{"id":529166,"date":"2026-03-11T13:33:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T13:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/529166\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T13:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T13:33:08","slug":"the-pulse-march-11-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/529166\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pulse: March 11, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fringetheatre.ca\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Fringe Theatre<\/a> is offering a workshop series to help artists succeed at its own festival.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fringetheatre.ca\/launchpad\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Launchpad<\/a> consists of six workshops running from March 23 to 27. The sessions are open to all Fringe artists, from those who have never produced a show to established artists who want to learn a new skill, artistic director Murray Utas told Taproot.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think there&#8217;s value for whether you are walking into your first (production), to whether you&#8217;re tuning up to hit the road, and even if you&#8217;re a pro \u2014 you might be reinventing yourself,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>The workshops will give artists tips on how to <a href=\"https:\/\/tickets.fringetheatre.ca\/event\/601:6908\/601:44290\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">write and improve a play<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/tickets.fringetheatre.ca\/event\/601:6910\/601:44297\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">build a production team<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/tickets.fringetheatre.ca\/event\/601:6911\/601:44298\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">design a show that can tour<\/a> to other festivals, <a href=\"https:\/\/tickets.fringetheatre.ca\/event\/601:6935\/601:44329\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">design lights and sound<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/tickets.fringetheatre.ca\/event\/601:6912\/601:44299\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">promote a show<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/tickets.fringetheatre.ca\/event\/601:6913\/601:44300\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">plan a tour<\/a>. The Fringe has assembled a group of notable theatre artists to teach the workshops, both from within the organization and from the wider theatre community.<\/p>\n<p>The series formalizes the way the Fringe already helps artists, Utas said, and aims to teach skills that can at times be mysterious to newer artists and producers. &#8220;I&#8217;m going to help you get out of your own way by giving you some tools for the toolbox,&#8221; he said, adding that it&#8217;s a way to equip artists to &#8220;close the gap on what (they) think is unattainable, and look at it and go, &#8216;I just built a bridge myself, and now I&#8217;m going to walk across it.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The workshop series is just one initiative in Edmonton that aims to help newer theatre artists get their work produced:<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the organization is preparing for its second annual <a href=\"https:\/\/edmonton.taproot.events\/calendar\/2026\/04\/10\/a-fringe-benefit\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Fringe Benefit<\/a>, promising an evening that is &#8220;more daring, decadent, and deliciously unpredictable than before&#8221; on April 10. The benefit is a way to raise money, but also to demonstrate what the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fringetheatre.ca\/festival\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival<\/a> is about.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We want people walking in that love us, and we also want people walking in that may not know us,&#8221; Utas said. &#8220;If we want to showcase the fun, weird, amazing place that we are, then we need to make sure that they get that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The fundraiser party started last year as part of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fringetheatre.ca\/give\/sustain-fringe\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sustain Fringe campaign<\/a>, seeking to help the festival recover from COVID-era losses by building a monthly donor program. By the end of the 2025 Fringe Festival, the donor base stood at 692. This year&#8217;s Fringe Festival returns from Aug. 13 to 23.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fringe Theatre is offering a workshop series to help artists succeed at its own festival. Launchpad consists of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":{"0":"post-529166","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-edmonton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}