Edinburgh Fringe’s big four launch separate comedy festival

Published Thursday 20 March 2008 at 16:00 by Alistair Smith

Edinburgh Festival Fringe’s big four venue operators - Assembly, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance and Underbelly - have united to create their own comedy festival, which will run alongside the larger Fringe programme.

The move has been criticised as “divisive” by some other Edinburgh operators, although the quartet have insisted that the move marks a logical progression in terms of marketing their comedy offering at the event.

Anthony Alderson, director of Pleasance Theatre explained: “The four venues have always worked very closely together in Edinburgh. The Edinburgh Comedy Festival is the next logical step forward for us - we believe that we are stronger together than we are apart, that we can market our programmes more effectively and help attract new audiences to Edinburgh.”

The Edinburgh Comedy Festival as a new brand will present more than 250 comedy shows at this year’s festival, playing to an estimated audience of around 550,000 people. The event, which organisers claim will be the largest comedy festival in the world, will have its own brochure, with a print run of 400,000 copies, although shows will still be listed as part of the wider Fringe programme.

William Burdett-Coutts, director of Assembly said: “This is my 30th year on the Fringe and in that time I have seen comedy grow from a few shows to become a major part of what takes place in Edinburgh. I think this is a welcome development that will give comedy the platform it deserves whilst also being a magnificent way of improving marketing for our collective programmes and the festival as a whole.”

For more, see this week’s print edition of The Stage.