Help · Happy Fringe

Plan your first week

Five steps, start to finish. Nothing to sign up for, and nothing is lost if you close the tab halfway.

On Pick shows, find something you would hate to miss. Press Add on its row and choose Must, Want, Would or Won't.
On Shape your days, turn on the days you can actually get out, and set From and Until on each one.
Still on that page, use Add a commitment for anything already in your calendar — dinner, a shift, meeting someone.
On Your plan, press Build my Fringe. Several plans come back; the first one is readable before the last one lands.
Choose the column that suits you, then open Save / Share to print it, download it, move it to your phone or send it.

In a hurry: the Welcome page offers four ready-made shapes — Festival sampler, Easy evenings, Family matinee and Late-night laughs. Each one fills in random shows that meet its stated timing and genre rules, not a curated list. Random picks instead lets you choose a count from the whole program; those arrive as would-see choices so you can promote or remove them. See an example plan on Your plan loads a separate repeatable demo shortlist with mixed priorities.

The five steps across the top are a stepper, not a queue: you can jump between them in any order. Once you have started, the strip under them keeps a running count of where you stand.

Find shows worth your time

The program is the festival's own: 1,563 scheduled performances across 37 venues and 11 days.

Search

Search shows, artists, credits, venues also matches a genre, audience rating, content warning and the words in a blurb. The line beside it counts what survives — Showing 27 of the current program.

Narrow it down

Under the search box the filters come in two groups. What kind of show holds Genre, Length and Price; Where and when holds Area and Playing on. A menu that is narrowing the program is written in the same colour as your own choices, so you can see at a glance which ones are on.

Clear filters appears in the line beside the search box as soon as any of those five, or a content-warning group below, is set, and clears the lot. It does not change what Show in the program is set to.

Leave out what you would rather not see

Leave out shows with (content warnings) starts closed, so the topics are not printed across the top of the program before you have asked for them. Open it and there are eight groups: sexual violence; sex and nudity; strong language; violence; death, grief and suicide; mental illness; drugs and alcohol; and strobe, haze and loud noise. Turn one on and every show carrying a warning in that group drops out of the list. The closed row then says how many groups you have left out.

The groups are ours. The wording inside a show is the festival's: open a row with the arrow at its end and you get the blurb, the dates, and Content warnings, in the festival's own words — the festival's own phrases, unedited.

Say how much you want it

Must: Make it happen if there is any clean way to fit it.
Want: Yes, as long as it doesn't cost you a must-see.
Would: Nice extra if there is room after musts and wants.
Won't: Not this time. We'll leave it out.

Your must-sees are settled before anything else is looked at, whichever plan style you are reading. If too much is competing, moving one must-see down to a want frees the week more than any other single change.

Your list sits above the program and names everything you have marked, so you can re-rank the lot without scrolling. Marking a show does not move it: it stays in the program where you found it, with your choice on its row. Show in the program, beside that list, narrows the program to what you have picked, or to one priority at a time.

See a show twice

Once a show is on your list its row grows a Times counter. 1 = see it once; you can go up to every scheduled performance of that show. Each repeat is worth less to the plan than the first, so it gives way to a show you have not seen at all.

Say when you're free

One window a day

Every festival day has a checkbox and a From and Until. A day that is off gets nothing scheduled on it. The bar beside each day draws that window on a 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. clock, with the heavy mark at midnight, so you can see which days are wide and which are a sliver before reading a single time.

Under Set every day at once there are three buttons that shape the whole festival: Apply after-work evenings, Apply weekend focus and Apply late-night run. Reset days puts them back.

One window per day, not two. If you are free 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and again from 7 p.m., there is no way to say that directly. Set the wider window and add a commitment over the middle of it — that is the same thing to the planner, and it is the only way to express it today.

Nights that run past midnight

A time field cannot say whether 1:00 is before your start or after it. When the two readings genuinely differ, a runs past midnight checkbox appears beside the times. Tick it and Until 1:00 means 1 a.m. the following morning; the day's bar stretches to match.

Anywhere a time lands after midnight, the planner writes it out — 12:20 a.m. (next day) — rather than leaving you to work out which night it belongs to.

A commitment in the small hours belongs to the night before, so write it on the date it really happens. An after-party entered on the 14th at 12:30 a.m. blocks the night of the 13th, and a show on the 13th ending at 1:14 a.m. runs into it. Entered on the 13th instead, that same 12:30 a.m. would block the night of the 12th.

