How Brian Paisley built Edmonton Fringe into a festival that changed Canadian theatre

In 1988, Judy Lawrence was staying with friends in Kamloops, touring with a children's theatre troupe, when a man showed up unannounced at 8:30 a.m. at her door. Brian Paisley, the founder of Edmonton Fringe Festival, had somehow tracked her down. He interviewed her while she was still in her pyjamas for a job as assistant Fringe producer.

"Anybody who can handle an interview in her pyjamas is probably the right person for the job," Paisley remarked to her hosts on his way out.

That ability to size up people and take creative risks defined Paisley's approach to building the festival. Though he believed Edmonton had so much creative energy in the early 1980s that someone would have invented a Fringe-like gathering regardless, it's unlikely it would have been anywhere near as special or as durable without his mischievous spirit and boundless trust in artists.

"Brian was a great exploiter of the moment, with a talent for engaging people where they were," says Kenneth Brown, a longtime friend, prolific Fringe writer, director and actor. Brown recalls an incident when a tough-looking motorcycle gang rolled up on their Harleys and entered the beer garden Paisley had set up outside a fire hall on Whyte Avenue. Rather than chase them away, Paisley invited them to be a presence in the tent—turning potential conflict into community.

"Rather than make enemies of the guys, he made them feel like they had a place, indeed a function, on the Fringe grounds," Brown says. That move, Paisley converting Altamont vibes into Woodstock energy, may also deserve him credit as the originator of Edmonton's summer patio culture.

By 1992, when Paisley stepped down and handed the reins to Lawrence, the Fringe had become an Edmonton institution. It was a major economic driver for Old Strathcona and a springboard not just for a new kind of Canadian theatre but for a theatre audience willing to take chances on fresh voices and experimentation.

Paisley could have stayed on for decades more. "It took a lot of gumption for him to walk away from such a success," Brown reflects. "I never got the sense he felt burdened by the Fringe. He was from Northern Ireland, and he saw everything with a little irony. Even his own fame he took as a bit of a joke."

After stepping down, Paisley continued to write and direct for film and television, and eventually moved to southern Mexico. But he never fully stepped back—he helped establish Fringes across Canada, creating a circuit that extended his vision beyond Edmonton.