In 1983, I left my job as a consultant at Bell Laboratories, gave up my apartment on Mott St in New York City, which I shared with some aspiring actors, and hit the road. Some of those actors were going to be at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival later that summer, so I added Edinburgh to my itinerary.

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival was fantastic, and for the next several years, I went back every summer, watching an average of five plays a day for at least a week. Eventually, I settled down, started a family, and the trips to Edinburgh came to an end. How I wished that there was something like that in the United States.

I settled into the typical corporate suburban life as my children grew, but after a divorce, remarriage, the oldest kids heading off to college, and a career change, I found myself working as a freelance journalist and was invited to cover the New York Fringe Festival. It was different from my youth in Edinburgh. Instead of staying in youth hostels, I took the train into New York City from the suburbs of Connecticut. One day, I took my eight year old daughter in.

That was five years ago. Soon afterwards, I took a new job as a social media manager for a Federally Qualified Health Center, and it’s now been five years since I’ve went to the fringe.

My youngest daughter is all about movies, television series, web series, and acting. My wife watches television with her and takes her to the movies. I pretty much don’t watch television or go to the movies anymore. Ever since theaters like the Thalia or the Metro closed on the Upper West Side of Manhattan many years ago, I’ve found the mass produced media less and less interesting. Yet the fringe, that is where I’ve always found the most creativity.

This summer, my youngest daughter, now thirteen, was complaining about how uninteresting the assigned summer reading for school was. She wanted to read Shakespeare. My wife and I looked at each other. Was it time to return to the fringe, this time, bringing Fiona to several shows?

So, I got in touch with old contacts, arranged to take an extra week of vacation, and set things up to go to the fringe. Shortly, the two of us will return to the fringe. Today, we are planning on seeing three plays, which I hope to write about tomorrow.

As I’ve described my plans to friends, I have been surprised at the number of people who don’t know about the New York Fringe Festival. If there is any way you can make it, arrange a trip to the festival.