FRANJE is an autonomous fringe festival. It takes advantage of another festival's publicity, and uninvited adds a fringe program.
FRANJE sees art as an essential means to shape our culture, to pass it on and to renew it. This is done by actions of individual artists who feel the need to question life. In doing so they express the spirit of the age, research its values and hereby help to shape a changing society.
FRANJE is it's not being part of any establishment. Innovation often starts in the periphery and needs to be fostered in a safe place over a long time before eventually entering (or even defining) the mainstream. Not all ideas survive, and their initial chances often heavily depend on arbitrary external conditions. FRANJE deliberately focuses on emerging ideas that are not (yet) part of well-established structures, offering an open stage without artistic selection as a place to try out and develop.
FRANJE doesn't discriminate. Not on quality, not on professional education, not on genre, not on theme. Everyone who has something to show can apply and will get a place for it, as far as the available locations allow; first come first serve. FRANJE assumes that artists who have invested years of energy and money in their works, have implicitly invested in their artistic development. FRANJE takes care of locations and publicity, the rest is up to the artist. Artists play on their own terms, manage their own technical conditions, decide on entrance fees and host their own audiences. And in the end the audience decides who will have success and who won't.
FRANJE is a festival where local and international artists meet, a place where art disciplines mingle, artists inspire each other, and audience and bookers can sneak a peak at tomorrow's art. FRANJE brings you performances that cannot be found elsewhere. Come and see theatrical experiments, try-outs, strange crossovers, controversial productions, short performances, etc. Meet the artists and witness their creative process.