The Toronto Fringe is heading south down Bathurst. This larger location — the biggest footprint ever for a Fringe Club — will mean an expansion of its beer gardens, which after dark become a major hangout for the arts community or, as Straughan calls them, “hardcore Fringers.” Shipping containers will double as the bars themselves, an approach that builds on Scadding Court’s Market 707 along Dundas St., at which community vendors sell food out of converted containers. Following a seventh and final festive year in Honest Ed’s Alley, the Fringe Club — the indie theatre festival’s social headquarters — will be located from 2017 on at Scadding Court Community Centre at Bathurst and Dundas Sts., which will be transformed, in the Fringe’s words, into an “urban playground.”The move is necessary because of the upcoming closure of Honest Ed’s discount store, part of the transformation of the southwest corner of Bloor and Bathurst into a new large-scale commercial-residential project. For Fringe executive director Kelly Straughan, the move is also an inevitable result of the 28-year-old festival’s ongoing growth: “one step further” in the progress from its early social headquarters at the Tranzac Club on Brunswick Ave. to the parking lot behind Honest Ed’s where the club has been held since 2010 and now to Scadding Court, which include a large parking lot and a dry pad (in winter, an ice rink).

Source: thestar June 29, 2016 15:22 UTC