Adelaide Fringe: Street Performers’ Festival

Dado, our favorite street performer at the Adelaide Fringe

The Fringe is a world-famous month-long festival held every year in Adelaide, South Australia.  People fly in from all over the world both to watch the festival and to perform in it.  So far, we haven’t really been to any Fringe events, so this weekend we went to check it out.

Rabbi Ben, the Traveling Rabbi, used to be known as the Juggling Rabbi.  So he is always excited to see street performers doing their tricks, especially comedy and, of course, juggling!  So when the Adelaide Fringe featured an entire weekend of street performing – for free! – there was no reason not to check it out.

There were lots of different types of performers. Some were real amateurs, while others had many years of experience.  Most performers are professionals – in other words, they street perform for a living!  In fact, some buskers can make hundreds – if not over a thousand – dollars just in a weekend, not counting weekdays!  But for this they have to be very good.

Gabez, silent slapstick comedians and acrobats from Japan

Some of the acts we saw were not to our tastes.  There are many different types of humor and styles of performance, so they won’t always work for everyone.  Our favorite was Dado, whom Rabbi Ben had seen before a few times.  He had us laughing the entire time!  Some, like Gabez, who did a slapstick silent comedy routine, were not our type of humor, but were definitely very talented.  Others, like the heavy metal magician, had some fancy props, but the tricks done were very basic.  Akiva’s favorite were the juggling acts… he takes after his father!

All in all, it was a great day out!  We watched the performances in Rymill Park, where we were also able to have a picnic and feed the ducks.  The best part was that you paid the performers however much you felt they earned.  If you really enjoyed a performance, you could pay a lot, but if you didn’t like the performance, you didn’t have to pay at all.  Of course, many Fringe performances are reasonably priced, but none more so than this!

The Adelaide Fringe street performances are still going on today, so you can run to Rymill Park or Rundel Mall now and still catch quite a few. Have fun!