The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe were founded in 1997 by a growing group of experimental artists in Philadelphia who were manipulating traditional genres, redefining their crafts, and collaborating in ways that the greater art world had yet to see. After experiencing Festival Time in Edinburgh, Scotland, local arts producers Nick Stuccio and Eric Schoefer decided that Philadelphia was ready to join the international fringe movement.

In 1947, an esteemed group of European music and theater companies were invited to perform at the first annual Edinburgh International Festival, which was a state-sponsored effort to reunite post-war Europe through the arts. During that same week, eight uninvited theater groups descended on the festivities without warning, adopting and inventing venues that sat mostly on the fringes of the city's center, and thereby creating an unofficial festival of their own. And so the fringe was born. Today, the two festivals coexist peacefully. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe presents thousands of artists each year, and has inspired artists in cities all over the world to join the international fringe movement.

Festival Time in Edinburgh inspired Stuccio and Schoefer to create a much-needed venue for experimental artists of all kinds in Philadelphia. The first Festival took over the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia for five days in September of 1997 and featured sixty performance groups presenting their work in theaters, nightclubs, galleries, alley ways, and at least one parked car.

Since 1997, our organization has grown tremendously by galvanizing the energy and passion of the local performing arts community while reaching out to an ever-broadening network of nationally and internationally renowned artists who are forming the cutting-edge of performance world wide. The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe now present sixteen days of performing arts events each year, beginning on the Labor Day holiday weekend.