Things already in your calendar

Add a commitment on any open day. Give it a name, a start and an end. Where is it takes Doesn't matter, In a particular area or At a particular venue.

A commitment with no place blocks the time and nothing else. Give it an area or a venue and the walk there and back is counted too, so the show before it and the show after it have to be reachable.

A day or a commitment that ends before it starts is called out where you typed it, and nothing will build until it is fixed.

A time cannot be left blank. Clear one mid-edit and the planner keeps the time that was there and says so, rather than guessing at a default or saving half a clock — type the new time over it.

Settings that shape the whole week

Breathing room between shows is minutes on top of the walk — time for a snack, a washroom, or stopping to watch a busker. Zero up to an hour.

Ticket budget is a cap on what the whole plan costs. Leave it blank and cost is ignored entirely.

Prefer area is set on a particular day. It is a soft choice: the planner favours shows there without dropping a higher-priority show that only works elsewhere. Reduce travel between areas applies across the week and discourages crossing out of one neighbourhood and back again.

Longer trips between areas stays on the walking-safe automatic plan unless you say a bike, shared scooter, car or rideshare is available. Those choices are only used when they improve a genuinely long trip, and include time to get and leave the ride.

Choose between the plans you're offered

Build my Fringe searches four ways at once and hands you the results side by side: Balanced, Fewest festival days, Least hanging around and Fewest shows per day.

Two styles can land on exactly the same week. When they do, the plan says so rather than showing you the same column twice.

Each column header names what that plan is and what makes it different. Choose a column to see that plan in full; the arrow keys move between them. The leftmost column is the baseline every comparison is phrased against.

When only one plan comes back there is no table to read. You get the same facts about that one week instead — days out, busiest day, waiting, getting around, and what it costs.

Shuffle options keeps your shortlist, open days, commitments and planning rules, but looks away from the exact performance times already offered. It never drops stronger-priority coverage for novelty. When the same weeks return, your constraints leave no comparably strong alternative.

What each row means

Must-sees: How many of your must-sees this plan gets you, out of how many you asked for.
Also seeing: Your wants and woulds, added together.
Only in this one: Shows this column gets you that no other column does.
Days out: How many festival days it uses.
Busiest day: The most shows it puts into any single day.
Waiting between shows: Time standing around over the whole week, past the breathing room you asked for.
Getting around: What the week asks of you: trips by car or bus, walks between venues, and stays in the same building.
Tight connections: Handoffs where you have less slack than you asked for and have to leave promptly.
Latest night: When the last show of the whole week comes down.
Tickets: What the plan costs in total, including held tickets and tickets still to buy.

No cell is marked as the winner. Four of those rows have no better direction — fewer days out is not better than more, it is what somebody asked for — and picking a favourite in the rest would be the planner making your choice for you.

The two notes under the table

Compared with the leftmost plan lists what the column you chose does differently: more of a priority, fewer days, more waiting, a different cost.

Where this one is tight appears when something is only just working: proposed tickets just inside the budget allowance, held tickets already over the cap, specifically counted connections tighter than the breathing room you asked for, walks that cross between neighbourhoods, or a venue off the festival grounds.

Read your day

Each day opens with its date and its verdict — how many shows, what they cost, and when you are done. Under that, the day in order.

The time is the anchor. Every stop leads with when it starts, then the title, the venue and its area, the start and end, the price, and how much you wanted it.
The walk belongs to the stop it leads into, on the line above it — for instance about 7 min on foot, all in the same corner of the grounds · 53 min spare. Same room, same building, on foot, or by car or bus: it says which, and how much slack you have when you get there. The estimate itself is a link to the route on a map.
A tight connection says so on the end of that same line — TIGHT · 2 min short. Leave as it ends. It is in the plan because it is makeable, not because it is comfortable.
Free time is time with nothing in it — 45 min free, and where to spend it. Only ever inside one day: the hours between the last show of one night and the first of the next are not a gap you are standing around in. Add something here can reserve the time or look for another performance that fits wholly inside it.
A late finish is written 12:20 a.m. (next day), so a show that ends after midnight stays on the night it belongs to.
Anything you booked shows up in the day where it sits, in the words you gave it.
A performance that is sold out now only remains on the schedule when you already marked that exact performance as bought.

Add a show inside free time

Press Add something here on a free window, then Find a show. The list leaves out performances already in your week, ones you marked seen, and sold-out times. Nearby and normally available choices come first.

Choose Try it to preview that exact performance in your week. You will see anything that moves, tightens or comes out before deciding whether to accept it.

