AustLit

'If you were trapped in a room with a stranger and a gun, what would you do? A simple question that haunts two strangers in some strange twist of fate as they are thrown into this exact scenario, with no instruction or clue as to what happens next. What follows is a story that explores absurdist principles, moral dilemmas, and the morality of humans, in more ways than one during this original tragi-comedy.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'Something lurks in the corners of this nursing home.

'It hides in the walls and creeps through doorways, unwelcome and shy. Something forgotten long ago and left to waste away. Waiting, pleading...

'James can see it. He's not sure anyone else can.

'For three months he's worked here. The pay is shit. His bosses expect too much. His coworkers don't give a damn. And half of the residents are waiting around to die.

'It's tough going.

'When James makes friends with Sally, one of the newest residents, he feels like maybe things will start to change. But the forces at work here are old and strong. And in aged care, tragedy is never far away.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'Meet Jan Pedinski, she is seventy-twelve years young and she’s lived a long and fruitful life going from being a doctor to an exotic dance instructor. Now in her retirement, she’s decided to write a play about her life to anyone who will listen.

'Unfiltered and uncaring, join her as she goes on about family, cheese, Ted Danson, Fifty Shades of Grey, and everything in-between in a one-woman spectacular that she’ll never remember, because after all, you’re only as old as you tell the Government you are.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'I remember the first time my heart was broken. It felt like the world had ended. Of course, it hadn’t, but what if it did? A new original play by Blake Everett that explores heartbreak and the apocalypse.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'A family with a dark secret, a forbidden act committed by a sinful mother, a beast born with blood from the sun but kept in a sunless prison, a hero ready to slay the monster... But have you heard it all?

'Following its creative development at Testing Grounds 2022, "In the house of the sun" is the untold story of the women that, in their quest for freedom, made a legend out of a man, but were forgotten by history. An exploration on family dynamics, sex, violence, and freedom in a culture ruled by fear.

'Inspired by Pina Bausch's tanztheater, Damien Jalet's choreographic storytelling, Jennifer Saint's "Ariadne". Based on the story of the "Minotaur" classical myth.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'In 2015 Patrick's mum took her own life. How did this happen? Who was to blame?

'Portraying eight characters from Naomi's life, Patrick uses their real words - drawn from over thirty hours of interviews - to try and answer these questions.

'This intimate and intense solo performance premiered at Adelaide Fringe earlier this year, receiving the Adelaide Critics Circle and Mental Health Awareness Awards as well as two Weekly Awards.

'Brought to you by the creator of Fringe hits 'The Boy, George' and 'DIRT' and directed by Bronwen Coleman (The Actors Studio, NYC), Naomi dives beneath the surface of suburban facades to uncover a community left in anguish. With love, humour and unwavering honesty, it attempts to solve the unsolvable and offers audiences a rare insight into unspeakable tragedy.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'Set against the backdrop of catastrophic bushfires, Anthropocene Play Company’s Ignis follows ten people as they navigate the thrills and dangers of intimacy in modern Australia. A PHD student visits a sex worker, a high-level politician cultivates his protege, two old school friends unpack a complicated history...

'Based on Arthur Schnitzler’s 19th century play La Ronde – banned at the time of its writing for indecency – this modern Australian adaptation unfolds live in guest suites at the Toorak Manor Hotel. Audiences of only 12 per show will find themselves up close and personal with the world of the play: actually led from room to room by the characters themselves.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'The world, well, it's a lot!

'We can let life take its course or we could stand up, in all our strangeness and silliness, and experience as much love as we can with each other. Even if it doesn’t last forever, it will still mean something, which makes this shithole worth it, and maybe we can face it, because it's either love AND shit, or nothing at all.

'I Would Die For You (Just Not Yet) is a highly physical, tragicomedy play- set in the quiet hours of the night, where you aren't expected to live up to anything or anyone.

