The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe were originally founded in 1997 as the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. This year we have repositioned the two programming segments of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival as two separate, distinct, concurrent festivals. The Live Arts Festival features selected cutting-edge, boundary-breaking performing arts events, created by some of the most renowned contemporary artists from our region and around the world. The Philly Fringe - which provides opportunities for any artist, independent of a selection process, to self-produce their work - represents the true international "Fringe" movement.
Since beginning in 1997, our festivals have tripled in size and seen tremendous attention, support and community involvement. In 2003, our sixteen-day Festival drew over 47,000 people, with over 1900 artists and company members performing for more than 700 performances.