If the time is for dinner, a meeting or anything else that is not a show, choose Block this time instead.

Mark performances seen

Mark seen records the exact performance, not just the show. If that time is not ticketed, choose the date and time you actually attended. That matters when plans change and for anyone attending the same show more than once. If the time is no longer known, choose I saw it, but don't know when. It counts as one completed visit without inventing a date or venue. Press Seen again, or choose a time already marked Seen, to undo it.

Seen history stays on this device. It is not included in planner drafts, shared links, tickets, pins or Undo. Marking something seen leaves your current week in place.

Find what starts soon

Open What's On to find performances starting in the next two hours. During the festival it starts from the current Edmonton time; otherwise, choose a festival day and time.

You can look two, three or four hours ahead and prefer an area. Sold-out performances are marked Sold out. Use Mark seen to update the same performance history as your itinerary.

Change one thing without losing the rest

Any single stop can be nudged without rebuilding the week around it. On a stop, where the festival's own schedule allows it:

Move to another day — a performance on a different day. This is the one you will reach for, because a Fringe show almost always plays once a day: in this year's program a show runs on eight days on average, and only thirteen of them ever play twice in one day.
Find another time — a different performance on the same day. It only appears on the handful of shows that play twice that day, and where it appears the stop names the other time: It also plays at 9:30 p.m. on Sun, Aug 16. Even then, it will move the show to another day rather than give up if the second slot on the day cannot be made to fit.
Drop this show — off the plan and off your list. On a show you asked to see more than once it reads Drop this visit and takes only that one.

They sit on the same line as the ticket tick under each stop, on every device. Where a move cannot be made at all, the reason is beside it in a sentence about the festival — "The Song Collector only plays on Fri, Aug 14."

On any stretch of free time, I need this time turns the gap into a commitment. Name it, adjust the times, and press Work it in.

Nudges are offered only while the plan on screen is the plan your choices describe. If you have changed a show or a day since it was built, rebuild first — otherwise a nudge would be answering a question you have already moved past.

Nothing changes until you take it

The answer arrives under the stop or the gap you asked from, and the plan below it does not move. It comes back one of four ways:

A clean swap: It moved and nothing else had to.
Possible, at a price: It moved, and here is what the rest of the week pays for it.
Only one way to do it: There is a single arrangement that works, and this is the trade it makes.
It can't move: What is standing in the way, named. There is no plan to take, and that is an answer rather than a failure.

Take this plan keeps it. Keep what I had leaves the week exactly as it was — when there is nothing to take, that button reads Close instead.

Once you have taken an offer, the planner holds those performances where you put them while you keep nudging. Build my Fringe starts fresh and lets them go — the plan says how many it is holding, so you know what you would be giving up.

When a show won't fit

What didn't fit is one row per show: what it was, how much of it you asked for, why it did not make the plan, and what you can do about it. The reason is about that show, not about the week in general.

It only plays on festival days you turned off.: None of its performances land on an enabled day. Open one of its days back on Shape your days.
The nearest performance is outside the hours you're free.: The day is enabled, but its From/Until window excludes the performance. Widen that day's hours on Shape your days.
Every performance clashes with something you have already booked.: Its performances run into a commitment. Move what you have booked and it can go in.
Every performance that fits your days is already in this plan.: You asked to see it more times than the festival is playing it inside your days.
Every performance clashes with something else in your week, or with the walk to get there.: There is no room left: each performance runs into another show, into the walk between venues, or into the breathing room you asked for.
Every performance that fit your plan was sold out when we checked.: Sold out in our snapshot. The Fringe does not sell at the door, so this one probably needs a different week.
It fits your schedule, but not your budget.: The row says roughly how much more you would need.
Another show you ranked higher took the slot.: The time it needed went to something you wanted more.

Where forcing it in is possible at all — no room, over budget, or outranked — the row offers See it anyway. That builds the week again with this show ahead of everything else, and shows you what it costs before you take it.

The other reasons get no button, on purpose. A day you are not free and a commitment you have already made are facts about your life rather than rankings, and no amount of forcing moves them — so the row tells you the one change that actually would.

See the shape of your week

Week at a glance puts all 11 days side by side against the time of day. Each block is a real show at its real time, and its height is how long it runs.

Blue blocks are shows. Yellow strips are the time spent getting to the next one. Red appears only on a connection that is tight, while time you entered yourself is hatched. The same colour key carries into a shared week picture; your private commitments are left out of that image.

Point at a block, or tab through them, and the line under the grid names the show. Table gives you the same week as a table instead: shows per day, first curtain, last one out, whether the evening is free, what the getting around looks like, and what is on.

