Kraków’s newest arts and culture festival is set to take place on 15th-18th June with the inaugural Kraków Fringe Festival.
The Kraków Fringe is a performing arts festival which aims to promote spoken word performances and culture by offering attendees a variety of interesting and engaging shows across multiple genres.
To kick things off the 2017 Kraków Fringe features over 50 performances from 16 performers from mime, stand-up comedy, theatre, musical comedy and magic.
SCHEDULE – Krakow Fringe Festival 2017
Ashley Deppeler, the Krakow Fringe Festival founder and organiser told KED:
“We’re really looking forward to be able to bring such a diverse and exciting group of performers to the city for the Krakow Fringe Festival”
The world’s most popular Fringe Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe has been running since 1947. In 2016 the Ed Fringe as it is known, featured over 50,000 performances from over 3,200 performers across 294 different venues over a grand total of 25 days. As the largest arts and culture festival in the world the Edinburgh Fringe has a set of core ‘Fringe values’ that make up a Fringe Festival mantra which promote diversity, fairness and positivity. The Kraków Fringe Festival has also embraced these values and strives to provide an entertaining and enjoyable experience for all involved.
The Fringe Festival allows performers an opportunity to showcase their talents in a Festival format and anybody is welcome to perform. By keeping the event open to all performers the Kraków Fringe will ensure that acts are not chosen on the basis of their ability or reputation but by their willingness to participate and contribute to the festival. Each performance has a running time of 50-55 minutes which keeps shows sharp and allows Fringe goers to see several shows per night.
Kraków Fringe features a number of local and international performers during the Festival. Polish comedians Tomasz Biskup, Damian Skora and Kamil Gryczka will be performing standup in their aptly named show ‘Local Boys’ while English language improvisation comedy group ‘Improv Comedy in Cracow’ will also be performing. Kraków Fringe also features a wide mix of international acts including musical comedy sensation and Edinburgh Fringe veteran Thom Milner as well as Canadian Daniel-Ryan Spaulding who has established himself as one of Youtube’s most well known comedic acts.
If comedy isn’t your thing we recommend checking out local magician Michal Skubida, Wroclaw based mime outfit ‘Liquidmime’ or the theatrical performance from Team Boardwalk, a collection of theatre enthusiasts based in Kraków who are performing a number of short sketches as part of their show.
In addition the Fringe seeks to promote Kraków as a world class city for arts and culture by promoting not just the festival but the city as a whole. As part of this the Kraków Fringe will be the centrepiece of an upcoming documentary produced by Kraków based filmmaker Paul Pearson through his company Red Viper Media Arts. “Red Viper is excited to be a part of the Kraków Fringe and to capture such an interesting experience in the city of Kraków” Paul said. The yet to be named documentary will showcase the city coming to life during Fringe as well as showing the behind the scenes work that goes into creating and running a festival.
The Kraków Fringe Festival was born out of an existing project ‘Kraków Standup Comedy’ which runs English language standup comedy events every Sunday night at Szpitalna 1. With Kraków Standup Comedy having hosted performers from all over the world it was decided to do this on a wider scale and give back to the growing English speaking community in the same way that a festival such as ImproFest has done for Polish language improvisational comedy.
While tickets are available on the door we recommend buying them in advance from the Fringe website to guarantee your spot, especially in smaller venues. Tickets for individual shows are available for 20zl each or Fringe goers can purchase a ‘Gold Pass’ for 100zl which permits entry to all shows and performances during the Kraków Fringe. See you there!
Krakow Fringe Festival on Facebook
Krakow Fringe Festival 2017 – Facebook Event
Krakow Fringe Festival Website