In 1999, “Urinetown” exploded out of the New York International Fringe festival, garnering praise and finally making it all the way to a successful run on Broadway. Since then, every actor, director, and playwright in the five boroughs has come to see the dog days of summer as their time to shine. Smaller festivals have cropped up to compete with the Fringe, and in the past few years several plays from the Fringe and other festivals have made the leap to larger houses.

Between now and September, hundreds of productions will show up at the Fresh Fruit Festival, the Ice Factory, the Midtown International Theatre Festival, the New York Musical Theatre Festival, and the Fringe. And the impressive Moral Values Festival at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg has already wrapped up. For theatergoers, this is a boon. Where once we may have slid into a post-Tony haze, the stages of off- and off-off-Broadway now remain filled with attractive options.

Many of those who produce these plays have geared themselves toward producing those few, elusive, and lucrative transfers. But the odds for those putting on the shows still aren’t great. You can count the number of transfers (“Matt & Ben,” “The Joys of Sex”) on two hands. This year the Fringe alone will present around 180 shows. And while the success of a few productions has encouraged many hopefuls, the size and sprawl of the August festival has driven others away.

The book writer for “Urinetown,” Greg Kotis, once described the Fringe as a “barely controlled riot.” He was around in 1999, when participants were still getting eight-hour tech times; that time has been cut in half as the Fringe has grown. Often a show will not know much about their venue ahead of time, so those four hours have to accommodate set installation, lighting design and focus, re-blocking, and fervent prayer.

When Greg Felden, award-winning director of last year’s “The Jammer,” showed up for his tech rehearsal, a hole in the ceiling was dumping rainwater on the lighting instruments.

“In order to avoid killing anyone, the power had been cut,” he recalled. “Since you only get one time slot for tech, our first tech rehearsal, our first dress rehearsal, our first you-name-it was opening night.”

Mr. Felden came to love his rollercoaster experience with the festival because “explosive things happen,” but others have grown disenchanted with the Fringe. The insane schedules, the lack of security, and the sheer bulk of competition destroyed director Mercedes Murphy’s faith in the Fringe, and this year her “Miss Julie” for Theatre Trouve will deliberately go up in competition with the behemoth.

“Sure, they may have cut my costs by 10% [in addition to space, festival participants get breaks on marketing and insurance], but they cut my production values by 50%,” she said, recalling a broken lamp, a muddled light plot, and missing props. Certainly, more visual works that rely on subtleties of design must look elsewhere for their home.

The Fringe, only nine years old, wasn’t the first important festival on the scene. Twelve years ago, Robert Lyons, artistic director at the Ohio Theater, realized the summer was an underutilized dead zone. “It was a completely different landscape,” he said, “it was just a wasteland.” The Hamptons can’t possibly accommodate every single art lover, he reasoned, so they put on the first Ice Factory Festival. It was supposed to be a one-off, but audiences showed up in droves.

After 12 years of increasing success he and his team haven’t tinkered too much with their original formula – they’ve expanded from four weeks to six, but have no plans to get any larger. And the Ice Factory does nearly everything in a manner counter to the now-accepted breakneck festival style. Participants do not pay the Ohio a fee; they split the box office. Shows get a four-day load-in and tech period (as opposed to the four hours at the Fringe), and with only six shows on the roster, the Ohio team curates carefully.

Though Mr. Lyons also wants his festival participants to go on to further productions, there seems to be more family feeling to the whole enterprise. Shows and companies return repeatedly to the Ohio, as the relationships there are cultivated over many years. When asked if he dreamed of expanding the Ice Factory, Mr. Lyons said, doubtfully, “Well, more is better.” But he quickly laughed that off. “Even as I say that, I’m not sure it’s true. I don’t know if expansion would make it a better festival.”

Better instead of bigger. Could it ever catch on?

The Ice Factory festival at the Ohio Theater from July 6 until August 13 (66 Wooster Street, between Spring and Broome Streets, 212-352-3101).

New York International Fringe Festival from August 12 until August 28 (www.fringenyc.org).