Your 2025 Guide to the Sixth Annual Denver Fringe Festival

“We received more applications than ever before,” says Ann Sabbah, executive director and founder of the nonprofit Denver Fringe. “That just confirms that what we're providing is of value, and people are ready to engage with this Fringe platform.”

Sabbah was first inspired to launch the festival after attending the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017 and witnessing firsthand how transformative it could be for both audiences and artists. "The spirit of Fringe is an ethos of equity for all," Sabbah says.

In its Denver incarnation, Fringe has grown into a grassroots cultural force, built on the same foundation as its international predecessors: unjuried, uncensored performances that push boundaries and invite creative risk. Artists apply with ideas at every stage of development, and audiences show up not quite sure what to expect but knowing they’ll find something unlike anything else in town.

“Fringe is about breaking barriers and giving independent artists a platform to incubate their ideas,” Sabbah says. “We strive to create equity in the arts, ensuring that creative expression is something everyone can access, whether on stage or in the audience. This is art for the people, by the people, building connection and community along the way.”

That inclusive spirit continues to power Fringe’s rapid expansion. This year, the festival received over 130 applications from artists eager to take part in what has become one of the largest unjuried performance festivals in the region. Whether you’re into queer burlesque, clown ballets or puppets, you’ll find something that stretches your imagination and maybe your comfort zone.

If you're new to Fringe or just need a strategy for navigating the sprawling festival, here’s the guide you need to know to make the most of the madness.

2025 Denver Fringe Festival Lineup

This year’s Fringe lineup is wildly eclectic, with works ranging from stripped-down solo storytelling to extravagant aerial productions. New works explore queerness, neurodivergence, reproductive politics, AI anxiety and pretty much every other topic you won’t find in a traditional theater season.

"The process for selecting shows is always a combination of lottery and strategy to figure out how we can support the most artists and the most productions every year," Sabbah says. "It's really that range that truly makes me the most excited. I always love seeing how many different experiences we're able to offer people."

Meat Show in Space is a standout example of the festival’s signature blend of absurdity. Performer Alice Gillette stars as a trash-collecting astronaut in a cracked helmet, desperate for the stars to remember her as more than space junk. The show is staged in male drag and dripping with satire.

“Clowning, by its nature, is political," Gillette says. "It makes the implicit explicit, turning dysfunction into spectacle. Everything matters to Meat Show: every lie, every mess, every last scrap of hope.”

Other ambitious offerings include Spectacle: The Habits and Hobbies of Dictators, a puppet-driven dinner party nightmare that explores the rituals of authoritarian leaders, and Ben Franklin Sex Party, a historical farce where the founding father time-travels to confront modern sexual repression and fascism.

The best way to explore it all is by using the searchable schedule on the organization's website. Tickets are $20 per show or $95 for a Festival Pass that grants access to any performance (space permitting). You can also take advantage of the Fringe With Friends discount, which offers 10% off when you buy four or more tickets to the same show.

Where is Denver Fringe Festival?

The festival continues to sprawl creatively as well as geographically. While core venues like RedLine, RISE Comedy and Savoy Denver return, several new spaces are joining the lineup.

These include Hope Tank, a social enterprise storefront in Whittier; Manos Sagrados, a community venue in Aurora; the Shop at MATTER, a bookstore and creative playground in LoDo; and the Learned Lemur, a quirky Colfax oddities shop that doubles as a late-night performance spot.

"We’ve got nineteen announced venues, but we will have other locations as part of our Free-For-All program," Sabbah says. "For example, we're going to have eight to ten other locations where you can catch pop-up performances or shows. It’s been a really organic process of growing. We're not really trying to grow to a certain size at a certain rate or anything like that. It's really much more of a responsiveness to the local creative communities’ needs."

The expansion has allowed Fringe to accommodate more styles and sizes of work. Cleo Parker Robinson Dance is hosting large-scale pieces like Galaxias: Find Your Universe, a circus-inspired odyssey across space and imagination. Meanwhile, Hope Tank offers a more intimate setting for personal, interactive performances like Voices in My Head, where audience choices determine the direction of the story.

