Garden Of Unearthly Delights Closes Its Best Season Yet 

In what has been a spectacular 60th year for the Adelaide Fringe, The Garden of Unearthly Delights will close its season this Sunday March 15th boasting its most successful year to date.

This year The Garden hosted 112 separate shows across 17 venues with more than 1600 ticketed performances, hundreds of sideshow acts and regular free events over the whole season (including the Kangaroo Island Garden Gala, The Donut Olympics and The Garden Sessions).

Over 30 five-star reviews were dished out for Garden shows and 12 were celebrated with Weekly Fringe awards including; The Kagools for Best Comedy in Week 1, L.I.A.R. (Life Is A Rehearsal) for Best Circus and Physical Theatre in Week 2 and Thunderstruck for Bank SA's Pick of The Fringe in Week 3.

The 2020 program hosted a variety of outstanding season highlights such as Tripod's sell-out return to The Garden on the first weekend; Tommy Little received the love from Adelaide with a sell-out season including extra shows added due to high demand; Maho Magic Bar brought something new and unique to the festival with a purpose built bar and show experience from Japan; and the follow-up to 2017 and 2018's biggest show, Blanc de Blanc Encore wowed audiences and packed out the Fortuna Spiegeltent night after night.

Other top selling shows in The Garden included, Tom Gleeson - Lighten Up, Abandoman - Road to Coachella, Dave Hughes - Ridiculous and the interactive installations 1000 Doors and COMA.

Our nation's first people were represented proudly throughout the 2020 program. Garden first-timers, Aboriginal Comedy All Stars treated crowds to huge belly laughs from the heart of the wide brown land.

Casus Circus brought the only Indigenous contemporary circus ensemble in Australia to perform Chasing Smoke, which celebrates 65,000 years of old-time ways told through now-time circus.

Returning for its seventh year The Garden Sessions, presented by The Government of South Australia, celebrated local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musicians with free concerts each Saturday afternoon.

Karl Winda Telfter and Yellaka's Mullawirrayerta / Dry Forest Country gave Garden attendees the opportunity to come together in special cultural sharing ceremonies as the sun set on selected nights.

Each year The Garden partners with local and global charities to help raise money for very worthy causes. Fundraising efforts for 2020 were a huge success, with the Dulcie's Vintage Bus having a record-breaking year and bringing in over $30,000 for The Hutt Street Centre.

After joining forces with Mix 102.3's breakfast team Jodie and Soda (featuring Erin Phillips), The Garden presented a whopping night of free entertainment in the form of a Garden Gala on Kangaroo Island. A convoy of high-class comedians and circus performers donated their time to perform for the bushfire-stricken region of South Australia and provide some much-needed free laughs and levity for 1500 KI residents. It was a truly special day.

Each year The Garden aspires to reduce its footprint on the earth and 'tread lightly' as Karl Winda Telfer so eloquently put in his Greeting to The Spirit of The Place ceremonies each week. A four bin system, along with completely compostable food vendor waste, reusable glassware across the bars, and water refill stations all continued to form part of The Garden's ongoing landfill reduction strategy. All compostable waste and co-mingled recyclables that were redirected from landfill will be turned into fertiliser or energy. In addition to this, hundreds of thousands of bottles and cans are recycled through South Australia's recycling scheme.

About the Garden's 2020 season, Michelle Buxton, Co-Director of The Garden of Unearthly Delights said:

"2020 has been an incredible season in The Garden. I've seen great old friends performing at their peak and new artists who have delighted and inspired me and, for me, that is the great joy of The Garden. I would like to thank the thousands of artists, producers, sponsors, staff, media, suppliers and friends who work so hard to make The Garden shine each year. I can't wait to get to work on The Garden 2021."

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