category: live performance
edition: 2009-2015

In 2009, the Fondazione Campania dei Festival launched a new project of cultural production, whose mission was to promote an alternative take of Napoli Teatro Festival Italia: an “independent” festival happening in parallel to the official one. “E45 Napoli Fringe Festival” took its name from the route that crosses Europe, from Finland to Sicily, passing through Napoli, and was inspired by the international Fringe festivals. “E45” introduced the new voices of the theatrical scene to the audience, guaranteeing all the participants – both individual artists and companies – the promotional support in all the information materials of Napoli Teatro Festival Italia. It also made available to them the theaters, open spaces, and non-theatrical venues involved in the program, as well as their technical equipment. 

The artists and companies that developed the first edition of “E45 Napoli Fringe Festival” – which in 2009 staged twenty-seven shows for a total of seventy-one performances – were selected from proposals that found no space in the official program of Napoli Teatro Festival Italia. The 2010 edition, instead, relied on a national and international tender that attracted more than two hundred, seventy companies from the United States, Brazil, Russia, Spain, Belgium, France, and Great Britain, as well as Italy. The submissions were selected by an artistic committee comprising of Neapolitan associations, theaters, and galleries. Fringe 2010’s program featured thirty-nine projects for a total of seventy-one performances. 

The selection of proposals via a tender returned in the 2011, 2012, and 2013 editions.