Clare Bartholomew often leaves the word “clown” out of her show descriptions because she fears it will put audiences off. That small act of self-editing captures the squeeze facing artists in a form many people reduce to buffoons, killers, oversized shoes and a red nose.
Who Gets to Define a Clown
Melbourne Fringe’s 2026 program includes more than 20 clowning-related shows, 17 of them locally produced. The festival runs until October 18, bringing together performance styles from Australia and overseas. But artists don’t all promote their work with the label. Bartholomew’s recent show The Portrait was described as “wordless satire” and physical theatre, though it includes clown elements. It follows two oddball gallery attendants preparing for the unveiling of a notorious artist’s portrait.
“The overwhelming majority of clowns around the world aren’t the stereotypical type portrayed in the media,” said Hayley Edwards, a clown doctor at the Royal Children's Hospital and creator of The Carrot Show. “Some of us just carry about a giant papier-mache carrot to make people smile and connect with one another, or work in kids' hospitals to help distract them during impossible times.”
The Carrot Show brings together puppetry, a large papier-mache carrot, projected images, archived documents, prerecorded interviews and real carrots. It draws partly on Melbourne’s Carrot Man, Nathan, a local figure who worked as a street clown in the 1980s and now walks the city with a comically large vegetable prop. Edwards said the work explores how distraction and absurdity can help people navigate difficult times.
The label carries baggage. Bartholomew said some people assume clowns are either two-dimensional buffoons or serial killers, pointing to US killer John Wayne Gacy, who dressed as a clown to commit crimes. Pennywise, Stephen King's clown character, and Twisty from American Horror Story are among the frightening images linked with clowns; Ronald McDonald and Bozo the Clown evoke oversized shoes and a large red nose.
“There’s no one image of a dancer, but you could conjure up a clear image of a clown very quickly,” Bartholomew said. “It has a hook, and to some people, that’s negative.” Dance, she said, has distinct styles such as contemporary and hip-hop, while the single word “clown” can hold the artform back.
The Work Behind the Ridiculous
Melbourne’s scene brings together mime, mask work and ensemble clowning, popular for decades, with North American styles that emerged over the past five years. Those styles bring more absurdity and audience interaction, said Melbourne Fringe chief executive Danny Delahunty. He said the city embraces ridiculousness as technically sophisticated: performers spend years learning to make something look as if it has gone wrong.
The 2026 program includes Freidah Will See You Now, Caitlin Duff’s performance about a bewitching creature who ushers people into the underworld, and Dune but Worse, Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin’s attempt to perform the entire Dune saga solo. Other approaches range from California character clowning and improvisation to Paris’ Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier-style physical, emotion-oriented clowning.
Clare Bartholomew teaches clowning in Melbourne. Hula-hoopers and acrobats have taken her classes to develop physical comedy and slapstick skills. Their performances may not technically count as clowning, but the training can inform them. Bartholomew said Melbourne arguably has one of the strongest networks of clown teachers and workshops, a scene that largely began with theatre director, teacher and clowning expert John Bolton in the 1990s.
Permission to Fail
Australia’s clowning scene also includes “sex clowns” and clown-adjacent artists such as Sydney’s Betty Grumble, described as a “proud ecosexual [who] believes in art as an action of her spirituality”. Bouffon-inspired performance uses intense mockery, grotesque realism and dark social parody. “This all has merit,” Bartholomew said. “It’s a broad church.”
Delahunty said Melbourne’s porous boundaries let clowning move between forms. He described it as “the convened chaos” of taking unpredictability and giving it an element of control. He hopes Fringe festivals and clowning workshops across Australia will shift preconceptions. For him, clowning offers play, vulnerability, movement and collaboration—and permission to fail “in a culture where everything is polished, optimised and packaged.”