THE HOLLYWOOD FRINGE FESTIVAL

VENUE PACKET
 WELCOME!

Thank you for your interest in participating as a venue for

The Hollywood Fringe Festival, an annual, open-access
event celebrating freedom of expression and collaboration
in the performing arts community. The festival serves local
artists by providing a networking opportunity for dozens
of theater companies otherwise made disparate by
distance. The festival was called “an artful feast” by the LA
Times, “a roaring success” by Backstage, and “a triumph”
by LA Weekly during its first year.

Participation in the Hollywood Fringe is completely open

and uncensored, which has only intensified the event’s
popularity. First, this free-for-all approach underlines the
festival’s mission to be a platform for artists instead of a
self-serving curative body. By opening the gates to anyone
with a vision, the festival is able to exhibit the
most diverse
and cutting-edge points of view the world has to offer.
Additionally, by creating an environment where artists
must self-produce their work, the Fringe motivates its
participants to cultivate a spirit of entrepreneurialism in
the arts.

Thousands of patrons and artists converge in Hollywood

each June to see what new works are about to break out.
With over 32,000 tickets sold in 2022 and $300,000 going
back to artists and venues, 4.9 million since 2010! Since its
inception, the Hollywood Fringe has become one of the
largest uncensored arts festivals in the United States and
an integral part of the Los Angeles arts scene.

Check out our annual report to learn more about the inner
workings of our organization!
www.hollywoodfringe.org/annualreport
 BECOMING A FRINGE VENUE

Participating as a venue in the Fringe is an exciting and

profitable way to spend the month of June each year.
As a venue, you are under no obligation to house any
performances; you simply agree to have your space(s)
listed on the Fringe website
(www.hollywoodfringe.org) as available to receive
proposals from producers. The Fringe is deliberately a
free market: We realize that every venue in Hollywood
has unique priorities, aesthetics, and bottom lines.
Listing your venue exposes you to hundreds of
producers who stage their work at the festival. The site
facilitates communication between you and the
producers with messaging, scheduling, and deal-
brokering features. Once you have reached agreeable
terms with an act, you can propose a deal on the site,
add them to the schedule, and be selling tickets online
in minutes. All terms of the contract are up to you; it
works just like booking any other time of year, only
you will have a wider range of productions competing
to rent your space.

We do require you to carry General

Liability Insurance at the level of
$1,000,000 naming Hatchery Arts dba
The Hollywood Fringe Festival as an
additional insured. Email
support@hollywoodfringe.org once you
have secured the certificate.
 BENEFITS

There are many benefits to becoming a Fringe venue.

The most obvious is financial: During the festival, there
are hundreds of artistic groups looking for space. The
Fringe ethos embraces shows throughout the day,
rather than once a day at 8 PM. Throughout the rest of
the year, you might be able to book 9 or 10
performances per week; during Fringe, some venues
have 8-10 performances on a single (weekend) day.
Booking Fringe acts continue to benefit your space
throughout the rest of the year by exposing your
venue to dozens of energetic producers, most of
which stage productions at other times. Cultivating a
loyal group of Fringe producers creates invaluable
word-of-mouth for your space throughout the L.A. arts
community. You are also eligible for venue-specific

awards at the festival, sponsored by community

organizations and producing groups. Once Fringe is
concluded each year, you may have the opportunity to
extend shows as a part of the Producer’s Encore
Awards program.
 CREATING YOUR VENUE PROFILE

