NEWCASTLE Fringe – a festival of the performing arts - will run from Thursday, January 28 until Saturday, February 6 featuring more than 100 shows at six locations across the city. All tickets and more information are available via the festival’s website: newcastlefringe.com.au. For tickets to events at the Civic Playhouse click here.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Friday, January 29
The Civic Playhouse:
5pm: Would man Strikes a Pose. WouldMan, armoured in wood from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, is an action packed one man show for everybody. One for the whole family, children above five. The audience is invited to attend in fancy dress.
7.30pm: Steve and the Birds of Sandman. A one man show which Steve Abbott (AKA The Sandman) describes as a navel gazing look at his life as an artist with an emphasis on his brush with fame and how bird-watching helped him to understand a malaise that almost swallowed him.
9pm: The Incredible Feelzo is an evening of satirical sideshow and twisted storytelling (for consenting adults.) Enter the mind and heart of a circus charlatan, as he shares tales of beauty, darkness, oddities and puns. Be charmed and titillated by masks, puppetry, physical comedy, linguistic tragedy, piss-poor mind reading, and other feats of excellence.
The Royal Exchange:
6pm: Up the Nerdsville Track is a one man comedy show, written by and starring Clark Gormley. The hour-long show is a combination of a wildly divergent slide presentation focussing on bizarre aspects of our island continent, sprinkled with original songs and verse about the natural world and people with poor social skills. Think of a psychedelic road trip with a nerd as your guide, complete with soundtrack and slide show.
7.30pm: The Stage Where We Met is a self-devised, experiential performance work that challenges the act of acting. Encouraging volunteers and audience participation, the show explores human reactions to live theatre and lets a stranger choose the script to be performed. How will the volunteer respond? Well that's up to them. You'll never see the same show twice!
Unorthodox Church of Groove:
6.30pm: Committed to mediocrity is a comedy show by Gavin Lind. He storms the stage at the ripe age of 41. No, not old. Just ripe. Being middle-aged, gay and married is difficult enough without having a mildly annoying vegetarian accent. Which makes picking holes and kicking down the ordinary lives of the rest of the world Gavin’s survival mechanism as he tries to validate his existence. A fresh face on the Melbourne stand-up comedy scene, join Gavin as he navigates his way to old age, striving to achieve mediocrity.
8pm: Mind over Mind over Matter is the revival of the sideshow by an assembly of artists who are masters in their field. A collective of some of the nation’s best circus, burlesque and sideshow performers. Prepare to have your senses caressed and your sensibilities shattered. From the mercurial Dangerboy, to the internationally acclaimed Fever Pitch, the venomous villain Verouge, and the stupendously sensuous Mistress Knicker-less, performers titillate, entertain, abominate, and refrain. Find beauty in the bizarre and witness feats of mental mastery and human experience like no other. In short: you'll be in for an amazing show.
Newcastle Leagues Club:
7pm: Confessions of a Good Catholic Boy. Jarrod Moore is a terrifically good catholic boy, unless you listen to him speak for a minute, or look at him, or think about his name. Come to think of it he’s actually pretty bad. Come along for a laugh as Jarrod Moore entertains you in his first ever half hour (or so) solo stand-up comedy show.
8.30pm: Hot Wheels. Sam Maloney has been hitting the comedy circuit in New South Wales for the past 18 months. He has had great success with his shows and has been well received by audiences and critics alike. Over the past 18 months he has been developing and refining his routine with one goal in mind, to create his own speciality show.. Sam is a comedian with cerebral palsy who uses a wheelchair. Hot Wheels is the story of Sam’s life and his many experiences. It encompasses anecdotes from his early childhood to drunken Saturday nights as a teenager and beyond.
Newcastle Christ Church Cathedral:
7.30pm: Huckleberry plays jazz blues and ragtime songs on banjo and guitar. His voice and character resemble the era of music he plays.