Once you have tickets

Mark I have tickets on a stop once you have actually bought for it. That is per performance, not per show: thirteen shows this year play twice in one day, and a ticket for the Saturday matinee says nothing about the evening.

A ticketed performance stops being something the planner may reconsider. It stays put through a rebuild, through changing your days, through dropping the show from your list, even through a day you turn off — the planner will build the rest of the week around it rather than move it. That is the point: you have paid, so it is no longer a preference.

If the festival later withdraws that performance, it does not disappear from your plan. It stays, marked as cancelled, with what you booked still legible, until you take it off yourself. You may be holding a receipt, and that is not ours to tidy away.

Removing a ticket is not the same as dropping the show. Removing the ticket says you no longer hold one; the show stays on your list and the planner is free to move it again.

Take it with you

On Save / Share, Print or save as PDF opens your browser's own print dialog, where "Save as PDF" is one of the destinations. It works with no signal.

The paper is a different thing from the screen, not a screenshot of it. It carries what the screen leaves to a tap — every venue's street address, and the walk into each show — and drops everything that was there for choosing between plans. Each performance gets a Have tickets box, a Seen it box, and a rule long enough to write a seat number on. Days with nothing on them are left off, and nothing is filled with colour, because it is your ink.

Anything you have already marked I have tickets on screen comes out already ticked, so the paper agrees with the plan rather than asking you the same question twice.

Download this plan on the same page saves a file instead: the built week plus your shows, days, commitments and settings.

Download calendar (.ics) saves every performance in the option on screen as a calendar event, with the Edmonton time zone, venue address, ticket status, price, availability and any accessibility note published for that performance. Import it into Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook or another calendar app.

If you change options or rebuild, download the calendar again and import it into the same calendar. A performance keeps the same event identity instead of becoming a duplicate, and the new file includes cancellation updates for performances removed since the last calendar download from this browser. Calendar apps may ask where to put an import; choose the same calendar each time.

This is a local file, not a calendar subscription. Happy Fringe builds it in your browser and does not upload your week or send it to a calendar service.

Move it between devices, or send it to someone

These choices live together on Save / Share, after the schedule itself. Your chosen plan and its alternatives also return from this browser's saved state, so reopening the page does not need to build them again.

A link carries the week you built — the actual schedule, not just your picks — so what opens on the other device is the plan you sent, without being worked out again. It also carries your shows, days and commitments, so it stays editable once it arrives. Any performance with an accessibility note published for it — a relaxed, captioned, interpreted or described-audio performance — keeps that note, verbatim, wherever the plan goes: the link, the saved file, the email, and the preview whoever opens it sees.

Opening someone's link never touches the week you already have. It arrives beside yours, and you choose whether to keep it. If you take it, your own plan is checkpointed first, so Step back returns it.

A link is long, and chat apps and mail clients sometimes break long links. If one arrives damaged the planner refuses it rather than opening a half-mangled week — ask for it again, or for the file instead. Download this plan is the reliable path and the one to use for a backup.

If you need something you can type, Make a short link stores the compressed plan on Happy Fringe and gives you a twelve-character hosted code. Anyone with that code can open the plan; it is kept until 30 days after the festival.

Share my Fringe makes a picture of the week graph for a post or message. Preview it first, then copy it or save the PNG. The picture shows the shape of the week and its travel connections, but leaves out show names, commitments, tickets and account details. It is made in your browser and is not uploaded.

Email this plan sends the schedule, a time grid and the same restorable plan file to the address you enter. Happy Fringe does not store the address itself; a private reference is kept briefly so the email's block link works. Using that link keeps only the reference needed to honour the block.

The full link keeps your plan off our servers — there is nothing stored and nothing to delete. It does not make that link private: it sits in your browser history, in synced tabs, in screenshots, and in whatever you sent it through. Anyone you give it to can pass it on. A short link is different: it is stored until its retention date, and possession of the code is permission to open it.

Compare show lists with a friend

On Your plan, choose Make interest link to share must, want and would-see choices. Schedules, free days, commitments, tickets, attendance, budgets, locations and accounts stay out of the link.

Opening it shows three plain lists: Both of you, Only you and Only them. A common pick uses the less enthusiastic of the two priorities: one person’s must does not become a joint must when the other marked it would.

Your shortlist and week stay unchanged. The full interest list is in the URL; Happy Fringe does not receive or store it. Anyone with the link can read and pass it on.

