For decades now, the Fringe model has been one of the most important engines of live performance in the world. What began in 1947 as a scrappy rebellion against the formal programming of the Edinburgh International Festival has grown into a global movement of open-access festivals where artists can experiment, audiences can discover new voices, and strange ideas are actively encouraged.
That spirit arrives in India with the Mumbai Fringe Festival today, a four-day event running until 15 March across venues in Bandra and Khar. The inaugural edition will feature international acts as well as local talent, bringing together theatre makers, comedians and experimental performers. Audiences can expect a mix of classic storytelling, physical comedy and some very inventive solo theatre.
Paul Goodwin’s one-man adaptation of Macbeth, for instance, looks particularly interesting. Rather than recreating Shakespeare’s tragedy with elaborate costumes and props, Goodwin’s version strips the play down to its absolute essentials. The hour-long performance focuses on the psychological arc of the characters, built through text, movement and a rich soundscape. “You will find no daggers, or crowns, or blood—no props, no set,” Goodwin explains. “Shakespeare that is pared down, but not dumbed down, distilled but not diluted.”
That psychological approach is deliberate. During the development process, Goodwin and his movement director drew on interpretations of the play that treat Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as complementary halves of the same psyche. For Goodwin, Shakespeare’s work has never been about spectacle anyway. “For me Shakespeare has never been about big sets and massive supporting casts,” he says. “It’s about the depths of the human experience that the plays express.”
If Shakespearean tragedy sounds a bit intense, the festival programme also veers into much stranger comedic territory. David Hoskin’s A Haunted House is a comedy-horror mime show that begins with a simple premise: the audience arrives at a large Gothic mansion after their car breaks down, only to be invited inside by the building’s caretaker for a guided tour. Things, naturally, start to go wrong.
During the tour, audiences encounter the mansion’s many inhabitants—“some living, some dead, and some… well, something unexpected,” Hoskin says. The show blends clowning, mime and audience interaction, drawing heavily from European physical comedy traditions. The structure, Hoskin notes, actually borrows a lot from horror storytelling. “Both horror and comedy rely on tension and expectation,” he explains. “In horror the tension builds toward a scare. In comedy the payoff is a laugh.” The challenge, he adds, is getting that balance right.
Then there’s Nigel Miles-Thomas’s Sherlock Holmes: The Last Act, which imagines the legendary detective in the final chapter of his life. The one-man play sees Holmes reflecting on his career, the mysteries he solved and the personal costs of dedicating an entire life to the pursuit of truth. “It’s an intimate piece about legacy and memory,” Miles-Thomas says, noting that while the show leans into drama, Holmes’ famously dry wit is never far from the surface.
Miles-Thomas is no stranger to the Fringe circuit, having performed at the Edinburgh Fringe nearly 30 times over the course of his career. That experience has taught him to expect the unexpected from festival audiences. “Fringe crowds can be wonderfully unpredictable,” he says. Though he does have one small request for Mumbai viewers: that they disconnect from their phones long enough to fully experience the show.
For the performers themselves, the appeal of a Fringe festival goes beyond just the stage time. Goodwin, who has previously directed workshops in India, says he’s particularly excited about interacting with younger theatre artists. When he first visited the country to work with Thespo participants, he was struck by the energy and ambition of emerging performers. The Fringe model, he hopes, might encourage more artists to create their own work.
“I hope a few people walk away from my show thinking, ‘I had no idea Shakespeare could speak to me,’” he says. “Maybe they’ll even feel inspired to make their own show for next year’s Fringe.”
In addition to these international acts, Indian comedians including Kanan Gill, Urooj Ashfaq, Shamik Chakrabarti, Tarang Hardikar, Varun Grover, Navin Noronha’s Queer Rated Comedy and Shreeja Chaturvedi are on the bill.
You can get your tickets here.
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