ON THE FRINGE

ADELAIDE FRINGE was born out of rebellion in 1960 and today is the SECOND OLDEST and SECOND BIGGEST fringe festival in the world. We chart the story and EMBRACE THE SPIRIT of this annual MONTH of marvellous mayhem.

MY FIRST INTRODUCTION to the Adelaide Fringe took place under a canopy of festoon lighting and gum trees in a sequin-fuelled sequence of madcap encounters at the Garden of Unearthly Delights. Within the first three hours I’d engaged in an existential conversation, via text messages, with a lemon-scented gum, got cosy with some naughty nanas played by Melbourne comics Thomas Jaspers and Kyle Minall in their retro caravan, and allowed myself to be spooked by spirits – well, some very clever sound art – in a pitch-black shipping container. And within my three days at the Fringe I had danced on stage to a soundtrack of Happy Mondays, joined a toxic ‘girl squad’ in an experiential commentary on social media and was serenaded by a hotpant-wearing, accordion-playing boy wonder from Berlin. Such random experiences are the Fringe in a nutshell, says festival director and CEO Heather Croall. As she puts it: “You might be walking along and suddenly some people will just appear out of nowhere and a capella sing to you. Then they’ll run away and you’ll never see them again – and you’ll be left thinking ‘what just happened?’” The Adelaide Fringe was born almost 60 years ago as an act of rebellion. In 1960, the Adelaide Festival of Arts was launched as a major cultural event with a program that included the Sydney and Victorian symphony orchestras, Shakespearean actor Sir Donald Wolfit, Viennese opera conductor Dr Karl Frankl and legendary actress Ruth Cracknell, plus a visit from the festival’s patron, the Queen Mother. Local artists who found themselves excluded from the festival decided to form their own fringe on the side: echoing the spirit in which Edinburgh Fringe began in 1947 as an alternative to the Edinburgh International Festival. “It was an artist-led event,” says Croall. “It was ground up, it wasn’t top down.” As an open-access festival, anyone who wants to be part of the Fringe – be it with a show, exhibition or cultural event – can do so, as long as they’re not doing anything illegal. Today, Adelaide Fringe is the second oldest fringe in the world after Edinburgh. It’s also still the second biggest – despite 300 other fringe festivals having been launched in cities around the world since. Over 31 days each February and March, the Fringe takes over Adelaide, its surrounding suburbs and regional pockets in South Australia. This year’s festival, which runs between 15 February and 17 March, will see 1326 events hosted by more than 7000 artists across 517 venues, encompassing comedy, music, theatre, cabaret, visual art and design, children’s events, circus and physical theatre, dance, magic and more. It’s Australia’s largest arts event, accounting for 40 per cent of all the arts festival tickets in the country. Last year it sold 705,761. “It’s staggering, and it’s worth just lingering on it and realising how big that is,” says Croall. The Fringe might not have a curator hand-picking the bill, but in Croall it has the perfect champion and custodian. We meet at the National Wine Centre of Australia – a Fringe venue on the edge of Adelaide Botanic Garden, which is also a Fringe venue – and even though it’s not yet midday, we drink sparkling wine and toast the festival as it kicks off for 2018. “I hope you’ve got time for a nap today,” she says. “I factored one in.” During the Fringe, Croall will see three to four shows per day, sometimes more, and that evening she’s effectively hosting hundreds of thousands of people who’ll gather for the opening night street party and to watch the

city’s cultural boulevard, North Terrace, light up in a series of mind-bending digital projections. During the opening weekend I see Croall everywhere, shimmering in a jacket of turquoise, pink and purple sequins that colour-matches her hair; she’s a mirror to the festival and its joyous abandon, and also an industry stalwart. An international festival director and documentary producer, Croall previously helmed the UK’s Sheffield Doc/Fest and became festival director and CEO of the Adelaide Fringe in 2015. She has, however, been involved with the festival since the early ’90s when she ran a venue called the Star Club – which, in 1992, hosted some of Stomp’s earliest shows. In town for a month, the young British percussion theatre group sold out all their shows. Croall remembers queues down the road and a midnight show added as a result; these were also a sell-out. And when the group extended their time in Adelaide by a few days, they crashed – all 15 or so of them – at Croall’s house. The season was a runaway success and a portent of things to come both for Stomp and for the Fringe itself as a tastemaker and international festival force to be reckoned with. “That year was a big turning point in the Fringe,” says Croall. It also saw acts like Tokyo Shock Boys, Doug Anthony All Stars, Bob Downe and Rachel Berger on the bill: “all these people who, fast-forward all these decades later, are huge and still going strong, and were unknowns in that year at the Adelaide Fringe.” “For the artists, the Fringe is a breeding ground of talent where many fabulous shows start and then often go on to have big futures,” concurs cabaret star Hans the Boy Wonder from Berlin – the aforementioned accordion-playing wearer of hotpants who is a 2019 festival ambassador and a Fringe veteran. “For the audiences, this means you often get to see shows before they become big hits. And who doesn’t like to say, ‘I knew them before they were famous’? “I’ve seen so many shows that began in Adelaide and are now playing all over the world. The Boy With Tape On His Face was a show I saw years ago in a tiny tent in Adelaide; it’s now got a residency in Las Vegas,” Hans continues. Shows like Backbone by Adelaide-born contemporary circus company Gravity & Other Myths have become huge international hits and Australian feminist cabaret act Fringe Wives Club, “who I first saw performing on the final night of Fringe one year,” says Hans, “are now hitting up venues in London like the Southbank Centre and Soho Theatre.” Adelaide is transformed when the Fringe rolls around each year. Shows can happen everywhere from Federation-era pubs and rooftop bars to a caravan park, swimming pool and even a hot-air balloon, and the whole city takes on the feeling of one big stage and street party: festivalgoers spill out of venues and onto the pavements along main thoroughfare Rundle Street and its surrounding laneways. Everyone’s here – young, old and all in between – and everyone’s in a good mood. Ask any local and they’ll tell you it’s their favourite time of year, aided and abetted by the weather: beautiful blue skies all day followed by warm and balmy starry nights. The Garden of Unearthly Delights and the adjacent Gluttony, two open-air venues spread across parkland in Adelaide’s East End, comprise an unofficial festival hub that harness the absurd, anything-goes atmosphere that finds its parallels at weird and wonderful UK festivals like Glastonbury. It’s where you’re most likely to run into technology-savvy gum trees or séances in a shipping container, between karaoke caravans and big (and small) tops bursting with life and eccentricity. The festival experience is enhanced by the new-wave dining and drinking scene that’s been taking Adelaide by storm in recent years too. In the east there’s Duncan Welgemoed’s African restaurant Africola and Good Food Guide’s restaurant of the year Orana, and in the city’s West End lies a network of laneways that’s home to a fresh generation of small bars (as well as some of the city’s best street art). Try Pink Moon Saloon, wedged into an exceptionally narrow space on Leigh Street, and Clever Little Tailor and Hains & Co on nearby Peel Street and Gilbert Place. It’s in one of these new-wave haunts, Sean’s Kitchen, that I – and the rest of my dining party – am serenaded by Hans. Later I catch his midnight show at cult comedy club the Rhino Room. If Croall is the ultimate advocate for the Fringe, then cabaret star Hans – with all his sparkling, irreverent, razor-sharp wit and showmanship – is the ultimate Fringe performer. Fresh from a bout of fame on America’s Got Talent, he’s gearing up for another round in Adelaide. “I just love the excitement in the air when you finally see all the venues setting up for the new season,” he says. “It’s like the circus has arrived in town again and you know you’re in for another month of unforgettable fun.”