Melbourne Fringe Festival 2024
October 1 – 20, 2024
The 42nd annual Melbourne Fringe Festival returns 1 – 20 October 2024 with veritable buffet of over 470 diverse events taking place across Melbourne. The program invites audiences to ‘Eat Your Art Out,’ with delectable events for food and art lovers to indulge in. As always, boundaries will be pushed across performing arts, music, dance, cabaret and many more wild and wonderful categories that will have audiences entertained, provoked and astounded.
The two-stream Festival boasts a cornucopia of delights with a curated program of heavy hitting civic events, commissions and hand-picked works from established and emerging artists alike; while the open access program is a feast for the senses, created entirely by independent artists registering to participate in true democratic style.
Curated program highlights include:
Melbourne Fringe’s 2024 Civic Commission project, COOKED, presents a major new series of events at Fed Square. With the installation of an architect designed hot plate stage, the amphitheatre will transform into a public dining meets performance space. With culinary mavericks Long Prawn at the pass throughout, audiences can gather and grill around the working barbecue where artists add heat to conversations and spice things up with pop-up performances. Free food will be given out every hour of the free drop-in daytime program. The striking space has been designed by Mikhail Savin Roderick Projects, with interiors by internationally recognised artist Mike Hewson. 
COOKED begins 1 October with the free event Seasoning the Grill, a First Nations grill up and smoke out as the oldest continuously grilling culture lights up the BBQ for a night of smoke, dance, DJs, art and mad feeds. A deadly combination of traditional and contemporary First Nations-led saucy performance art and food.
Evenings will transform into COOKED: Hot Nights. Artists and chefs take over the COOKED BBQ for performances and dinners. Highlights include Indecisive Cinema – STEAK & Sausages with underground South Korean film and culture artist collective STEAK featuring Dudo Wook serving up cinema and snacks with Long Prawn. The COOKED program runs for the entirety of the Festival with many fun and fiery events.
The foodie theme continues with theatre renegades and Festival favourites Pony Cam (Burnout Paradise), premiering a brand-new work: FEAST (pictured left). Taking place at the Substation, audiences will be treated to an intimate dinner party served and performed by Pony Cam. The show will play out across a multi-course degustation where food and performance land on the same plate.
Before audiences devour the delicious events of the 2024 Festival, they’ll kick off in bright and bold style with the Opening Night Gala. At the historic Capitol Theatre, guests are in for an outrageous, glamourous and very, very Fringey fun night, rubbing shoulders with the crème de la crème of the independent arts with a variety showcase featuring a tasty selection of morsels from the Festival. On the Gala purple carpet, category is – ‘Culinary Couture.’ Whether it’s chef whites or an inflatable hot dog costume, Fringe wants to see the best food-themed finery.
In partnership with two iconic Melbourne institutions, the Festival will present jumbo-sized, food-themed fun with the Queen Victoria Market and Melbourne Museum. At the Fringe Flavours Night Market at QVM, audiences will tuck into a smorgasbord of Fringe artists in a five-week takeover of the perennially popular night time feast beginning in September. Also on the menu is Nocturnal: Food for Thought, an after-hours amuse-bouche of bite-sized performances curated by Melbourne Fringe, paired with talks, tours, music and adults only access to Melbourne Museum including Victoria the T. rex after-hours.
Melbourne Fringe Creative Director Simon Abrahams said: “Melbourne Fringe has a little of everything, for absolutely everyone. It’s a melting pot of artforms and ideas, sitting right at the heart of our culture and pushing at the boundaries of artistic possibility. You’ll witness things you’ve never seen before alongside familiar names and faces that you’re guaranteed to love. In this moment in time, Melbourne Fringe offers both a sanctuary and a provocation – we’ve got mind-blowing, risk-taking art that will entertain your socks off while reflecting our world today, showcasing both seasoned and emerging artists who truly know their craft. Our Festival is Melbourne’s chance to express itself, inviting everyone to see the world differently, hear new perspectives, and feel something live, visceral, and urgent.”
Festival highlights also include the Pulse program, in particular, two works which explore consent and gender – Flames Danced in Their Hair But Did Not Burn Them by Fraught Outfit, and Body of Knowledge – This intimate and playful work is performed by teenagers who call into the theatre on mobile phones, and is a powerful meditation on age and change: changes to bodies, changes in attitude, and changes to life.
The Fringe Focus Taiwan program is back with two contemporary dance works that focus on exploration of the body. TOMATO, a rib-tickling work of sex, lust, and a box of tomatoes showing at Dance House! This show is an Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2022 Award Winner. While Girl’s Notes sees a dancer and a live pianist take inspiration from an anonymous book from the 90s that instructs women on how to behave – and turns it all on its head.
Bringing music to the annual Deadly Fringe program is Digital Echoes which explores translation and what is lost and gained through coding and decoding. Inviting reflection about the history and future of internet and interstellar communication, this new work from Aaron Wyatt and Speak Percussion combines remarkable technology, contemporary classical music and percussive art to create an enthralling and otherworldly score, taking place at Arts House.
The XS program which presents bold and truly contemporary work for children returns with the likes of Dream Swamp – two dancers will perform a whimsical performance by choreographer, Melanie Lane. Dreaming beyond the limits of bodies, young audiences will be transported into an absurd and uncanny universe of magic, adventure and transformation.
A spectacular event for the senses is Free Fairy Floss – a magical, free, one-off outdoor performance created especially for Maddern Square in Footscray, where performer Niow dances with fairy floss, spreading it into the air while flying high above the square. Free Fairy Floss celebrates finding beauty in the everyday, while bringing the community together in a joyful and wondrous moment of the sublime. Featuring aerial performance, live music and fairy floss.
Ever the beating heart of the Melbourne Fringe Festival program, the Festival Hub at Trades Hall will buzz with excitement and discovery – and a Festival-long program of over 100 events large and small throughout the historic building. A must-see moment among them is Finucane & Smith’s Global Smash Club, an unforgettable ode to 20 years of the international smash-hit Burlesque Hour from Melbourne Fringe Living Legend and cabaret icon Moira Finucane. Joined on stage in the final week of the Festival by Maude Davey, Yumi Umiumare, Mama Alto and more, Finucane will present an outrageous and out-of-this-world club spectacular that will leave audiences asking – ‘what the f*ck was that?!’.
The full program is out now and invites audiences to explore the wild, wonderful and spectacular events of offer.
Melbourne Fringe Festival 2024
1 – 20 October
For two and a half weeks each year, the Melbourne Fringe Festival invites audiences to discover the unexpected with a bold and audacious program of art and performance across the city in theatres, galleries, venues, public spaces, homes, studios and everywhere in between. Featuring a curated program of large scale public events and risk taking art, and an open access program with over 400 events, it is one of the largest multi-arts festivals in the country.
The open access framework means that anyone can register to be part of the Festival, bringing voices from the margins and amplifying them across the city. Melbourne Fringe keeps access and inclusion at its heart, actively working to remove barriers to participation and develop artists skills through First Nations commissioning program Deadly Fringe, Deaf and Disability arts programs, mentorships, workshops, residencies, forums, awards and touring support.
