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It’s the final week of Adelaide Fringe and Festival, and Arts Garden brings together a powerful mix of artists exploring endurance, storytelling, and meaning.

🚴 Connor Delves joins us to talk about CADEL: Lungs on Legs: a high-intensity solo performance where he rides live on stage while telling the story of Cadel Evans’ Tour de France victory. We explore the discipline of endurance sport, the challenge of telling a “winner’s story”, and why this is such a uniquely Australian journey.

🎭 Casey Jay Andrews (Punchdrunk) shares insights into immersive theatre and her Designing Immersive Worlds workshop. We dive into how environment, design and storytelling can merge and how her latest work Feast of Words turns performance into a shared sensory experience through food, music and story.

📖 Gemma Parker discusses her memoir The Mother Is Restless and She Doesn’t Know Why blending philosophy, parenting and pandemic life into a deeply reflective exploration of nihilism, creativity and what it means to keep making work when conditions are far from perfect.

💥 Justine Martin closes the episode with an extraordinary story of resilience, from life-changing illness to building five creative businesses. We talk about “bouncing forward”, rejecting inspiration stereotypes, and the power of creativity as both healing and purpose.

Across sport, philosophy, theatre and lived experience, this episode asks:

👉 How do we create meaning when nothing feels certain?
👉 What does it take to keep going and keep creating?

🎙️ Arts Garden with James and Bronwin
📻 Three D Radio 93.7FM

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We are beyond the Womad long weekend and have two weeks of festival season left. On this week's Art's Garden we talk shower burlesque thoughts, boy band dating parodies, Portuguese folktronica and making a career in circus.

New Zealand performer Gigi Cartier joins the show to talk about Showgirl Roulette: a wild, improvised cabaret where a spinning wheel decides the lineup and random song selections push performers into freestyle chaos. We also discuss the craft of burlesque, the realities of nightlife performance, and how improvisation and spontaneity shape the show.

Portuguese artist Tereza shares the story behind Abraço (Embrace), a multilingual music project blending folk traditions, electronic dance music and influences from across Iberian, African and global cultures. Performing in five languages, Tereza explores identity, ancestry and connection through music.

From circus to wine tasting, Virago Circus producer Nicole Walker previews Flight, an immersive experience pairing aerial and circus performance with a curated wine flight at Beresford Estate.

We also hear from South Australian Circus Centre director Alex Charman about The Pack, a youth ensemble show exploring adolescence, trust and risk through acrobatics and aerial performance.

And musical theatre director Richard Carroll discusses the hilarious boyband parody Fuccbois: Live in Concert, written by Bridie Connell, which skewers modern dating culture through pitch-perfect pop pastiche.

Featuring interviews, music and Fringe previews from across Adelaide’s arts scene.

Featured artists and shows

• Gigi Cartier — Showgirl Roulette
• Tereza — Abraço (Embrace)
• Virago Circus — Flight
• South Australian Circus Centre — The Pack
• Fuccbois: Live in Concert

The Arts Garden
Broadcast on Three D Radio 93.7FM Adelaide

Championing artists, performers and cultural creators from across Australia and beyond.

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From Brazilian futuristic dance to avant-garde magic, clown game shows, contemporary circus from Aotearoa, stand-up rebellion and the 50-year legacy of Friendly Street Poets – Episode 7 is packed

We talk emotional regulation through dance, colonial language hangovers, speed-sewn circus couture, migration and magic, hot girl comedy politics, and why poetry might matter more than political turmoil.

In This Episode

🎧 Talita Fontainha – TQ Productions

Tune In! The Frequency Within

Brazilian choreographer Talita Fontainha joins us to discuss her high-energy, futuristic dance-theatre show about emotional self-regulation. Inspired by lived experience with ADHD, occupational therapy frameworks, and Afro-Brazilian movement traditions, this family-friendly show remixes pop music, DJ decks and carnival costumes into a vibrant sensory journey.

• Using dance to teach emotional literacy
• Living as a migrant artist in Adelaide
• Brazilian cultural storytelling
• Making Fringe shows inclusive and accessible

🎪 The Dust Palace (Lizzie & Eve) – Haus of YOLO

Direct from Aotearoa/New Zealand, contemporary circus company The Dust Palace brings fast fashion chaos to Gluttony.

In Haus of YOLO, costumes are sewn live on stage while aerialists spin, glass is walked on, and Spanish Web circus unfolds under rave beats.

• Why New Zealand circus is delightfully weird
• “Number 8 wire” innovation culture
• Queer fashion satire meets cabaret
• What actually happens when you sew lycra at speed

🎩 Annanya George – I Want To Be The World’s Greatest Magician

Off-Broadway performer Annanya George unpacks what it means to reinvent magic as storytelling.

This is not a standard card trick show. It’s magic as memoir – blending illusion with migration, bureaucracy, identity and defiance.

• Why narrative magic is considered “avant-garde”
• Border agents demanding tricks at 3am
• The politics of illusion
• Breaking the rules of traditional magic culture

🌏 Vibhinna Ramdev – Why English?

A powerful physical theatre work examining linguistic colonisation in India.

