HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT

The tourists are coming! It’s no surprise that for a city of just less than a half-million people, the world’s largest art festival brings with it more police — and a lot more trash. This year, the festival, which has promised to reduce its paper usage by a third within five years, has launched a renewable energy plan. Artists are being discouraged from printing out flyers, which traditionally have helped keep the public informed about underground shows. Meanwhile, the Deedit app is encouraging festivalgoers to engage in small acts of kindness like giving directions and to share their good deeds on social media.

The pirates of the playhouse. The world’s biggest arts festival began in 1947, founded by Jewish-Austrian opera impresario (and escapee from Nazi persecution) Rudolf Bing, who chose Edinburgh because it was largely spared from wartime bombing. The event attracted thousands of visitors in evening dresses and kilts to its highbrow offerings — but, when the “uninvited eight,” a group of mostly local, radical and experimental production companies that were refused permission to perform, showed up anyway, the real Fringe was born. Since then the festival has focused on acts outside the mainstream and helped launch the careers of the late Alan Rickman, playwright Tom Stoppard and Eddie Izzard, while other locales from New York to New Zealand have copied the idea for their own Fringe festivals.

Time for a Fringe for Fringe? The festival has became massive. According to the organizers it’s topped in attendance only by the World Cup and Olympics — and the tourist crowds double the city’s population during the festival. Prices have gone up too, and the smaller companies that were the Fringe’s original focus sometimes find that big-name acts with deeper pockets have an easier time snapping up venues, accommodations and headlines. The increasingly slick aesthetic (and corporate sponsors) are also giving pause to those who wish to maintain the Fringe’s outsider vibe.

They’re sending a message. While past years have seen a rise in shows dealing with Brexit and the tenure of President Donald Trump, this year’s Fringe is looking inward: 42 shows deal with mental health, the festival’s leading theme. Shows about LGBTQ issues, refugees and human rights have become less common, but the #MeToo movement and women’s issues feature in 29 productions, and nearly a quarter of the festival’s performances this year deal with a social issue.

WHAT TO READ

We Need to Get Rid of All the Snobby Reviewers, by Shappi Khorsandi in the Independent
"For too long this same snobby bunch have prowled around the festival dictating what we should and shouldn’t talk about in order to meet their approval. We need a coup."

U.S. Gun Culture and Racial Politics Come Under Fire at Edinburgh Fringe, by Catherine Love in The Guardian
"‘The play isn’t making an easy, simple political point,’ says Haydon. ‘The fact that it exists is itself an act of protest, because you wouldn’t be writing plays about school shootings if there weren’t any.’"

WHAT TO WATCH

DollyWould, from Sh!t Theatre "This 2017 Fringe hit, returning this year, tells the story of a mother, a daughter, Dolly Parton ... and Dolly the sheep."	Watch on YouTube
Underground Railroad Game, from Soho Theatre "Already a hit in New York, this darkly funny piece tackles the teaching of uncomfortable history in an unorthodox U.S. school."	Watch on YouTube