their work, their form of presentation, and their process to be able to participate.
From being a 100 percent live event Stockholm Fringe Festival will this year present a smaller range of live acts, a full pay-on-demand library and a series of live streamed local, national and international performances. We’re also thrilled to launch the incredible Sanitasia gala that will finish off the festival with a bang of immersive performance art, glitter and anti-bacterial hand gel showers.
I’m sure there were times during this process when you debated whether the festival was going ahead at all, and if so, what this edition would look like. Can you describe the process of hope and despair you have gone through to come to your conclusion? Lina Karlmark: Needless to say, it has been a strange year for festivals. Nearly 80 percent of the fringe artists are touring companies. A LOT of soul searching went into discussing what the responsible thing to do is. How can we create a safe environment for the audience, our artists and the staff alike? The dialogue is ongoing. It doesn’t really matter what we plan now, a lot can change really swiftly at very short notice. The Covid protocols will differ from venue to venue. Aside from offering exciting fringe art, the safety and wellbeing of everyone involved is our key mission!
Adam Potrykus: Before we could establish the format and size of STOFF2020, we asked each of the shortlisted acts: How are you doing? How has the pandemic affected you? Are you still able to participate in STOFF? If needed, how can you re-imagine your work for a digital stage? We envisioned three possible outcomes for the fall. 1. A full-fat edition of STOFF. 2. A fully digital festival. 3. A hybrid of both real life live events and pre-recorded content. In the end, the outcome is an intimate five-day long ‘boutique festival’, with 50 events, and 32 premieres created by 129 artists in 16 countries! The program spans across all sorts of genres and platforms. Will you find something to your liking? That’s easy to establish! From September 1st, you can take part in our digital Fringe Quiz! Your ‘current mood’ will lead you to the appropriate ‘pathway’ of shows! For the second year running, the pathways are curated by Tora Enkvist.
Helena: As soon as the pandemic was a fact we knew
we had to try and stay open to adjustments and to follow the progress closely. As the time went by we witnessed a devastating avalanche of colleagues and sister festivals cancelling upcoming productions, which left us with more than just a logistical dilemma. Is it at all possible, and at what cost, to pursue our 11th year and what ethical principles are we potentially breaking? In the midst of the storm our answer appeared - we need to stay responsive and let the voices of our artists guide us. By asking our applicants, partners and colleagues it became crystal clear that the need for art was stronger than ever before. As we received masses of hope, passion and longing for an artistic platform, we knew that we had to go ahead no matter what. It just had to be on the right terms for the artists, who contributed with an amazing scope of ideas that would let art inspire in the face of one of the worst human challenges of our times.
What essential part do you think that culture fills in difficult times, whether it be economic crisis, a pandemic or a combination of both?
Lina: In some ways, culture and the arts can give people hope and comfort during times of hardships. We’ve all been a bit overwhelmed by the constant bombardment of Coronavirus headlines. A fringe show can be a temporary refuge from current events! You can also use STOFF to ‘escape it all’! Or, let the festival process our reality. The fringe is a platform of expression that helps us to make sense of 2020’s absurdity. Furthermore, I think that fringe creates a sense of community, it links us together! Who would have thought that we would live through a catastrophethemed Hollywood blockbuster in our own backyards? We’ve simultaneously been the spectators and players!
The pandemic has hit a lot of cultural institutions and creative outlets pretty hard. How does this affect the Fringe Festival specifically and what does this mean for future festivals?
Adam: You’re absolutely right about that! The pandemic has been fairly brutal across the board. 2020 has been like a faulty hard drive that needs some serious rebooting! The fringe sphere has been hit particularly hard by this crisis, because many of our acts are at the start of their creative career, with little or no funding at hand. Many smaller theatres have struggled with rent. Some of the artists have had to suspend their creative work, and search for income in other industries. Others have been furloughed, and have done what they can to help out in their spare time! Orionteatern, our main #STOFF2020 venue was turned into a PPE factory, staffed by volunteer workers! The workshop only closed this month! We love and embrace that kind of community spirit! But, it’s not all been doom and gloom. While a great deal of international events have been cancelled or postponed, many producers have gone into some serious re-grouping action! STOFF’s 2020 motto is #TheFringeMustGoOn. Our poster features a theatre rat, inspired by Banksy. The nature of this persistent little creature is very punk, just like the fringe itself! It’s been inspiring to see how quickly all stakeholders can adopt, shift and get the ball rolling again! From our talent reworking their shows, to festival partners like Abundo, who built a new streaming and pay-per-view platform within a matter of weeks! In this case, the pandemic has triggered and ushered in something that was way overdue. The digital stage should have been activated ages ago, and now it’s here to stay! At the very core the fringe is about experimentation, renewal and daring to take the audience ‘out of the box’. That’s exactly what we aim to do! The future? In the age of Greta Thunberg, we really need to reduce travel, and focus more on the local. Site-specific shows are already a thing. They just need to be further embraced! Further down the road, I see VR theatre! A fusion of the gaming industry with live performance art. That’s how we will get more young people to get involved. Imagine a Fortnite game-style festival, that allows you to mingle with other festival punters in a virtual garden of unearthly delights , before your fringe show experience.
