Every year around Fringe season you start hearing the same sentence again.
“People don’t go to theatre anymore.”
It sounds convincing. Streaming exists. Phones exist. Attention is shorter. Life is expensive. The explanation feels neat and modern.
And yet every August in Edinburgh people queue in the rain for a show they know almost nothing about. They stand on pavements listening to pitches. They compare scribbled notes on folded programmes like treasure maps. Venues run from morning to midnight. Late night buses are full of performers still half in costume.
The same pattern repeats elsewhere. Camden Fringe venues quietly fill with curious audiences who have taken a chance after work. Brighton Fringe turns cafes, pubs and back rooms into theatres for a month. People are still showing up.
So the real question isn’t “where have audiences gone?”
It’s: why do some shows find them easily, while others never find them at all?
Because the problem isn’t interest. It’s discovery.
There is no shortage of theatre. If anything, there is more than ever. Edinburgh alone hosts thousands of productions across comedy, drama, musical theatre, spoken word and everything in between. Camden and Brighton continue to grow, giving artists accessible spaces to present new work.
The supply is extraordinary. The visibility is not.
Audiences today live in recommendation culture. Almost every part of modern life is filtered through systems that help us choose. Streaming platforms suggest what to watch. Music apps learn our taste. Online shops rank products. Even restaurants come with hundreds of reviews before we step inside.
Fringe theatre still asks audiences to choose differently.
A brochure with thousands of listings.
A website that feels like a directory.
A flyer handed to you at speed on a busy street.
A show title and a 50-word description.
For seasoned Fringe-goers this is part of the adventure. For everyone else, it’s friction. Not because theatre is unappealing, but because the path to the right show is unclear.
When faced with too many choices, people don’t stop wanting theatre. They default to safety.
They pick a known name.
A familiar venue.
A recommendation from a friend.
Something they have already heard about.
That behaviour is human, not cultural decline.
This is where scale and marketing power quietly shape what gets seen.
Larger productions often arrive with established companies, PR teams, recognisable performers and advertising budgets. They generate early coverage. Early coverage generates early audiences. Early audiences create conversation. Conversation leads to more reviews. The momentum builds quickly.
There is nothing wrong with that. It is simply professional theatre doing what professional theatre does.
But it creates a visibility loop.
Meanwhile, a solo performer in a small room may have a remarkable script, a moving performance and a story that stays with you for years. What they may not have is marketing reach. No publicist. No early press. No immediate buzz.
The difference between the two shows is not necessarily quality.
It is discoverability.
Audiences often assume the most visible show is the best show because visibility signals legitimacy. Yet anyone who spends time at the Fringe knows some of the most memorable work happens in rooms you would never notice unless someone points you toward them.
This is also where reviews enter the picture.
Reviews were once guides. They helped audiences decide where to spend their limited time and money. At modern Fringe scale, however, only a fraction of productions receive coverage at all. Some shows receive multiple write-ups before opening weekend. Others run their entire performance schedule without a single review.
A show that isn’t reviewed isn’t rejected. It’s unseen.
From an audience perspective, a review functions less as a judgement and more as reassurance. It tells someone: a real person went, watched, and this is what you might experience. Without that reassurance, many simply won’t risk the ticket price when hundreds of alternatives exist.
So the narrative that audiences are abandoning Fringe theatre misses the point.
The audience is there. The curiosity is there. The appetite is there.
The bridge is fragile.
Fringe theatre doesn’t necessarily need fewer shows, and it doesn’t need harsher criticism. What it needs is navigation. Better signposting. More translation between artists and audiences.
Publications, bloggers, reviewers and word-of-mouth communities increasingly play that role. The job is no longer simply to judge whether a show is “good” or “bad”, but to help the right audience find the right performance. A thoughtful article, a recommendation, or even a single descriptive review can be the difference between an empty room and a full one.
That idea sits at the heart of what Theatre Village tries to do. Rather than ranking productions against each other, the aim is to describe what an audience will experience and who might connect with it. Not every show is for everyone, but every show is for someone, and sometimes all a production needs is to be found by the people who were already looking for it without knowing its name.
Audiences aren’t looking for “the best show.” They’re looking for the right show. The one that suits their taste, their mood, their sense of humour, or their emotional tolerance that day. The challenge is not convincing them theatre is worthwhile. It is helping them locate the performance they would genuinely love among thousands of possibilities.
When someone leaves a Fringe performance and tells a friend, “you would love this,” that is the moment the system works. A connection has been made. Not through advertising scale or venue size, but through guidance.
Fringe theatre does not have an audience problem. It has a discovery problem.
Artists are still making brave work. Audiences are still willing to take chances. Festivals in Edinburgh, Camden and Brighton continue to thrive with energy and creativity.
The task now is not to rescue interest in theatre.
It is to help people find each other.
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