Fringe reboots for locked-down audiences

Melbourne Fringe Festival has reformulated its 2021 program for a locked-down city raring to "ride out the roadmap".

Announcing a revised program on Friday, creative director and CEO Simon Abrahams said a majority of the 126 events on offer are digital, with the rest a mix of site-specific, socially-distanced and at-home experiences.

"This is truly a phoenix festival that has risen from the ashes," he said, adding that much of it had been compiled in the past two-and-a-half weeks.

Many artists have recreated what were intended to be live performances for online consumption, while others have conceived new work with current restrictions in mind.

The action starts next Thursday with a digital opening ceremony, Art Guides the Way, in which performers whose shows have been unable to proceed repurpose 50,000 now-redundant program guides.

"We have artists turning them into stop-motion animation, using them in circus acts to balance from, making a sound composition with them and transforming them into fashion," Abrahams said.

"Then there will be a ritual burning of these guides in a beautiful offering."

While most of the festival will take place on screens, Abrahams stressed that artistic innovation and high-quality production values ensured it wouldn't be a cavalcade of awkwardly filmed live events.

The Game Boys' Hey Hey It's Lockdown, a live-streamed improv performance with plenty of green-screen wizardry, is a case in point.

"They poke fun at '90s nostalgia in all its problematic nature, and this show will be the best use of technology you'll see in the festival," Abrahams promised.

Musical performers are also embracing the digital sphere to reach at-home audiences.

Billed as "a digital sea shanty spectacular", the questionably named Streaming Seamen involves a 10-strong choir performing traditional sea shanties to contemporary pop backing tracks.

"It's a TikTok sensation, so I am told," Abrahams quipped.

Meanwhile, Queer-aoke is a participatory karaoke session on Zoom that throws down the gauntlet to lockdown divas keen to wobble their way through Whitney or let rip with Lady Gaga.

And in place of an IRL Fringe Club, the indie-pop tunes of DJ Mr McClelland's Finishing School can also be enjoyed virtually on Zoom.

"You can have a disco party in the comfort and privacy of your own living room," Abrahams said.

"It's not quite the same as people licking each other at 3am in the Fringe Club, which is what normally happens, but you can lick the screen."

Expect more mayhem and silliness in the maiden voyage of Dazza and Keif Re-enact the Titanic Movie Playing All the Roles.

"Drag kings Dazza and Keif are bringing the entire movie, iceberg and all, online for you to enjoy," Abrahams said.

With school holidays already underway, events for children include an online resin jewellery-making workshop led by Gunai/Kurnai and Monero Ngarigo artist and jeweller Hollie Johnson and the Koorie Heritage Trust.

Polyglot Theatre is sharing short videos containing a range of creative activities for kids and adults to enjoy together.

And family adventure story Squishy Taylor and the City-wide Ghost Plague is posted to audiences as a "sleuthing scrapbook" that contains clues to solving a supernatural mystery.

"This work is based on Melbourne writer and theatre maker Ailsa Wild's Squishy Taylor junior fiction series and it's something families can undertake at home at any time," Abrahams said.

One Fringe show couldn't be more specific to the moment.

"Simon Taylor's Comedy Picnic is a comedy show that takes place while you picnic with Simon at Carlton Gardens," Abrahams said, adding that, due to the event's format, tickets are very limited.

Only one household may attend the performance - fully vaccinated Taylor is the other household - and attendees must themselves be fully vaccinated and live within 10km of Carlton Gardens.

"Audiences can expect a regular picnic experience except I do all the talking and they do all the eating of cheese," Taylor told AAP shortly after conducting last-minute rehearsals in Carlton Gardens with his wife, Lucy, and their dog, Beans.

Given a picnic blanket is quite an intimate venue, Taylor acknowledges that novel strategies may be required to manage difficult audience members.

"Hecklers will be dealt with by me walking over to the next picnic blanket and doing my show to those people instead," he said.

If people are nervous about sitting in the front row in case they're picked on, too bad.

"Hold a baguette in front of you and I will direct my jokes to that," he said.

However, in the event of rain, which is likely given he's doing his routine for three weeks straight, in Melbourne, Taylor does have a back-up plan.

"I will start performing my dry humour," he said.

Melbourne Fringe Festival runs from September 30 to October 17.

For more information, visit melbournefringe.com.au