Darwin Fringe Festival

Brilliant, hilarious, lo-fi, surreal, or green as an unripe mango, Darwin Fringe is your chance to experience the best new theatre, art, music and dance as it explodes into the world.

Opening night offers a tasting platter of creativity as a range of artists pitch tents in Civic Park, each a small art installation of shadow puppetry, sound or sculpture.

Afterwards wander over to Happy Yess for the opening night party featuring Darwin maverick musos Room 105 and Double Dinghy.

This year’s festival has a great-looking program (literally and figuratively), especially in theatre/cabaret and dance.

ATYP Fresh Ink Play Readings features 15-minute plays written by emerging Darwin scribes, who’ve been mentored by award-winning playwright Mary Anne Butler.

In My Skin is a theatre piece of spoken word stories about living with mental health issues from Darwin Community Arts’ CemeNTworx Theatre Program.

For a candid insight into how a Gaulier-trained clown created a theatre show on zero budget and a starving-artist’s wage, go see How to Make a One Person Fringe Show in 3 Months, written by the ‘Lena Dunham of Wadonga’, Kyle Walmsley.

In cabaret, Yas Qween! pays tribute to rock royalty Tina Turner and Whitney Houston as well as other goddesses with powerful lungs. It’s taking place at Rorkes, which is one of the venues hosting Fringe’s independent producers.

At Happy Yess, a rare opportunity to tell an artist what you really think of their show is happening in Ernest Critique. Comedian Ernest Leigh will even provide the tomatoes and custard pies. Brave man.

Fresh Tracks presents original contemporary dance works by local artists and should be a beautiful, thought-provoking show – for one performance only.

Fri 7 – Sun 16 Jul | See the event listing.