The Tyler Fringe Touring Fund was created to support artists touring work through open-access Fringe festivals across North America. The Fund is named in honor of Edward Glenn Tyler (1964–2006), a visionary movement artist from Cheverly, Maryland. Tyler’s interdisciplinary practice, spanning performance, visual art, costume design, and set creation, sought to illuminate the blind spots in human perception. He was a true original, deeply committed to his artistic vision and to the communities in which his work lived.
Fringe festivals are not curated seasons selected by artistic directors. They are open-access performing arts festivals, typically using a lottery or first-come registration system, where artists choose to participate, and audiences choose what to see. Fringe festivals prioritize experimentation, affordability, and speed, often taking place in non-traditional venues and returning the majority —sometimes all— of ticket revenue directly to artists. Around the world, Fringe festivals continue to function as artist-led ecosystems for making, testing, and touring live performance.
The Tyler Fringe Touring Fund awards two $10,000 grants annually. In its inaugural year, the Fund received 120 applications, approximately 25% from Canadian artists, with the remainder from across the United States. The response affirmed both the need for the Fund and the depth of uncurated and unfiltered artistry circulating through the North American Fringe festival networks. Due to the volume of applications, submissions were divided into two randomized pools, one U.S.-based and one Canada-based, with one awardee selected at random from each pool.
2026 Canadian Pool Awardee
Lisa Krol, Krol Entertainment — Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Production: Things That Go Bump
An immersive séance-style experience set in a forgotten age, where the veil between worlds grows thin. Guided by hostess Lenore Kilgrave, audiences encounter unsettling phenomena, hypnotic sequences, and historical storytelling that challenge perceptions of reality.
Lisa is a magician working in a field where women represent just 3–5% of performers, often facing misidentification as an assistant rather than an independent artist. New to Fringe touring in 2025, she successfully navigated her first season with profitable runs and supported another artist on a seven-city tour, managing applications, logistics, and budgeting. Fringe touring offers her a rare pathway to present unconventional immersive work that would be difficult to place in curated contexts, particularly in smaller markets.
2026 U.S. Pool Awardee
Sohrab Haghverdi, Koan Brothers — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Production: Sohrab Is Bumbling Foreigner
A solo performance that simultaneously explains—and refuses to explain—the experience of migration and asylum. Through humor and contradiction, the piece interrogates the “good/bad foreigner” binary within a charged contemporary political moment.
Sohrab is an Iranian asylum seeker who has lived in the United States since 2013 with pending status. His work is designed as a suitcase play, making it uniquely suited to rapid, multi-city Fringe touring. With extensive U.S. touring and residency experience, he sees open-access Fringe festivals as aligned with both the political urgency and the practical needs of this production, spaces where experimental, boundary-breaking work can reach diverse audiences without gatekeeping.
Beyond the Award
In the year ahead, Capital Fringe will use the Tyler Fringe Touring Fund not only to support the awardees as they tour work through three or more open-access Fringe festivals, but also to amplify the broader Fringe festival ecosystem that makes this touring possible. As Lisa Krol and Sohrab Haghverdi move through the Fringe circuit, their work and the festivals hosting it will be highlighted as part of an ongoing effort to lift the voices of Fringe artists and to spotlight the more than 50 open-access Fringe festivals across North America.
Through updates, features, and shared stories, the Fund will serve as a way to make visible the labor, risk, and the infrastructure needed sustain artist-led touring. Fringe festivals are often discussed individually, but they function collectively as a network that allows work to move, artists to learn, and audiences to encounter performance that might not exist elsewhere. The Tyler Fringe Touring Fund is one small but intentional way to help that network be seen, named, and supported.
Learn more . . .
Edinburgh Festival Fringe: edfringe.com
World Fringe: worldfringe.com
United States Fringe Festival Association: usaff.org
Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals: fringefestivals.com/festivals