First, it was the Romans and the English; now, the cheery residents of Edinburgh, Scotland, have throngs of theater folks invading the capital’s storybook lanes each August for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a three-week arts carnival and showcase of every stripe. An extension of the more formal Edinburgh International Festival, which runs concurrently, the Fringe began at the same time, in 1947, when a collection of theater troupes, excluded from the main festival, formed their own guerilla program instead.

That scrappy spirit remains to this day: The Fringe is now a proving ground for burgeoning talent, its alums including Fleabag ’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Baby Reindeer ’s Richard Gadd, and the hit Broadway musical Six , whose brisk 80-minute runtime owes much to the demands of Fri

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