"I love that Fringe brings such a wide variety of performances — things you wouldn’t normally find or expect,” says Bruce Trujillo from the newly opened community arts venue Manos Sagrados. “It’s a chance to discover something unique, and that makes the whole experience exciting and fresh."

Bring the Kids to Denver Fringe

The festival’s family-friendly programming also expands in 2025. KidsFringe, the free two-day mini-festival geared toward children and families, will take place June 7 and 8 with shows at both the Savoy Denver and the People’s Building in Aurora. Featured shows include Sickly Victorian Rat Circus, PreTend Friend Show, The Big Bug Adventure (in both English and Spanish) and The Swashbuckling Adventures of Pirate Zeb.

"One of our goals with Kids Fringe is to make sure we reach kids who don't have as many opportunities to see live performances," Sabbah says. "We believe that young arts lovers become future arts supporters, so it's just the idea that you get kids exposed to interesting artwork and performance when they're young and they carry that with them. We're hoping to reach audiences in Aurora who may not have access to a lot of great live theater."

Denver Fringe Festival Things to See: FringeART, Free Events

Fringe may be rooted in performance, but its impact extends beyond the stage. Now in its second year, FringeART brings together a compelling mix of visual works across two spaces. The first half of the exhibit is already on view at the People’s Building in Aurora and will remain up through the end of June. The second launches Sunday, June 2, at the Truss House in RiNo Art Park. Unlike traditional curated shows, FringeART has no theme.

"We didn't set too many requirements," Sabbah says. "It's just sort of like a beautiful collection of artwork that represents what a lot of people are thinking about and doing these days."

That same ethos informs the Fringe Free-For-All, a series of pop-up street performances and free events scattered across RiNo, Five Points and beyond. It’s not just a supplement to the ticketed program — it’s part of the core mission to bring art to unexpected places and people.

Highlights include UnProfessional Magic, a whiskey-soaked sleight-of-hand act with just enough chaos to feel dangerous, and Bad Bubblegum Improv, a fan-favorite local troupe popping up with a set at BrewDog. Friday's First Friday celebration at Truss House features a free performance of The Offering, a dramatic, seafaring epic combining cello, rap and poetry from Mariel Roberts Musa and Omar Musa.

Whether you’re into clown duos, aerial acrobatics or improvised musicals about your life, the Free-For-All ensures that no one gets priced out of experiencing what Fringe has to offer.

A Festival for the Moment

Underneath the glitter, absurdity and chaos, Denver Fringe holds space for something deeper: the freedom to say what needs to be said. As artists across the country face mounting censorship, defunding and ideological scrutiny, Sabbah sees Fringe as a vital antidote.

“As humans, we shape our world and define our culture by the stories we tell,” she says. “Fringe gives artists the platform to share those stories and that makes our culture stronger, more compassionate and more resilient.”

That mission has taken on new urgency in 2025, as a second Trump administration and ongoing federal cuts to the arts create new barriers for many creatives. Sabbah says that reality is reflected in this year’s programming, which contains a wave of work responding directly to the political climate.

“There’s a lot of artistic response this year,” she notes. “It’s uplifting. It’s challenging. It’s cathartic; it’s entertaining. It’s all of those things because there are a lot of different ways to respond to this political moment.”

What links these pieces isn’t style or subject — it’s perspective. In an era when entrenched institutions shape most narratives, Fringe provides something far more radical: a platform for artists to decide what matters.

“Fringe puts the control in the hands of the tellers and that's one of the most important things in this political landscape: that the artists are able to control the narrative,” Sabbah says. “The Fringe allows us to hear creative voices that we would not have heard otherwise, which is why it is so important because a beautiful diversity of voices strengthens the fabric of our culture.”

Denver Fringe Festival, Wednesday, June 4, through Sunday, June 8. Find tickets, times and more information at denverfringe.org.