Taking place 1-28 August, the Camden Fringe Festival is the hot choice for summer entertainment. Tickets are booking fast, so don't delay!

Love Camden caught up with Michelle Flower, co-creator of the Camden Fringe Festival, to get the low-down on this year's bumper line up of performances.

What is the fringe?

The Camden Fringe is a four week extravaganza of theatre, comedy, spoken word, dance, musicals and genre-defying performances that takes place in Camden each summer. We’ve even got some opera this year. 2011 will be the sixth consecutive year the festival has run. It was established in 2006 by Michelle Flower (that’s me) and Zena Barrie. This year we’ve got around 150 different shows taking part.

When and where is it taking place?

This year’s Fringe runs from 1-28 August. Shows are going to be taking place in 17 venues all over the borough of Camden – from Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate and in two spaces at RADA down in Bloomsbury. They’ll be shows taking place in theatres and pub venues, as well as in more unusual spaces – there are some performances happening in parks and car parks.

What are the highlights of this year’s festival?

It’s a difficult thing to predict which shows will be highlights – we have so many different styles and at this point before the festival the shows are at very different stages of development – some probably haven’t even been written yet!

Female ensemble Get Over It Productions have been doing innovative revivals at the Camden Fringe for the past five years – this summer they’ll be doing a version of A Midsummer’s Nights Dream in an unusal Japanese neo-geisha style. I also like the sound of David Ralfe's solos show Hamster Town.
I recently had my first Bright Club experience and it is something I can thoroughly recommend. Bright Club is a brilliant mix of variety and expert talks that has come out of UCL and they’ll be doing three special shows for the Fringe. The topics are 'Green' (5 August), 'Music' (12 August) and 'Museums' (26 August).

We also have some great comedy to enjoy - we’ll be watching Scott Capurro’s show (a guaranteed highlight), Luke Toulson’s new hour of stand-up and Alys Torrance’s quirky storytelling show 'The year of being a squirrel'. And who could resist the intriguingly titled 'Four Women, Nine Tits'?
There are so many shows that we can’t see everything – so there will be plenty of gems to be discovered and there are a lot of styles and genre’s, so there should be something for everyone.

How can people find out more?

Our website is the first stop for all information on the Camden Fringe, with details on the venues and full show listings. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook. Our brochure will be available from the end of June in all reputable venues – keep an eye out for our mod pigeon.

What’s your favourite joke?

Two goldfish are in a tank. One turns to the other and asks: “So, how do you drive this thing?”