Driving You Mad, Driving You Crazy

23 Aug 2018

INTERVIEW: Simon Abrahams – CEO & Creative Director of Melbourne Fringe Festival which is on from 13-30 September

Arts, Comedy, Community, Entertainment, Interview, Music, Theatre

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David & Sue talk to Simon Abrahams who is the CEO & Creative Director of Melbourne Fringe Festival. It’s on from 13th to 30th September 2018. Melbourne Fringe is a now in its 36th year and is a celebration of cultural democracy and art for everyone. By embracing diversity and a spirit of independence, the Festival creates a unique space for artistic self-expression linked to the life of Melbourne and its on. This year’s theme is “Are You Game?” so get online now to download the program and book for the more than 450 acts, theatre, visual displays, dance events. The festival is now held all over Melbourne so check out what’s on in your area. You can book, of course, at the Melbourne Fringe Festival website.

This years festival is described on the Melbourne Fringe website as:

“For 2.5 weeks in September, Melbourne Fringe transforms our city into a platform for every kind of art form imaginable, supporting over 3,000 artists to present 450+ works in 170+ venues to more than 360,000 people.

Our open access Festival champions cultural democracy – art for anyone. We celebrate freedom of artistic expression, we take voices from the margins and amplify them across the city. Fringe embraces risk through our uncurated festival which supports anyone to participate.

We work year round as educators, promoters, and creators. We are supporters, we are challengers, we rock the boat and we question the status quo.

Our participants and our audiences are at the heart of what we do. They are the risk-takers and the art-makers. They are creative, they are bold, they are diverse. They are the artists at the start of their careers, they are the artists launching into the next echelon, they are the big names trying out brand new ideas, and sometimes, they are just everyday people who have something big to say.

Our Festival is unlike any other. It takes place in theatres and galleries, but also in living rooms, in alleyways, in bookshops and libraries, in restaurants and cafes, in the backseat of cars – anywhere you can imagine. By pushing boundaries and illuminating new thoughts and ideas, our Festival transforms not only our city’s places but its people too. Not many come out the same way they go in.

We have evolved across our 36 years, beginning in 1982 as the Fringe Art Network. While we stay committed to our roots – a collaborative encouraging, representing and uniting artists of all disciplines – we have matured to become one of our state’s most significant arts organisations that supports the generation of new work, discovering artists and new ideas.”