'Join us as we celebrate the lives of the living and the undead.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'Meet Alice Anderson – a gay mechanic and entrepreneur in 1920s Melbourne

'Meet Joy Hester – a fierce, angry, larger-than life artist in 1940s Melbourne

'Meet Elizabeth Gould – mother, lover, wife, artist of colonial Australia in the 1800s

'Meet Dawn Faizey-Webster – a woman with locked in syndrome completing her PhD with the blink of an eye.

'These remarkable women have been relegated to the sidelines of history and it’s time to bring them centre stage. In four interweaving, funny, moving, thought-provoking monologues, two actors – Mary Steuten and Tess Parker – inhabit these extraordinary women, telling their stories with truth, rawness and vulnerability.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'“I was expecting a knock. I was expecting a crash. I was expecting a fucking bang. I was expecting the walls to shatter and the ground to open to molten magma and my house to float down the street. I was expecting it to boil then freeze then boil again, but as far as I’ve seen, the end of the world is watching shit TV with you fucks.”

'The world is ending. For real this time. Maybe. It’s a very big deal. Four friends are waiting expectantly. A couple plays out their parts. A girly gets really buff. People try some kinky stuff. And a sad clown gets up and goes to work.

'HOW TO BE A PERSON WHEN THE WORLD IS ENDING is a post dramatic exploration of what it means to be a member of Generation Z at present. It captures the essence of hurt, apathy, boredom and hilarity that comes with being expected to exist in an expansive way whilst being told we have a few good years left. Exploring relationships, work culture, Dungeons and Dragons, nihilism, pessimism and porn, it is a funny, shocking, meditation on youth. Written by Myfanwy Hocking, HOW TO BE A PERSON is a dynamic, challenging, new Australian work that explores the hyper lyrical side of writing. Performed by a phenomenal cast of artists, audiences will be left in awe of this bold new production.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'It's funny what a woman will reveal to another woman when she's under pressure. Until now, 10.23am on a Wednesday morning, no-one had the faintest idea that Julia had made a move on Zoe's boyfriend at the staff Christmas party. None of them knew about young Lucy's unfulfilled dream, or that Barb was secretly planning to retire - and who could have had any inkling that Marg, stalwart employee and doting grandmother, would drop such a bombshell? But at 10.23am, on what started as just another day at the office, life for Julia, Marg, Barb, Zoe and Lucy will come to a complete standstill when Patty walks in. Now, what to do with her?

'Written by insightful Melbourne playwright Cerise de Gelder, and featuring a stellar all-female cast, HOSTAGE is a funny, fast-paced and sharply intelligent new play about the friendships between women, the invisible ties that bind us, and how these are stretched in a crisis. When the chips are down, can you really expect your best friend to forgive you for running off to Noosa with her partner? If you're looking for the ultimate Girls' Night Out at this year's Fringe, you just found it.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'I am walking amongst the dead, and they love me for I am one of them.

'King Hamlet is dead. Claudius is king. Hamlet is for the first time meeting themselves, like a reflection in the undercurrent of a river. There's a red light in the forest, voices on the wind, the taste of a narrative decaying. You are here at the end of all things. The sun is setting. The river is swelling. This story won't die.

'Horatio is desperate for a happier ending, and when they find themselves in a strange, stitched-together timeline with three bickering Hamlets, they think they might have an opportunity to rewrite their world into something softer. Tragedy, however, has a power of its own, and if there's any story that knows how to survive, it's a Shakespeare.

'Exploring the legacies of love, violence, and storytelling, this new work from a group of emerging student artists opens up radical new possibilities in the realm of adapting Shakespeare. Multi-disciplinary and experimental, this is a production unafraid to look you in the eye and ask: why are you still sitting there, when you already know they're all going to die?'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'Gordon Grass is a loving father, a beloved son, Fairfern's premier small property landscaper and the 2012 valedictorian of Brown River High School.

'Little does he know he'll be leaving his ten-year reunion in a body bag; as ex-classmates gorge themselves on room-temperature party pies and point pastry-flaked fingers.