The first step to becoming a Fringe venue is to create

your venue profile on the site. Visit
http://www.hollywood- fringe.org/venue/add in your
web browser (If you haven’t already created or logged
in to your Fringe profile, you will be prompted to do
so). Complete the short questionnaire and click “Add
Venue”. We’ll be notified to review your profile (we do
require venues to carry liability insurance and cover
basic safety concerns). Once approved, we’ll make you
live on the site’s venue list:
http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/venue/list. You’ll want
to add enticing descriptions of the key features of your
space and attractive photos to show your space to
other parts of the country (and the world!). We’ll help
you out with this part: when you become a Fringe
venue, we send a staff videographer out to your space
for a guided video tour we will cut and post on the
Fringe YouTube channel. You can use this video to
promote your space on the Fringe site and elsewhere.
We encourage you to add your page as early in the
Fringe season as possible in order to reach the
greatest number of producers. For more information
on the booking process, please visit:
http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/learn/index/685
 THE BOOKING PROCESS

Registration opens for the festival each year on February 1st. The registration deadline for
productions wishing to appear in the printed Fringe Guide is April 1st. This two-month window is the
most active time for projects
o seek venue housing. Some go-getters may begin to solicit earlier, and procrastinators can register
right up through the festival opening in June. When should you book? It is entirely up to you. Some
Fringe venues simply want to fill their availabilities as early as possible; others seek to cultivate a
particular aesthetic and may want to wait until they can review a diversity of applications; still, others
may have other commitments that dictate when they will have organizational bandwidth to process
applications. A nice benefit of the volume of shows attempting to produce at Fringe is that there is
almost always someone looking for a venue in the months leading up to the festival. If you want to
book yourself solid, starting early is probably a good idea, but if you are simply looking to fill a few
gaps in your bookings, closer to June may be the time to do so.
Booking productions can be a very passive process in which you only respond to those producers
with the gumption to reach out to you. It can also be very active if you choose to browse projects and
seek out those which fit your venue’s larger sensibilities.
You can easily scale the Fringe to suit your ambition. Maybe it is your first year as a venue, and you
want to test the waters; booking a handful of shows may be the way to go. You can also go full-bore:
Some venues book hour-long slots throughout the day with 30 minutes of changeover between
performances. Part of the Fringe sensibility is that producers expect to have to scale back the
complexity of their staging/design to accommodate the quick turnarounds. A well-organized venue
with a tightly attuned tech staff can serve over 30 productions in a single month. All along the way,
the Fringe community and the festival organizers are here to help you navigate your Fringe
experience.
The Fringe website allows you to receive applications from interested productions. Your venue
comes equipped with a useful “dashboard” to display applications, completed and in-progress deals:
 BEST PRACTICES

You can use the site as a one-stop means of

communicating with producers with our built-in
messaging system or take the conversation offline to
finalize terms with producers.
Please do your best to keep rents reasonable. The primary
mission of the Fringe is to lower the barriers to staging
work for young, emerging, or underserved artists. As a
Fringe venue, you are part of this social contract. Cheaper
overall rents should accompany the larger volume of
rentable time. We all have bills to pay, but the Fringe
thrives when low rents drive lower ticket prices which
draw larger audiences. When the festival organization ran
a theatrical venue during the first four festivals, we were
able to recoup our production costs by charging an
average of $175 for each 90-minute performance slot. Be
fair to producers and yourself.
Once you have a signed contract with a participant

production, you add them to your space’s schedule and

send them a deal offer. Upon accepting your offer, the
production is automatically cleared to register for the
festival and join the Fringe!

FOUND SPACES

We encourage adventurous parties to stage their work in

non-traditional spaces. A hallmark of Fringes the world
over is the conversion of non-theatrical spaces into
temporary venues. The Fringe encourages this type of
entrepreneurism in its community. In fact, to meet the
expanding demand for space, we see this as a vital part of
the Fringe-venue ecosystem. The only requirement the
Fringe has is that the space meets reasonable safety
requirements and that you carry insurance (be prepared
to provide a Certificate of Insurance).
 VENUE CONFIGURATION

Fringe spaces run best when they are geared to be nimble. Due to the high volume of shows, most producers
are prepared to work in a more “stripped down” environment. You can arm yourself for success if you are
clear from the get-go about what you are offering in terms of staging/tech. Here are some ideas about a
typical Fringe configuration:

• Slot times are often short. Many venues book hour-long slots, with a half-hour between shows. With that
being said, there are as many ways to configure your schedule as there are venues in the Fringe. Keep in mind
that start times for performances need to be in 15-minute intervals (e.g., 1:00, 1:15, etc.) for the website to add
them to ticketing. Make sure that shows book enough time to run their show, seat the audience, and
setup/strike. In general, it is best to tailor slot- length to the needs of the show.

