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Fringe File, #30: Final Box Office Results for 2017

by Basil Considine -

A bar chart showing historical box office totals for the Minnesota Fringe Festival.

The Minnesota Fringe Festival announced the final statistics today for the 2017 Minnesota Fringe Festival. The 11-day festival brought in 46,076 butts-in-seats, spread across 860 performances of 167 shows at 17 venues in Minneapolis.

Why Count Butts-in-Seats?
Since 2016, the Minnesota Fringe Festival has used a daily wristband & pass + token system to track show attendance, eliminating single-admission ticket sales. Because wristbands are valid for a day and VIP+artist passes are valid for the whole festival, they do not by themselves show attendance. Instead, wristbands and passes are used to obtain tokens that are collected for each performance, providing an accurate measure of attendance for allocating box office revenue.

Box office sales for 2017 totaled $302,843. The Minnesota Fringe returns 70% of the box office to artists, and announced a collective payout of over $212,500. The average producer payout was approximately $1,270; individual show payouts ranged from $200 to more than $5,000.

Top 15 Shows: By Total Sales

  1. Couple Fight 3: Weddings!, presented by Weggel-Reed Productions.
  2. The Wright Stuff, or You’ll Believe They Can Fly!, presented by Outlandish Productions.
  3. Swords & Sorcery: The Improvised Fantasy Campaign, presented by Bearded Men Improv.
  4. Intermediate Physical Comedy for Advanced Beginners, presented by Comedy Suitcase.
  5. MEDUSA, presented by Vox Medusa with Infiammati FireCircus.
  6. Fruit Flies Like a Banana: WORLD TOUR, presented by The Fourth Wall.
  7. Jefferson Township Sparkling Junior Talent Pageant: A New Musical, presented by Devious Mechanics.
  8. DUNGEON, presented by Hit the Lights! Theater Co.
  9. Pinocchio, presented by Sheep Theater.
  10. The Memory Box of the Sisters Fox, presented by The Winding Sheet Outfit.
  11. The Mysterious Old Radio Listening Society, presented by Ghoulish Delights.
  12. RomCom-Con: A Meet-Cute Musical, presented by August Moon Productions.
  13. Blackout Improv, presented by Rogue Gallery Arts.
  14. Death in Yosemite: A comedic adaptation of the Non-Fiction Book, presented by Rooftop Theatre Company.
  15. Lettres et Café, presented by Bad Mime Productions.

Top 15 Shows: By Capacity

  1. A Pickle, presented by Really Spicy Opera.
  2. It Can’t Happen Here, presented by Sinclair Lewis Productions.
  3. Sevlin & Devlin Presents: Seven Evans in Heaven, presented by Ferrari McSpeedy Theatrical Production.
  4. The Buttslasher, presented by New Endeavors.
  5. Hot Air, presented by SCHMAGENCY.
  6. The Ballad of Bearclaw Jones, presented by Jacobin Grille.
  7. BOOMBOX. a (sort of) solo show, presented by Hannah Starr.
  8. Live From New York, He’s a Prom Date!, presented by Side by Side.
  9. On The Exhale, presented by Market Garden Theatre.
  10. The Memory Box of the Sisters Fox, presented by The Winding Sheet Outfit.
  11. Couple Fight 3: Weddings!, presented by Weggel-Reed Production.
  12. A Resister’s Handbook (for holding onto optimism in shitty times), presented by minnerican productions.
  13. Waiting for Gygax, presented by Hot Chocolate Media.
  14. Blackout Improv, presented by Rogues Gallery Arts.
  15. Pope Joan, presented by Featherstone Creative.

Twenty-five of these shows – those with the highest total sales and capacity – had at least one sold-out performance.

The 2017 encore winners were:

  • A Pickle, presented by Really Spicy Opera.
  • Absurd Advice, presented by Hill-Murray Theatre.
  • Blackout Improv, presented by Rogues Gallery Arts.
  • BOOMBOX. a (sort of) solo show, presented by Hannah Starr.
  • Broad Sex in the Twin Cities, presented by GIRL Theatre.
  • De Hjerteløse (The Heartless), presented by WAR Theater.
  • DUNGEON, presented by Hit the Lights! Theatre Co.
  • Fruit Flies Like a Banana: WORLD TOUR, presented by the Fourth Wall.
  • Hot Air, presented by SCHMAGENCY.
  • Intermediate Physical Comedy for Advanced Beginners, presented by Comedy Suitcase.
  • Mayor Lear of Townsville, presented by Play-Dot.
  • RomCom-Con: A Meet Cute Musical, presented by August Moon Productions.
  • The Memory Box of the Sisters Fox, presented by The Winding Sheet Outfit.
  • The Wright Stuff, or You’ll Believe They Can Fly, presented by Outlandish Productions.
  • The Zoo Story (new version), presented by Mortimer Productions.

The 2018 Minnesota Fringe Festival, the festival’s 25th annual offering, will take place August 2-12, 2018.

Basil Considine
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