'"Grass" is a sixty-minute high school reunion spectacular that blends Agatha Christie's cozy whodunnits with the sardonic, self-aware wit of a quarter-life crisis. It's a profoundly cynical but uplifting story about hating your life but refusing to do anything with it; after all, the grass is always greener... until it's dead.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'This one person play follows the school-hood to adulthood journey of a teenage boy, positioned as a reluctant bystander to sexism and social injustice, watching, 'all in good fun' conversations perpetuate and prove, malicious and unnerving.

'Each space, the train, the classroom, the PE changerooms, emanates a silent, slow ooze of masculinity and entitlement. And so too, each space is revealed for what it is: Locker room talk is misogyny; disdain to the queer community is transphobic; staring eyes are predatory; and pathetically justified displays of affection are assault. And the notions that permit such actions, sentiments such as brotherhood are dismantled. Because it is not, boys being boys, it is the reason why one in three women experience abuse.

'This story provides insight into not only the male gaze that is unruly, and abusive, but the male gaze that is the silent bystander. Together with the main character we learn the causes rather than the effects of the slippery slope of abuse. And together we struggle to accept and understand the agonising 'everyday-ness' of sexism, and realise that in doing nothing we permit and encourage injustice to occur. Be a part of the process of reflection and the change that comes from it, dissect and disapprove, consider and catalyse, as you watch, un-interrupted, the implosive and destructive nature of boys, sadly, ... being boys.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

''Brothers' tells the story of two estranged brothers, Matt and Jay, in their early 30s, who reunite as one fights testicular cancer and the other battles addiction. Fearful of their survival, Matt and Jay revisit their dysfunctional childhood and the night that impacted their once unbreakable relationship.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'When a young loner from the suburbs starts a job in an inner city office, she walks right into a story we’ve heard a hundred times before. A handsy male boss standing between her and the opportunity to start climbing the corporate ladder.

'Waiting for a roadmap for how to speak or when to speak, she’s caught in an endless merry go round without a resolution.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'Darling Boy feels like he’s failing at his 20’s. He hates the apps, can’t do clubs or casual sex, and feels like a main character in a movie that absolutely no one is paying to see. He’s trying to get over his first love, the memory of which lingers, and there is so much he and his family aren’t talking about.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'Thursday night. A club bathroom. A rag-tag group of friends.

'It's the designated queer night at Doghouse - the club that no one plans to go to but everyone ends up at. Tonight, it's full of your usual Melbourne 20-somethings, who know each other a little bit too well.

'Tensions run high when Reuben runs into his former partner Denis and his new girlfriend, the designated driver Kate, while old school friends Jade and Charlie reunite. All on something different, its an evening marred with miscommunication.

'Taking place entirely in the grotty, tiny, all-gender bathroom of a nightclub, this is a queer character drama and relatable absurdist comedy about a turbulent night out – but only the parts between the dancefloor.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'“I think about all the good I could do in the world, I think about all the things I could achieve if I really tried, I think about what my life could look like.

'I do nothing.

'Until I do something.

'But first I do nothing. For a really long time.”

'Potential stinks up Wren’s car, fogs up her bathroom mirror and barbs her insides. Trapped in an inertia of wishing things were different, Wren dreams of doing something meaningful, of leaving behind more than just credit card debt, of being valued by society.

'From the creator of 'Turtle’, (Nominated for Best Performance 2018 Melbourne Fringe), ‘Donor’ is a dark comedy about not living up to expectations.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.

'Flat White: A Cyberpunk Dystopia in Melbourne (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Housing Crisis) is an actual-play live show where improvisers play through a roughly 90-minute dystopian tabletop roleplaying game set in a fictional Melbourne in the far-off future of 2019.

'Throughout the experience, the audience can vote on events and situations, or provide bonuses to support or hinder the players in their journey, similar to streaming DnD live shows.'

Source: Melbourne Fringe.