• Growing up English-speaking in India
• Cultural identity and belonging
• Performing across Edinburgh and Adelaide
• The parallels between colonial histories in India and Australia

📖 Nigel Ford – Friendly Street Poets

Friendly Street celebrates 50 years as the largest and oldest poetry group in the Southern Hemisphere.

• The oral tradition of poetry
• Reading under the shadow of the Whitlam dismissal
• Why Friendly Street doesn’t censor language
• Three upcoming themed poetry nights
• The release of the expanded Chronicle (350+ pages)

A timely conversation about free speech, art and community.

🎤 Korinna Gouros – Comedy & “Hot Girl Retirement”

First-time Fringe performer Korinna Gouros reflects on strict Greek upbringing, queer awakening, and navigating comedy as an attractive woman in a male-dominated space.

• Social media validation
• “Hot girls shouldn’t do comedy”
• Rebel energy as creative fuel
• Doing two Fringe shows at once

🤡 Jeremiah Detto – Giuseppe’s Love Quest

Clowning meets vulnerability in this charming solo show about searching for love.

• Studying under Philippe Gaulier
• Rediscovering childlike play
• Fringe variety culture
• Supporting Gary Starr’s hit show

🎟 Adelaide Fringe runs until 22 March
📍 Shows at Gluttony, Courtyard of Curiosities, Tandanya, Woodville Town Hall & more
📻 Arts Garden on 93.7FM Three D Radio
📲 Follow @artsgarden93.7fm

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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.

New episode out now.

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This episode of Arts Garden dives head-first into Adelaide Fringe season, with conversations spanning grief, circus, comedy, and the realities of making creative work sustainable.

We’re joined first by Melissa and Connor from CRAM Collective, who introduce their new Fringe work Meteors. Developed through a residency at The Mill, the show explores how young people experience grief; the silences around it, the awkward kindness of casseroles and lasagnes, and the long journey that begins after the funeral. Drawing on lived experience, Meteors makes space for grief that is tender, funny, unresolved, and deeply human. The conversation touches on ritual, memory, care, and why grief doesn’t disappear; it changes shape.

We also hear from Eva Seymour, Melbourne actor and writer, bringing her acclaimed solo show The Understudy to Adelaide Fringe. Eva reflects on the strange psychological territory of being perpetually “almost on stage”: the tension between gratitude and frustration, waiting and ambition, and what happens when an artist puts their life on hold for something outside their control. The discussion moves through acting, writing, theatre versus screen, and the freedom (and terror) of making solo work.

Later in the episode, we speak with the full lineup behind The Diversity Quota, a sharp, self-aware stand-up showcase interrogating representation, identity, and workplace culture. The comedians discuss how the show came together, why comedy is uniquely suited to tackling taboo topics, and how leaning into awkwardness can create something generous rather than tokenistic.

Finally, the episode features a conversation with Lachlan Binns from Gravity & Other Myths, reflecting on growing up in circus, touring internationally, and presenting two Fringe shows this year: The Mirror and Ten Thousand Hours. Lachlan talks about mastery, repetition, technology, play, and why the process behind a spectacular moment can be more interesting than the moment itself.

Across the episode, Arts Garden explores:

• how artists sit with grief and uncertainty
• why Fringe matters for new and risky work
• the labour behind creative excellence
• and what it means to keep choosing art in difficult conditions

Guests:
CRAM Collective (Melissa & Connor) · Eva Seymour · The Diversity Quota · Lachlan Binns (Gravity & Other Myths)

Recorded on: Arts Garden, 3D Radio 93.7FM

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Episode 2 — Arts Garden: Fringe curation, cosmic art, comedy bodies, and expanded sound

Episode Two of Arts Garden is firmly in Adelaide Fringe mode, moving between curation, creation, and the different ways artists make meaning in a noisy world.

We’re joined by Joanne Hartstone (Joanne Hartstone Presents), marking 20 years at Adelaide Fringe, to talk through her 2026 program — from intimate, high-impact theatre and myth-driven storytelling to new work designed to “catch fire” in small rooms. Joanne reflects on curation as care, longevity in Fringe, and why the best work colours us in rather than shouting at us.

The conversation then turns to Splendour: The Transcendental Experience of Nature, with curator Jessica Curtis and Wirangu/Kokatha mixed-media artist Ashleigh Anne Bruza. Together they explore art as a bridge between spirituality, science, culture and Country — touching on sacred geometry, plant communication, ancestral knowledge of the stars, and the importance of culturally safe, judgement-free creative spaces.

We also hear from Nicola Brown, award-winning New Zealand comedian and clinical psychologist, whose Fringe show Space Invaders uses sharp, fearless comedy to explore bodies, health, identity and power — blending humour, social commentary and radical honesty in a way that’s both confronting and deeply humane.

And we preview the sound world of Liana Perillo, Melbourne-based harpist, vocalist and composer, whose electro-acoustic harp quartet expands the instrument through pedals, strings and layered textures — creating music that’s immersive, emotionally precise, and quietly experimental.

Along the way, James and Bronwyn reflect on:

• why Fringe still matters for risky, intimate work
• how art reconnects us to bodies, nature and attention
• and what it means to listen — properly — in uncertain times

Guests: Joanne Hartstone · Jessica Curtis · Ashleigh Anne Bruza · Nicola Brown · Liana Perillo
Recorded on: Arts Garden, 3D Radio 93.7FM

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