More than 20 clowning-related shows appear on the bill at this year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival. Seventeen are locally made, and the artists behind them say the form offers something a polished, optimised culture rarely allows: permission to fail together.
Festival chief executive Danny Delahunty said clowning shows ballooned the previous year, and the number has stayed high in 2026. The festival runs until October 18.
Comfort in Hard Times
For Hayley Edwards, a clown doctor at the Royal Children's Hospital, the work isn't about red noses. It's about reaching people when things are at their worst. Edwards created The Carrot Show, a Fringe production combining puppetry, a giant papier-mache carrot, projected images, archived documents, prerecorded interviews and real carrots. It explores how distraction and absurdity can help people through difficult times.
The show 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.
“‘Clown’ is a very broad term that can be used for so many things: Finding connection, playfulness and joy – even in walking around with a giant papier-mache carrot,” Edwards said. She added that “the overwhelming majority of clowns around the world aren't the stereotypical type portrayed in the media.” Some, she said, “work in kids' hospitals to help distract them during impossible times.”
A Scene Built on Teaching and Exchange
Melbourne's clowning ecosystem didn't appear overnight. Clare Bartholomew, a performing artist who teaches clowning in the city, said Melbourne arguably has one of the world's strongest networks of clown teachers and workshops. The scene largely began with theatre director, teacher and clowning expert John Bolton in the 1990s. That was about three decades ago.
The training extends well beyond traditional clowns. Bartholomew has taught hula-hoopers and acrobats who take her classes to build physical comedy and slapstick skills. Their performances may not technically count as clowning, but the form can inform their work.
Delahunty said Melbourne's approach is unusually open. “It's about how porous the boundaries are in Melbourne. What makes our clowning scene unique is how relaxed and interchangeable the artform is across comparative forms.” Mime, mask work and ensemble clowning have been popular for decades, he said, while North American styles have emerged over the past five years, bringing more absurdity and audience interaction.
The festival's lineup spans that range. Caitlin Duff's Freidah Will See You Now follows a bewitching creature who ushers people into the underworld. In Dune but Worse, Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin attempts the entire Dune saga solo. Benny Boot's Die Clown Die joins clowning with spirituality, following a clown who repeatedly dies ridiculous deaths in search of nirvana. Mel McGlensey's Motorboat, a show from a year ago, features a woman-boat hybrid character.
The Image Problem
Bartholomew said she often leaves the word “clown” out of her productions' descriptions because it may put audiences off. Her recent Fringe show The Portrait was billed 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.
Some people, she said, assume clowns are either two-dimensional buffoons or serial killers. She pointed 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 share the popular imagination with Ronald McDonald and Bozo the Clown.
“There's no one image of a dancer, but you could conjure up a clear image of a clown very quickly. It has a hook, and to some people, that's negative,” Bartholomew said. Delahunty said most clowns are probably “tarred in some way by the brush of Pennywise” and hopes Fringe festivals and clowning workshops across Australia will shift those preconceptions.
Australia's scene includes more provocative work too: “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 draws on intense mockery, grotesque realism and dark social parody. “This all has merit,” Bartholomew said. “It's a broad church.”
Why This Matters: A surge in clowning at a major public arts festival says something about what audiences and artists want right now. Delahunty put it plainly: clowning “is an artform that gives artists permission to fail. That feels incredibly appealing right now in a culture where everything is polished, optimised and packaged.” Edwards's work in a children's hospital also shows the form's practical value, offering distraction and connection to kids in impossible circumstances. Fringe gives independent performers, many working outside commercial theatre, a platform and an audience. The teaching networks Bartholomew describes pass those skills on. Keeping that ecosystem healthy takes sustained support for community arts; patients, audiences and artists all benefit.