Keep your plan

Your draft saves in this browser as you go — the shows you picked, the days you are free, what you have booked, and your settings. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to press. Clearing this site's data in your browser clears the draft with it.

The badge on Your plan says Saved in this browser, or tells you that you have changed things and the plan on screen is behind.

To reach a draft from another device, create a passkey account on one device, save the draft, then press Link another device. Open that link or scan its code on the other device and press Link this device. The same path works from phone to desktop. No passwords — your face, your fingerprint or your device PIN — and the link expires after ten minutes.

Only what you told us is saved to an account — your shows, days, commitments and settings — never the built week, which is rebuilt from those. If saving to an account is not available, the planner says so and your plan is still safe in this browser.

What the estimates actually mean

The planner is only as good as what it knows, and some of what it knows is approximate. Here is exactly how approximate.

Travel times are an estimate, not directions

There is no routing, no transit timetable, no traffic, no weather and no time of day in any of these numbers. For each leg the planner takes the first of these that applies:

Same venue — you stay in the room; a few minutes to turn around.
Shared site — two stages in one building, so it is a room change.
Same area — a short walk inside one corner of the grounds, capped at 12 minutes.
Free Fringe shuttle — between the main Festival Grounds and French Quarter when the next published half-hour loop, including the walk at each end, is quicker than walking.
Off the grounds — a drive or a bus, counting parking and the walk at each end.
A known route — three routes across the grounds checked by hand, where assuming you walk two sides of a block overstates a walk that is actually straight.
Everything else — distance off the map, stretched for the grid, at a comfortable adult walking pace with festival crowds included, plus a few minutes to get out of one venue and into the next.

If a connection looks tight, it probably is. Treat the numbers as a plan that holds on an ordinary evening, not as a guarantee.

In a free window, Find a show can test a bike, shared scooter, car or rideshare for that opening alone. Getting there is already sorted removes only the travel estimate and still keeps your breathing room. Use it only for a connection you have checked yourself. If the chosen ride is not faster, or the two stops no longer sit together, the plan says that it was not used.

Press the estimate on a plan and Google Maps opens with the route between the two venues — walking, or driving for a venue off the grounds. That is the real route against our guess at it, and it is the way to settle a leg you do not believe.

Area — the grouping the filter and commitments use — is ours too. The festival does not publish districts, so venues within a short walk of each other are grouped from their addresses in the program.

Five venues are off the festival grounds

The Nancy Power Theatre and The Lorne Cardinal Theatre, both at the Roxy on 124 Street; Woodcroft Hall; ArtsHub Ortona; and CKUA at the Alberta Hotel. All five sit north of the North Saskatchewan, so getting to any of them from Old Strathcona means crossing the river.

The planner treats them as a drive or a bus rather than a walk, and will not chain one to a tight slot. If your week includes one, budget more than the number says: parking on 124 Street in August is genuinely bad.

Availability is a snapshot

A show's row says how many of its performances were sold out when we checked. If every performance is gone, it says Entire run sold out. A performance the box office calls nearly gone is flagged as "Almost gone".

We report the festival's own verdict — on sale, almost gone, or sold out — and not a number of seats. The box office used to publish a count and stopped when tickets went on sale for real, so any number we showed you now would be a figure frozen at the last day it was published, dressed up as today's. The three-way verdict is less precise and actually true.

Through the festival we re-read the schedule continuously, a slice at a time. Nothing here is a direct booking-system feed: it is the most recent complete reading our updater published, and availability could have moved since. Treat it as a strong hint and buy early for anything you would be sorry to miss.

A sold-out performance is never offered as a new stop. If another performance of the same show is bookable, the planner tries that time instead; otherwise the show stays in the missing-shows report without occupying a slot. A sold-out time remains only when you already marked that exact performance as bought.

If a performance in a saved week sells out, Happy Fringe leaves the week untouched and asks what to do. You can record that you already bought tickets, preview another performance of the same play, preview another show in its place, or replan the whole week. A preview lists every move before you accept it.

Prices are what the program published

Ticket prices are the festival's own, including the service fee where one is charged — open a show's row and it says the price and how much of it is fees. They were captured with the rest of the schedule and can change. Confirm at the box office.

The budget is a cap, not a wall

Set a Ticket budget and every plan aims to come in under it. It may go over by a small amount — 3% of your budget, never less than $1 — when going over saves a show you wanted. The planner tells you the exact allowance while you set the budget, and says so on the plan when it has used it.

A show that only misses on price says so, and says roughly how much more you would need.