The Hollywood Fringe Festival

Robert Whirry is a self-employed grant writer and program developer with over 25 years of experience assisting health care and human services organizations such as the California HIV/AIDS Research Program and Asian American Drug Abuse Program. Based in Los Angeles, Robert Whirry co-authored Anita Bryant's Playboy Interview, a play that debuted as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival (HFF).

Held annually in June, HFF promotes complete freedom of expression through the arts and features projects highlighting diverse and cutting-edge viewpoints. Genres included at HFF range from family programming and performance art to circus and comedy acts. All projects are self-produced by the artists and 100 percent of the festival's revenue goes back to both the artists and venues. More than $1.8 million has been generated since the first festival in 2010. 

In addition to independent artistic projects, the festival features educational events and an award ceremony. Interested viewers can access footage from previous festivals through FringeTV, the nonprofit organization's YouTube channel. The 2017 festival takes place on June 8-25.

Sponsoring an Award at the Hollywood Fringe Festival

 


For more than 25 years, Robert Whirry has helped nonprofit groups and government agencies develop and improve health and human services programs as a self-employed consultant. Also active in the theater, Robert Whirry cowrote the play Anita Bryant’s Playboy Interview, which ran at the Hollywood Fringe Festival.

Rooted in the fringe performing arts tradition dating back to 1940s Scotland, the Hollywood Fringe Festival is an open-access annual festival serving as a venue for hundreds of performing arts groups and individuals from Los Angeles and around the world. Unlike many performance art festivals, the Hollywood Fringe Festival gives back 100 percent of its revenue to the performers. Since 2010, this amount has totaled more than $1.3 million.

One of the unique aspects of fringe festivals is the large number of awards given out to participants. Many of these awards are proposed and sponsored by local organizations and are a great way for companies to show their support for local arts. In order to sponsor an award for the 2017 Hollywood Fringe Festival, an organization must be an LLC, LLP, or other form of incorporated body. Additionally, sponsoring organizations must have a representative in attendance at the festival to present the award, which does not need to include financial remuneration.

The deadline for proposing an award for the 2017 festival is May 1, 2017. For more information on award guidelines, please visit www.hollywoodfringe.org.