Hold onto your creative bits! The NZ Fringe is turning 30, and it's the largest, most diverse festival ever!
We’re Thirty. We’re Flirty. And We’re Thriving.
That’s right, for three decades New Zealand Fringe Festival has been supporting emerging artists and practitioners like
nothing else in Aotearoa. The 2020 programme was joyously announced last week at Te Auaha in Wellington, with a
spectacular launch by the Hon. Grant Robertson, Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage.
The upcoming festival will be held at 40 venues all over Wellington Region from 28 February to 21 March, and includes
every genre possible—theatre, comedy, dance, music, clowning, cabaret, visual art, children’s shows and more! The 30th
edition of Fringe is also the festival’s most ambitious yet, with over 150 unique productions and events from local,
national, and international artists.
‘It’s exciting and extraordinary and also, there are changes afoot, so who knows what the next 30 years will hold,” says
Sasha Tilly, the intrepid Fringe Operations Manager. “Over half of the 2020 programme listings feature practitioners
based in Wellington. The rest are a mix of national and international offerings who come to delight audiences, whatever
their tastes may be."
Tilly joins Creative Producer Sameena Zehra as Co-director, Festival Coordinator Rose Jang, Marketing Manager Charlotte
Wooster, Events coordinator Phil Loizou, and Volunteer Coordinator Ella Carling. With a crack team of experts at the
helm, New Zealand Fringe has created a season filled with so much creative opportunity that audiences will delight in an
abundance of artistic riches.
"Soak it up, revel in it, be voluptuous in your joy,” urges Zehra. “Come celebrate three decades of the country's
largest open-access, artist-first festival, and let us present you with a cornucopia of incredible creativity from both
home and abroad. Wellington’s Fringe is where practitioners of every kind come to express themselves, experiment with
form and flavour, and offer accessible art to our region and beyond.”
New Zealand Fringe Festival is a programme of Creative Capital Arts Trust, one of Wellington’s leading non-profit
cultural organisations. The festival is generously made possible by Wellington City Council, Creative New Zealand,
Wellington International Airport, Inject, NV Interactive, Wellington Community Trust, and Victoria University of
Wellington. Additional support and encouragement are provided by Garage Project, Havana Coffee Works, Bicycle Junction,
Resene, Radio Active, Phantom Billstickers, The Wellington Company, Australian High Commission, Skinny Fizz,
Co-liberate, and KPMG.
Information about the 2020 Fringe, and tickets to all shows are available at www.fringe.co.nz
ends