The Return of the Adelaide Fringe – and What it Means Post-Lockdown

When Reuben Kaye answers the phone, it’s a beautiful, sunny day in Brisbane. “I’m from Melbourne, so I hate it” says the cabaret and comedy performer drily. In a few weeks, he’ll be travelling again, this time to Adelaide for the city’s annual Fringe Festival. After two long years of cancelled gigs, he can’t wait.
“Coming back to Fringe means the world,” says Kaye. “To have a solid month of gigs is already a privilege and a joy, but to have it in Adelaide at the Fringe, the world's second biggest arts festival, it’s the cherry on top. It's where careers are made and it’s where I got my start.”

This year Kaye is returning as an ambassador for the festival as well as performing his show, The Butch is Back. A whirlwind of comedy and cabaret, it explores ideas of masculinity through Kaye’s experiences with coming out, family, and growing into your life.
“It's the answer to the question, how long can you scream into the void without losing your voice?” says Kaye. “But it really does address the last couple of years – how we’re all feeling, how we can be united by laughter and how everything doesn't always need to be incessantly Pollyanna positive. [We] can admit, ‘Hey, it's been fucked the last two years.’ The fact we all think it, is actually a great way for us to come together and laugh.”

But Kaye is blunt about the challenges artists and performers have been facing. “Everyone always asked me, ‘Well, how was creating art [during a pandemic]?’” he says. “Creating wasn't a problem – there's lots of fodder for material. The challenge has been getting it on stage, thanks to gigs getting cancelled last minute with no government support, and venues and producers unwilling to take the risk because there's no cash reserves. Even the government-subsidised venues are clutching their pearls. The live industry contributes $16 billion to this economy, yet we have a fraction of the government support and subsidy that construction and sport do.”

During 2020 and 2021 Kaye turned to the internet. “I created and wrote feverishly” he says, including putting out guided meditations on YouTube (“It was the only guided meditation that came with a wine pairing, because I thought the real way to get to the centre of me was via my liver,”) and discovering TikTok. “And then TikTok discovered me,” he says. Though he quickly amassed nearly 180,000 followers on the platform, it wasn’t a substitute for performing live.

“Stand-up comedy and cabaret are one of those art forms that can't exist without the audience,” he says. “It's empowering for an audience to hear someone else is going through exactly what they're going through. And if they come to my show, they'll see a 7-foot-tall drag queen in a sheer dress and 4-foot high heels and seven sets of eyelashes doing it. The chance to reconnect with an artistic community [in person] is fantastic. It's such a huge family reunion.”

After two years that felt like “reading Kafka and taking acid,” Kaye says he can’t wait to tour: “I'm looking forward to doing what I love, which is going to different cities different countries, going to Edinburgh Fringe, heading to America, heading to London.”

For the Fringe, he is looking forward to taking in as much of it as humanly possible. “I'm going to be the pate goose of Fringe – I'm going to stuff myself,” he laughs. “It's unstoppable. It's indestructible. It's the best month in my calendar – and that’s a lot. That's including leather week in Berlin.”

The Adelaide Fringe runs Fri 18 February – Sun 20 March, 2022. See more details and book tickets for Reuben Kaye in The Butch is Back and Kaye Hole.

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Adelaide Fringe.