The unusual and unknown is back by popular demand with this year’s Fringe Festival in Rochester September 12-22.

One of the most popular returning acts is Cirque du Fringe with husband and wife creative team Matt and Heidi Morgan. The two joined us to discuss this year’s show, ‘Cirque du Fringe Side Show,’ Tuesday during News 8 at Noon.

“I’m going to be hosting the show this year and you’re going to see Matt in a slightly different capacity,” said Heidi. “We have performers from all over the world performing various feats of acrobatics, and we have live music again this year. So the same elements as far as the variety of performers and the live music, but totally different people. We have performers from Ethiopia, from Japan, from Las Vegas and a myriad of other places.”

Matt added, “This year’s style is an ode to kind of the classic American circus – the midway, the side show, kind of. There’s an inspiration of P.T. Barnum that sort of seems to be permeating America at the moment, and so we’ve sort of latched on to that and we’re trying to reintroduce the classic elements of circus.”

Over the last couple of years the Rochester Fringe Festival has become one of the most anticipated events on the local calendar. “This sort of unknown live entertainment – it’s not a national Broadway tour, it’s not this – it’s I’ve never seen that show, I’ve never heard of that artist before,” said Matt of Fringe’s popularity. “I think people are kind of energized a little bit about that artistic unknown.”

Heidi said, “On the other side of the token, now that it’s been around for a while and it’s grown, people are coming to know the Rochester Fringe as, hey I went last year and had the best time, I can’t wait to go again this year.”

You can see ‘Cirque du Fringe Side Show’ in the Spiegeltent on Main and Gibbs in Rochester (across from Eastman Theatre) beginning Wednesday, September 12 at 7:30 p.m.

For tickets and a full schedule for this year’s Fringe Festival visit RochesterFringe.com.