La Mama has revealed its six-show program for the 2026 Melbourne Fringe Festival, running across two Carlton stages.
La Mama has locked in six new works for this year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival, running from 29 September.
The program spreads across the company’s two Carlton stages, La Mama HQ and the Courthouse, with tickets landing between $10 and $35. It’s a fittingly inspiring mix for the venue: an absurdist puppet tragedy, a wry look at care and failure, a musical comedy about one-sided obsessions, a shape-shifting piece that puts the audience on show, and a reworked fairytale from a disability-led ensemble. This is the company’s full slate for the 2026 Melbourne Fringe Festival, staged back to back across both rooms, and it all wraps up 18 October.
La Mama: Melbourne Fringe Festival
- Trash Wizard – 29 September to 4 October, La Mama HQ, Carlton, Victoria
- EXHIBIT – 30 September to 4 October, La Mama Courthouse, Carlton, Victoria
- Toto’s Song – 6 to 11 October, La Mama HQ, Carlton, Victoria
- Parasocial – 6 to 11 October, La Mama Courthouse, Carlton, Victoria
- Wrong Way Grow Back – 13 to 18 October, La Mama HQ, Carlton, Victoria
- RED – 14 to 18 October, La Mama Courthouse, Carlton, Victoria
- Tickets $15 – $35
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HQ kicks off with Extraterrestrial’s Trash Wizard, billed as a camp, absurdist comedy that slowly collapses into tragedy, with puppets thrown into the mix. Emma Fawcett’s Toto’s Song lands next, an offbeat and quietly funny new play about how we look after each other, how we fall short, and how we keep dancing regardless. Ben Grant then shuts the HQ program with Wrong Way Grow Back, storytelling from a man who reaches the middle of his life and goes hunting for the reverse gear.
The Courthouse holds the other three. Emma J Hawkins and Leisa Prowd’s EXHIBIT sits somewhere between performance, installation and a strange encounter, turning the crowd into the thing on display and leaving nobody entirely off the hook. Emerson Brophy’s Parasocial is a cheeky one-man musical about the lopsided attachments we form with the famous strangers we watch but never actually meet.
Closing out the run is RED, a freshly devised work from Rollercoaster Theatre that recasts Little Red Riding Hood as part fairytale, part reckoning. It’s staged by an ensemble of 16 professional actors with intellectual disabilities, who take apart the power structures baked into the old tale. The festival’s Trades Hall hub sits a short walk from Faraday Street.
For more information, head here.
