East Gippsland theatre lovers are in for a treat, with two standout productions from this year’s Adelaide Fringe Festival
set to tour the region thanks to East Gippsland Shire’s Performing Arts Centre, The Forge Theatre.
The award-winning shows Garry Starr: Greece Lightning, and NIUSIA will take to stages in Bairnsdale, Bruthen and Buchan across April and May.
Each year, The Forge Theatre’s programming team travels to the Adelaide Fringe – the second largest annual arts festival in the world and the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest – to handpick the most exciting, original and meaningful performances to share with local audiences here in East Gippsland.
From high-energy comedy to poignant storytelling, the program offers something for everyone.
Winner of multiple international comedy awards, Garry Starr is the alter ego of performer Damien Warren-Smith.
In Greece Lightning, Starr takes audiences on a madcap journey through Greek mythology.
With his signature mix of physical theatre, clowning and satire, this riotously funny one-man show is a crowd-pleaser that cleverly blends chaos and culture – perfect for lovers of irreverent comedy.
This year Garry won the prestigious Adelaide Fringe Best Comedy for his show Classic Penguins.
Event details for Garry Starr: Greece Lightning:
– Friday, May 23, 7.30pm – The Forge Theatre
NIUSIA, winner of the Cultural Diversity Award at Adelaide Fringe 2025, is a deeply personal story of memory, silence and discovery.
Niusia was a Holocaust survivor.
Her granddaughter Beth remembers only an angry, dying woman.
Now, Beth is ready to uncover her grandmother’s past – but what she finds are all the questions she was never allowed to ask.
Through NIUSIA, Beth weaves together memories, handed-down stories, and interviews to examine the precarity of identity, and the haphazard cultural legacy second, third and fourth generation immigrants are handed.
NIUSIA explores what happens when the pursuit of belonging leads to quiet assimilation after surviving war and devastation.
At its heart, it asks: “What does remembrance look like when all I remember is the space where questions should go?”
This project is coordinated by East Gippsland Shire Council, funded by the Victorian Government through Emergency Recovery Victoria’s Local Government Bushfire Recovery Funding in response to the 2019-2020 Eastern Victorian Bushfires.
Event details for NIUSIA:
– Wednesday, May 7, 2.30pm – Bruthen
Mechanics Institute Hall
– Thursday, May 8, 2.30pm – Buchan
Mechanics Hall
– Saturday, May 10, 7.30pm – Nagle College
