The 2025 Melbourne Fringe Festival is inviting the people of Melbourne to take part, take risks, and take action.
This year, the festival calls on everyday citizens to become action heroes. Not the caped kind. . . The ones that participate in shaping the kind of world we want to live in. The Fringe will bring its audiences three weeks of exciting, boundary-pushing art, asking Melburnians to step up, dance, make, move, play, and take action.
“This year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival is a rallying cry for creativity in motion. It’s about doing something – moving your body, participating in whatever way you can,” Melbourne Fringe Creative Director and CEO Simon Abrahams says. “Because action isn’t just about activism; it’s about participation. This year’s programme is full of works that invite audiences to respond, to get involved, to step into the art. It’s a festival of art that reminds us that culture is something we all shape together.”
Leading Australian artists like THE RABBLE, Pulsing Heart, Polygot Theatre and HORSE, among many others, will take to the stage in the Curated programme this year. The Curated programme is a handpicked selection of groundbreaking new works, and sits along the Open programme which welcomes anyone to register and present work.
'A Night To Remember'
Other highlights throughout the Curated programme include the Opening Night Gala hosted by Sammy J, Fringe Focus Taiwan, presenting works from Taiwan’s independent arts scene, Deadly Fringe featuring bold, political, funny and moving First Nations art, ‘Handle With Care’, a participatory work where audiences work together through a collaborative, participatory performance from Ontroerend Goed, and ‘Requiem For A Cuddle’ by Harrison Ritchie-Jones. . . Audiences will enter a space without their phones and encounter a surreal world of live choral music, movement, and dream-like imagery.
The Fringe XS programme will present experimental contemporary performance, designed specifically for children and families and developed by leading artists.
The Open programme includes new musicals by Sammy J and ‘Hamilton’’s Vidya Makan, a new play from Tom Ballard, works which activate unusual places across the city, and bold musical works from overseas. Plus, there’ll be musicians from the West Village to West Java via Wagga Wagga – legendary New York basement bar Marie’s Crisis will pop up in Melbourne for three nights only too.
'A Succulent Chinese Musical'
Also part of the Open programme is world music ensemble MZAZA, presenting ‘The Birth And Death Of Stars’ which has already dazzled audiences across Australia. Plus, storyteller Oliver Ayres will present ‘No Seasons’, a work about being transgender disabled, and the ethics of IVF. . . And, ‘The Break’ by Zoë Bastin Dance, a mesmerising dance work featuring live music, ocean sounds, and the tide as a backdrop.
“Melbourne Fringe Festival is the city’s creative playground, a place where anyone can share their art, from first-time makers to some of Australia’s most celebrated artists. It’s democracy in action: no invitation needed, no permission required. This is Melbourne’s independent arts scene in all its bold, brilliant, messy glory,” Simon Abrahams says.
Check out the full programme.
Melbourne Fringe Festival is on from 30 September-19 October.
