Fringe takes contrasting views on 11 September

A performance based on text messages sent by the audience is one of almost 1,500 shows that will make up the biggest programme yet at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

This year's collection of theatrical, comedy, musical and artistic events will comprise 20,342 performances from 11,713 performers at almost 200 venues – ranging from the 5,000-capacity auditorium at the showground at Ingliston to a two-metre square lift catering for an audience of one.

As in previous years, theatre and comedy are the most popular events, making up 59 per cent of the shows on offer, a quarter of which are billed as world premières.

As well as Text in the City, the 56th festival will feature the American political satirist Michael Moore in the first performance of his new one-man show. The Fringe director, Paul Gudgin, said: "It's a great coup for the Festival to have Michael performing his first live show in Edinburgh."

The most dramatic production is Project 9:11, produced by the students and staff of the Playwright's Horizon Theatre School at New York University. It takes seven personal accounts of the destruction of the World Trade Centre and works them into a 45-minute performance. Not all the shows are as reverent to the tragedy, though, and the subject provides subversive material for drag queen Tina C, alter ego of the comedian Chris Green.

The Fringe runs from 4 to 26 August and tickets go on sale from 17 June. The organisers hope it will be the biggest yet and beat the 873,887 ticket sales grossing £6,636,093 at last year's event.