June 17th marks the opening of the inaugural Hollywood Fringe. With dozens of productions, panel discussions, workshops and special events, the festival promises to get your summer theater-going (and networking) off to an exciting start. It’s a great opportunity to see works from local companies you’ve been meaning to check out and to discover artists from other markets. We sat down with Fringe founder Ben Hill to get the buzz and some tips on getting the most out of your Fringe-going experience.

Why did you start the Hollywood Fringe?

We always knew we wanted to do a theatre festival in LA once we arrived 3 years ago – we produced “The Hatchery Festival” for a couple years in Washington DC, a festival of new works where we workshopped plays with emerging playwrights. It was fun, but I always wanted more – a full-on theatrical experience, not just a showcase of new plays. I spoke with a few folks “in the know” in LA theatre, and asked if they knew of anyone doing a Fringe in LA. When all the avenues went cold, I discovered that there was an opportunity for something special here.

We conceived the name of the fest in my Hollywood apartment in Sept 2007…immediately bought the domain rights…and started slowly building up our capabilities step-by-step: Incorporation, Nonprofit, community contacts, organization memberships, venue relationships, artist marketing, website, sponsors….always wanting to do it “the right way” rather than the “fast and easy way”. We assembled a great team of folks I had worked with in DC, Chicago, and Iowa and we have been working ever since.

What will set Hollywood Fringe apart from other Fringe festivals (Philadelphia, NY, Edinburgh)?

Every Fringe is different. Some of the best advice I ever received was from FringeNYC founder John Clancy when he told me every Fringe needs to be reflective of its host city. This has been a guiding star for us ever since – how can we make the Hollywood Fringe right for Los Angeles. A few basic differences: Philly is a “Fringe” to a curated Festival, namely the Live Arts Festival. We have no such “elephant in the room”. NYC is curated (there is a jury deciding who gets in), we have no such requirement. If you can find a venue, you can join the HFF. Edinburgh is in many ways our model. Unlike many North American Fringes, we adopted the “entrepreneurial venue” method they spearheaded. Each venue is an independently operating business – as is each participant production. You might call this the “free market” model as the fringe organization is very decentralized, and focuses on doing a few things very well.

Deciding between available fringe models was a very difficult decision. In the end we opted for the Edinburgh Model over the lottery or first-come-first-served model as we live in a town where the arts are an industry and producers are used to calling their own shots and managing their own shows. One of out goals has been to nurture new producers, so this model really fits. For a list of many of the world Fringe models with descriptions, you can check out this site.

Can you give us a few promising/rare/intriguing/just plain weird shows to put on our Fringe radar?

Hahaha, well we can’t really promote one show over the other – that’s one of our guiding principles. We have developed some tools to allow you to choose-your-own-fringe-adventure. Check out this page where you can browse shows by category and this one where you can browse by day and time. There’s lots of interesting stuff to see – many of which qualifies as promising/rare/intriguing/just plain weird . I’d also suggest folks join us for our opening party at King King for an excellent cross-section of upcoming shows.

Can you give our readers some tips on parking and dining near the Fringe venues?

For parking, we’d all suggest parking at a convenient satellite metro station and taking the red line train to the Hollywood/Vine or Hollywood/Highland stops…then walk or use public transport from there. It’s a great way to save money and frustration on parking and score a point for the environment. Otherwise there is relatively inexpensive parking at the Hollywood/Highland shopping center and on the street in the Southern portion of our map closer to Melrose.

As for dining, we are assembling a list of business to be included in our “Hot Spot” program which we are launching soon. For a small fee, patrons can buy a card redeemable for discounts at local dining, drinking, partying, and shopping institutions in the Fringe Zone.

Are volunteer opportunities still available?

You bet! We need all the help we can get. Interested volunteers can sign up here: http://hollywoodfringe.org/volunteer

Make sure you’re following us on Twitter. Minerva’s intrepid intern Laine will be tweeting from the Festival to keep you in the loop!