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Adelaide Fringe is in full swing and Episode Six dives deep into joyful chaos, physical theatre and urgent storytelling.

🎭 …Earnest? (Say It Again, Sorry?)
What happens when the lead actor doesn’t show up and the audience becomes the cast? Josh and Rhys unpack how Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest transforms into an interactive experiment in identity, ego and theatrical bravery. By the final bows, there are no professional actors left, only audience heroes.

🤍 Joylyn Secunda & Marcel Cole — Partners in Mime
From The Routine to Smile: The Story of Charlie Chaplin, two physical theatre artists share how they met at Fringe, fell in love, and built wordless worlds of movement, magic and mischief. We explore clowning, ballet, silence, and why physical comedy still cuts deeper than dialogue.

🩰 Amy Raitman — PleaseDon’tCatchMeWhenIFall
A daring contemporary dance work bringing together performers three decades apart in age. Amy reflects on risk, improvisation, agency, and why young women’s perspectives remain urgent on stage.

🔥 Open Room Theatre — Ripe
A late-night Sydney story of two 18-year-olds navigating power, ownership and danger on New Year’s Eve. The cast discuss why these themes remain painfully current and why we so often centre powerful men instead of the girls.

Plus: Fringe highlights from Gluttony Gala, Slingsby at the Botanic Gardens, Ladyboys of Bangkok, Celestial Gardens, and more.

From audience-led theatre to mime romance to generational dance, this episode is a reminder that live performance is unpredictable, intimate and electric.

🎧 Recorded on Kaurna land.
🎭 Adelaide Fringe 2026.
📍 The Arts Garden on 3D Radio.

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Fringe season is almost underway and so are the big cultural questions.

In this pre-Fringe edition of The Arts Garden Podcast, James and Bronwin speak with artists confronting politics, identity, mental health and community in 2026.

🎭 Martha Lott (Holden Street Theatres) on The Debate, class satire in Eat the Rich, and why this year’s Fringe is bold, political and provocative.

📷 Alex Frayne (Adelaide Festival) on photographing America as an empire in slow decline; a three-month road trip from Los Angeles to New Orleans, shot on analogue film and transformed into an immersive LED exhibition.

🎤 Gillian Cosgriff on existential crisis, audience advice, and why humans still beat AI when it comes to wisdom.

🧠 Holly "Cookie" Baker & Travis Demsey on creatives and wellbeing: burnout, comparison culture, gig economy pressure and redefining success in the arts.

🔥 Uncle Moogy Sumner on the Dupang Festival at the Coorong: cultural healing, land connection and rebuilding community through dance and story.

From Fringe theatre to empire decline.

From Harvard ambitions to Murray Mouth ceremony

From artistic burnout to collective renewal.

If you care about art, politics, creativity and staying sane in chaotic times, this one’s for you.

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Fringe is almost here and Episode Four of The Arts Garden dives straight into the heart of it.

We begin in the gardens with Sacred Resonance, exploring illuminated landscapes, heart-coherence installations and immersive sound baths that blur the lines between nature, frequency and connection.

Then it’s dance, collaboration and creative risk with Alex Kuijpers, bringing three distinct works to Adelaide Fringe from cosmic queer horror in Astral Ghost Orchid to the improvised energy of It’s Alive and the next-gen choreographers of New Romantics.

From Belfast at 7am, Raymond Walsh of The Shamrocks joins us ahead of their month-long Adelaide Fringe run: five voices, Irish harmony, and a message of unity shaped by Northern Ireland’s history and resilience.

We also speak with Dr. Mark Rogers (re:group) about POV, an innovative Adelaide Festival work blending live filmmaking and theatre in an unrehearsed exploration of parenting, mental health and separation.

And finally, UK performer Hannah Maxwell reflects on autobiographical theatre, vulnerability in the age of Baby Reindeer, and bringing I Am Dram and BabyFleaReindeerBag to Fringe.

This episode moves from cosmic frequencies to community theatre, from improvised dance to unrehearsed drama; a reminder that art, in all its forms, is about connection.

🌿 Adelaide Fringe.
🎭 Adelaide Festival.
🎶 Stories, spectacle and sincerity.

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