WHAT IS MILANO OFF FRINGE 

The Milano Off Fringe Festival is a celebration of Off theater and performing arts; a Festival not just in the city, but of the city. The festival aims to achieve the maximum involvement of Milan's cultural fabric, as an artistic project that increases territorial marketing, and non-seasonal tourism.

The mission of MI OFF has stayed the same since its inception in 2016: increase the Gross Domestic Happiness (FIL).

FIL for our audience: to explore the city feeling like a tourist, and to take advantage of a unique opportunity to discover a vast array of artistic proposals.

FIL for our artists: to make direct contact with the Milanese audience, international industry members, fellow artists, and local students; to move towards a path of international growth.

The idea of creating a Fringe Festival comes from Francesca Vitale and Renato Lombardo. It arose from an agreement signed in 2015 with then-OFF D'AVIGNON Festival-president Greg Germain, in order to create a twin Festival in Milan ("Milano OFF") that would adopt the Avignon festival model, including all of its collateral events such as Focus panels and professional courses for artists.

Over time, relationships and partnerships were established with Fringes around the world - Adelaide, Orlando, Hollywood, New York, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Edinburgh - and Milano Off became a lasting part of the World Fringe Community.

THE FIFTH EDITION - OUR CONCEPT

The fifth edition of the Milano Off Fringe Festival offers the city an inclusive program of varied performances without geographical, genre, or thematic limits.

This year, Milano OFF will travel through several neighborhoods from the city center to the suburbs, and will be present in most of Milan's municipalities, making it a truly widespread Festival covering most of the city.

The concept of the new edition is the UNDERGROUND.

After going towards the moon due to the pandemic, and after landing on earth in a hot air balloon in 2022, this year we enter the heart of the city through the subway. This highly symbolic image represents energy, vitality, movement, and connection; it’s also a symbol of efficient and reliable post-modern world capitals like New York, Tokyo, London, Paris, and Milan.

It’s both a means of transportation and a place with many places at the same time.

Milan, the hidden, invisible city, is also represented in courtyards waiting to be discovered, by abandoned and forgotten places and spaces, and by public and social housing districts that are often disconnected from the city center.

And the theme of hidden, underground cities is very much in line with Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities," a famous Italian author who would have turned 100 this year.

Hence the idea of combining these two topics, to explore the theme of the city and to reach its inhabitants in its underground.

THE FOUR SECTIONS OF THE FESTIVAL 

MILANO IN - Milano Off will officially open in a prestigious and emblematic space of Milanese culture, where, in the presence of the “Testimonial” speakers, the 2023 festival and selected artists from all over the world take part in it will be presented to the city.

MILANO OFF FRINGE - Professional companies from all over Italy and abroad, after being selected by a panel of experts, will fill the city with shows in a vast array of artistic genres and in different languages, performing in the various locations of the Festival.

VILLAGE OFF - The Village is the center and heart of the Festival; a meeting point for artists, industry professionals, and audiences, as well as a place for exhibitions, meetings and focus panels and much more.

OFF-OFF MILANO - The most atypical part of our festival. Numerous events will be distributed in the different participating spaces around the city. Book presentations, mini-conferences on the themes and topics of the fringe performances,project presentations, ideas, exhibitions, concerts... A real journey through the archipelago of the "islands'' of theater and culture.

FRINGE OFF NETWORK

Milano Off Fringe Festival presents to all industry professionals the chance to participate in the worldwide FRINGE NETWORK.

Thanks to a complex network of involved theaters, operators, and national and international partners, this edition offers participating companies the opportunity through various selection prizes to enter into an international circuit on privileged terms with their show.

A unique opportunity for the companies participating in the festival.

"Many people work together to bring together theatrical and performative spaces: national and international theater companies and operators, off-the-beaten-track artists, staff, journalists, technicians, philosophers, politicians, merchants, volunteers, and anyone who chooses to contribute to this beautiful collective art form.

But all of this togetherness is empty without the applause of the audience. It’s the only true and essential driving force which makes this incredible ensemble move, which sends artists back into the orbit of creation and allows new emotions to take their ideal form when shared. Because alone, we are just a point in nothingness."