The Swansea Fringe Festival2

History of the Fringe

2005 sees the Swansea Fringe reinstated after a whomping 15 year gap. With the help of the second 'original Fringe' Administrator Robin Hall, a 1985 Fringe programme and some Touch and Go articles from 1983-4, Susie Wild investigates the festival’s shady past.

According to Hall, the Fringe was launched into the world in“1980 or was it ’81?” Sybil Crouch, working with West Wales Arts in Camarthen, initiated the whole thing and designed the original graffiti-like scrawl of a logo. Other names involved in the birth of the Fringe include Roger Warren Evans, championing the idea within the City Council, and the Townhill sculptor Rob Conybeare, Fringe Administrator for year one.

Hall got involved in years two, three, and four assisted by author, actor, director, playwright and general eccentric (not to mention my ex-father-in-law), the enigmatic Chris Hood, before they burnt out and Dave Downes took over. A host of Swansea artists and performers also helped to pull it all together and make October a veritable feast of a hundred or more acts of theatre, music, art, cabaret alongside much fretting, hair-pulling, ranting and, of course, partying in the late night club, the Members’ Bar, upstairs at the Coach House on Wine Street.

Hood summed this up in an article in Touch and Go magazine in November 1983: “What does it mean and what’s it all for, this packed and varied festival which roars through the October days in a cloud of crisis, controversy, hangovers, frayed nerves, quarrelling, elation, applause and a blue language like a two and a half week thunderstorm? I can only say that to me it needs no justification whatever and anyone who misses it is a fool.”

A fool indeed, acts from Wales, over-the-bridge, and over-the-continent rushed to perform on stages from the Dylan Thomas Theatre to Swansea Grand, the Taliesin Studio Theatre to the after-hours cabaret at the fringe pub, the Coach House. Remember Ines Berlin and her unusual dances and lengthy costume changes? Sun Ergos, the Canadian dance troop? Edinburgh Fringe success stories 76a? Big companies of the time 7/84, Brith Gof, and Made in Wales alongside fledgling acts and local heroes such as the ‘Godfather of Folk’ Tony Webb performing at the Coach House with his band Long Distance and several special guests.

Hall tells us that “It’s hard to say that big names played [the festival] and made their names because of it. The whole ethos was small time, cheap tickets, have fun and try it out.” Yet it is still true that some household names did appear. Those who frequented the festival range from Prunella Scales in ‘An evening with Queen Victoria’ at the Grand through Paul Merton and his side kick John Irwin starting off an illustrious career with a punishing two week stint in St Judes’ Community Centre to Arthur Smith of the Grumpy Old Men series appearing in an interactive entertainment called Monopoly at the YMCA. While Patrons of the Fringe included Howard Brenton, Philip Madoc, John Peel and Beryl Bainbridge; a pretty prestigious list.

Hood said that after the 1983 festival the fringe monster had taken 18 month’s of his life and he wanted to actually just go to the Fringe the following year: “A friend of mine has just floated back to London on a cloud of euphoria, having gadded about Swansea like a character from the Gay Nineties, going to every show in the programme, haunting the Club and never reaching his own bed or anyone else’s before four thirty in the morning. Next year I think I’ll try having one of his sort of Fringe for a change…Some other sod can help Robin run it. It seems Robin had a similar idea, both left after ’84, and the Fringe eventually petered out. Following a Taste of the Fringe pilot in 2004, the Fringe returned in 2005, complete with Chris Hood, that time round in performer mode with his Black Custard Theatre troop straight from Edinburgh Festival.

Details of the 2005 Fringe are here

Details of the 2006 Fringe are here