Hit shows from Edinburgh's Fringe festival are coming to America. Here are our top picks
The Edinburgh Fringe festival has concluded, showcasing a variety of experimental theater productions that are now slated for U.S. tours. The selection highlights the festival's role as a global incubator for unconventional and provocative performance art.
Why it matters
The Fringe festival is a major cultural bellwether, and its influence on the American theater landscape continues to grow as experimental works gain mainstream popularity.
Editor's note: This article contains sexual themes.
EDINBURGH — For nearly a month, Edinburgh has been overrun by performers, posters, packed rooms — and some very strange ideas.
The Edinburgh Fringe comes to a close Monday, wrapping up the monthlong performing arts festival that has become a proving ground for some of theater's riskiest, weirdest and most original work. Sometimes, those experiments escape the festival entirely and go on to become global cultural phenomena. (Looking at you, Fleabag and Baby Reindeer .)
This year, more than 4,200 shows descended on Edinburgh, with artists hailing from 74 countries.
NPR did its research — making its way through roughly 40 of them.
That meant testing out theater in a 200 degree Fahrenheit sauna. A musical about a Nebraska-based butt plug wearing cult. And clowns. So many clowns. A surprising (or perhaps not so surprising?) number of them naked.
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