You have a collaboration with the Sydney Fringe Festival, why Sydney, how did that come about and what does the collaboration include?
Adam: We’re constantly on the lookout for new partners on the global stage. Outside of STOFF’s annual festival week, we aim to present Swedish, and Nordic talent on the international arena.
2020 started with a team excursion to Australia, and the World Fringe Congress hosted by Adelaide Fringe, one of the world’s biggest and oldest fringe festivals. While we’ve flirted with Sydney Fringe for years, our teams really found common ground during our face-to-face meetings in Adelaide. Both our festivals are scheduled in September, and share a similar identity, with focus on cutting edge, innovative and boundary-breaking work. We ping-ponged a great deal of collaborative ideas with Sydney’s creative team, in order to find the acts, and the format, that best embody the spirit of our cities and festivals. Streaming live across time zones is a challenge on its own. Will the Sydney audience be drinking morning Bloody Mary’s while watching the evening feed from Stockholm? We sure hope so! Especially as we’re broadcasting events like ‘Santasia’ hosted by Smiley, Butcherqueen, Shaya, Progressive Genitalia, Farvash and Grebnellaw! It’s a Sanitation Gala that welcomes you to the future where we take inspiration from current events on Planet 2020. Artists will be able to audition for the event via Instagram Stories. The winner of the competition will be crowned during the evening! The night will be crowned by a kick-ass live set from Yung Titties! Our collaboration with Sydney goes under the label ‘Global fringe’, and it will feature Aussie acts like sassy Back Birds with Our Visions Begin With Our Desires - Chapter 2. The show is a big, bold and blinged-out drama-filled hour of fringe fun! Queers On The Fringe, by Sydney talent Maeve Marsden, promises a mixed bag of artists, writers, comedians and musicians for an experiment in intimate entertainment, ready to deliver story, song and catharsis to an audience of five, or maybe 50, or 500 strangers tuning in from their lounge rooms! Both festivals offer panel talks and seminars related to our industry, and the current Covid state of affairs. All these happenings will be streamed on Facebook and Zoom both during, and after STOFF 2020, to accommodate Sydney Fringe’s longer run. Just type in ‘global fringe’ on our website to find all Sydney-related content! Grab a refreshment, turn on the volume, and enjoy the ride.
One could think a digital festival could have all Fringe festivals collaborate for content?
Helena: We’re indeed part of a giant fringe family, and so thankful for the incredible network of support this means. During this spring we have had many network discussions on how to tackle our individual challenges in regards to the pandemic. As every fringe festival is different, and spread out across the year, everyone has experienced a different race against time to deal with the pandemic. As it came upon us so unexpectedly all fringes had to go down to their core to seek out the best option for them there and then. To go ahead or not go ahead was the urgent question this year, but I have no doubt in my mind that we will be on for a huge digital collaboration with our fellow fringes in the coming year.
During our visit to this year’s World Fringe
Congress (in February) the discussion of digitalisation was a hot topic, and we had talks on how to teach our audience to access/accept arts online, what quality should be the standard and how to deliver streamed content on low budgets. As Stoff has had digitalisation as an accessibility target for many years, 2020 has forced us and many more in the industry to work towards making your content available online. We are very proud to this year present at least one exciting not-to-be-missed digital collaboration with our fringe sibling Sydney Fringe Festival, that both parties see as the beginning of something bigger.
What have been your personal go-to sources for creative ideas and cultural entertainment during the times of partial lockdown?
Helena: My personal go-to sources have very much been about our Fringe artists (obviously) but I have also been fully immersed in the masses of incredible theatre, concerts, performances, events and talks that have been made available online from a wide range of sources all over the world. I would be quite heartbroken if the range of what is now being offered online goes back to a more limited layout as per prepandemic as I believe this widening of the digital stage has given us so many new and previously unknown opportunities to experience arts. Having said that, I still believe that performance art, networking and cultural events never touch the same nerve digitally as it does live. Arts is to a great degree about nerve, about live connection, about the collective experience, breathing the same air as our fellows, and 2020 has left us starving for live events so when we are out of this black fog I think all our suppressed energies will channel out in some form of creative ecstasy. And for that we cannot wait.