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Having emerged as one of the stories of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2010, the award-winning Theatre Ninjas are back! Bringing with them a new and improved mobile app, the support of more venues and the promise of many more free tickets to shows, the Theatre Ninjas will once again help to reduce the cost of the Edinburgh Fringe experience, as well as helping acts and companies fill their venues.

The premise is simple. Acts and shows can upload a certain number of free tickets on the day of their show if they expect lower ticket sales – with the ability to add tickets through the Theatre Ninjas up to 30 minutes before the show starts. Audiences browsing either the Theatre Ninjas iPhone app or visiting the website can obtain a codeword that grants them free access if they get to the venue before the Theatre Ninjas allocation goes. Whether walking down the Royal Mile, enjoying a coffee in Holyrood or relaxing at your hotel on Princes Street, the Theatre Ninjas will offer up a show to see absolutely free!

Theatre Ninjas was founded by a young and enthusiastic bunch of arts practitioners, from producers to directors to actors and everything in between. The group, having secured a £1,000 grant from leading arts charity IdeasTap, identified the Fringe as the perfect opportunity to trial a new scheme offering free tickets to shows that otherwise don’t sell-out on the day – especially with a high percentage of shows papering and experiencing low doors.

The Theatre Ninjas took the Edinburgh Fringe by storm last August. Audiences benefitted from a cheaper Fringe experience, shows benefitted from fuller houses and the free publicity marketing through the Theatre Ninjas offered, and venues benefitted by larger audiences coming to their spaces. Most importantly, the original ethos of the Edinburgh Fringe was strengthened, with audiences seeing a more diverse mix of shows and supporting a network of Fringe performers in an accessible and affordable programme of shows.

More than 10,000 free tickets were given away by the Theatre Ninjas via 240 companies as the Theatre Ninjas achieved an impressive 80% uptake on the total number offered. The Theatre Ninjas iPhone app was downloaded over 3,500 times in August, with an average of 40 shows offering tickets each day at a host of venues including Underbelly, Tron and Just The Tonic. The project gained widespread media coverage including features in The Times, The Independent, The Scotsman, The Guardian and The Stage.

Such was the success of the initiative, Theatre Ninjas were awarded a ThreeWeeks editors’ award and were nominated as Idea of the Year in The GaGAs 2011 alongside the National Theatre of Scotland.

In January, the team behind Theatre Ninjas were invited to meet with Culture Minister Ed Vaizey MP at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, with the minister going on to cite the project as an example of cultural innovation in his first keynote speech. Two months later Theatre Ninjas was included in The Sunday Times App List – a roundup of the 500 best apps in the world.

New features of the Theatre Ninjas app for the Edinburgh Fringe 2011 include GPS navigation to venues, a filter to search theatre and comedy shows and an updated website that improves functionality for all smartphone handsets. In the app you can:

• Browse the listings of shows on offer through Theatre Ninjas
• Read Twitter reviews from other audience-members
• View show posters
• Click through links to company websites so audiences can look at previous productions and find out more about their work
• View show information including the number of Theatre Ninjas that can gain free entrance, the secret codeword and start times

The Theatre Ninjas app can be downloaded in the iTunes Store from late July, or visit www.theatreninjas.co.uk for more info.