ABSTRACT
A few months before the government-backed Capital Fund was established to finance the building of new theatres, a movement began which included among its many aims that of doing without 'theatres' altogether. Exactly when the Fringe began depends on the definition of 'fringe'. Some would argue that the fringe companies which emerged during the 1960s were a logical development from the little theatres before and after the war. The word 'fringe' was in use before 1963 in connection with the theatre, but it had different associations. The revue, Beyond the Fringe (1960), drew its tide from the many small companies which assembled at the Edinburgh Festival outside the main events. The small companies were the fringe and the revue was beyond them. Some 'fringe' companies at Edinburgh were professional, most were amateur or student companies; and they were all self-supponing. The concept of an 'all-the-yearround' fringe or of fringe theatre as an alternative to mainstream theatre was not then current. Later on in the 1960s, 'fringe' theatre became associated with the 'alternative' society, which might mean either an expression of political revolt (most noticeable in 1968, when the evenements de mai in Paris and the opposition to the Vietnam war in the United States provided a general Western momentum for political change, if not revolution) or the formulation of different life styles (communes rather than nuclear families) and cultures (pop-an, psychedelic experiences).
