merelyplayers.org - Curtain Goes Down on IndyFringe 2008

Visit Merely
Players @

Press Room

Curtain Goes Down on IndyFringe 2008

9/09/08

Indianapolis Theatre Fringe Festival
by Pauline Moffat, Executive Director

IndyFringe 2008 is in the history books! The ten-day festival featuring more than 266 shows from over 53 performance groups began Friday, Aug. 22, 2008, and ended Aug. 31, drawing 9,880 patrons to Massachusetts Avenue for frivolity, fun, and fringy theatre—our largest attendance in the four-year history of IndyFringe! IndyFringe returned $8l,000 to the performers through the box office.

Six performance companies completely sold out all of their shows, and several more were near sellouts. Fringe Central provided free entertainment to over 1,600 people in addition to the street performers in the nooks and crannies of Mass Ave. Over 1,100 people filled out voting form at VisualFringe; 2,400 surveys were completed during the festival and diligently collected by our volunteers. More than 300 patrons enjoyed our sneak peek festival preview. VisualFringe enjoyed unprecedented crowds at the IDADA First Friday art walk, and the cardboard village proved a fun and funky addition to Mass Ave.

August 31 was the highest single-day attendance in the four-year history of IndyFringe, with 1,915 patrons in attendance at the Sunday shows.

The IndyFringe Web site enjoyed unprecedented usage in August. In June, our site traffic rank was 1,500,000+ according to Quantcast.com, an independent 3rd party company that tracks and analyzes site traffic for more than 20 million Web sites in America. By August 31, the final day of IndyFringe 2008, our Quantcast site traffic rank had risen to 144,849, putting it in the Top 1% of all Web sites in America in site traffic.

The top selling shows were:
Assholes & Aureoles
Moved
Phil the Void
Adventures in Mating
On the Rag
Wicked Dreams
Mental Shock
Clown at Work
Common Humanity
And I Am Not Making this Up

Our audience surveys show over l0% were new visitors to Mass Ave and 55% were new to the festival.

We achieved our goals set at the February 2008 IndyFringe five-year strategic planning meeting and look forward to our fifth year on Mass Ave. Our next exciting challenge is to refurbish 719 E. St. Clair Street and to finally have a home for IndyFringe.