• A rep-plot for lighting is the norm; do everything you can to make a flexible lighting configuration which can
cover a lot of bases. Most producers will understand that they will not be able to do customizing of focus and
will be happy to work with a rep-plot. LED fixtures which can mix a variety of colors, or color scrollers, are a
great way to diversify the lighting looks you can offer without breaking the bank.

• Standard stage furniture like couches, chairs and tables can be a huge boon to productions. If you don’t have
an existing stock, it’s a great idea to coordinate your productions to share resources. If you can make room to
store one couch permanently, perhaps all the shows can share it throughout the month.

• Keep sound and video simple. The more you can provide a standard setup that works across all productions,
the less you’ll need to reconfigure. If a show has sound/video needs beyond your standard configuration, they
may need to book additional time to set up and load-out the extra equipment; ditto for tech time prior to the
run.

• Be cautious when offering storage. Some venues have a strict “no storage” policy. There is nothing worse at
Fringe than a crowded, disorganized backstage. Producers would much rather make arrangements to bring
their items to each performance than to find items misplaced or missing when they take the space.

• Be clear about House Management and Box Office procedures. Are the producers responsible for staffing
these positions, or do you provide this as a service to your renters? What is the procedure for delivering
money from walk-up ticket purchases?

• Insurance protects the Fringe, your venue, and the producers you house. We recommend that you require
insurance from your productions. As you are required to carry insurance as a Fringe venue, you may find that
your insurance provider can add productions as additional insured to your policy. This may be a great service
to provide to your renters and may make your venue more attractive to producers.

• Communication is KEY! Plan on advising your producers of the Rules & Regulations of your space early and
often. Be available to promptly answer questions and concerns. When producers are kept happy, it drives
repeat business; when expectations are clear, it makes it much easier to say “No!” when unreasonable
demands arise.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK & INSTAGRAM @HOLLYWOODFRINGE

 ENAGING WITH THE FRINGE COMMUNITY

The best way to involve yourself in the Fringe is to participate whenever possible. Each year,
the festival hosts public town hall meetings, workshops, and networking mixers for budding
producers. A strong presence at these events can drive bookings to your space.

CHECK OUT OUR FULL TOWN HALL AND

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE HERE!

The Fringe also hosts venue-specific meetings and workshops throughout the festival season.
Watch the festival’s newsletter for details on these and other events (you can sign up for the
newsletter by checking the box to receive updates when you create your account on the
Fringe site).
Successful venues also host their own open houses and mixer events in the lead-up to the
festival. Keep our Communications Director (Carly@hollywoodfringe.org) notified, and we will
help get the word out via our newsletter and social media feeds (the more notice you can
give, the more we can help).
Speaking of social media: It is a great way to assert yourself in the Fringe. Use #HFF23 when
posting about your venue or share on our Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/hollywoodfringe. Fringers actively follow Instagram and
Facebook, and engaging helps you book slots, but it also helps drive audiences.
Once your Fringe roster is set, better communication with your producers can lead to
beneficial partnerships through collective marketing, resource sharing, outreach, and more.
In general, the more you and your producers engage with the larger community, the more
successful the festival experience will be for all.
 Key Dates for 2023

Feburary 1- Registration Opens

April 1- Registration Closes
June 1-6- Previews
June 7- Opening Night Party
June 8-25- Official 2023 Festival
June 25- Awards

HAVE QUESTIONS?
EMAIL LOIS@HOLLYWOODFRINGE.ORG

WE LOOK FORWARD TO WORKING WITH YOU!