Noah Seltzer Will Bring Solo Clown Show HERE COMES ALMOST To Edinburgh Fringe

New York-based performer and clown Noah Seltzer will make their Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut with Here Comes Almost, a solo clown show delving into the unique world of "Almost" - a playful yet vulnerable figure on a one-clown mission to cure the world of its loneliness. Blending physical comedy, clowning, dance and song, the show asks: if we try too hard to be loved, do we end up getting in the way of ourselves?

Created as a playful, artistic response to the World Health Organisation's labelling of loneliness as a growing global health threat, Here Comes Almost is all about connection: the ways we attempt it, the ways we fall short, and everything that happens in between.

The desire to be liked and accepted, by others and by ourselves, is entirely human. We live under the constant pressure to better ourselves, optimising ourselves to achieve success in dating, online, at work. The problem is that the more we warp ourselves to fit, the harder it becomes to make genuine connections. We assemble the version of ourselves most likely to be loved, and then wonder why the love we do get often doesn't quite reach us.

Set within a heightened, dreamlike world, Here Comes Almost follows a clown determined to make themselves lovable at any cost. Adorned with bows threaded through hair and clothing, Almost continually reshapes and reinvents themselves in search of connection, desperate to project sweetness and lightness, yet unable to suppress the mischievousness, intensity and wildness that keep breaking through. Moving through physical comedy, dance and burlesque, the carefully constructed version of themselves slowly begins to unravel until, come the end of the show, the bows that once held everything together litter the stage.

Drawing on Seltzer's own journey around queerness, gender and self-expression, the show reflects wider questions of what it means to be authentic in a culture which claims to celebrate individuality and authenticity, but which is increasingly built around performance and self-disclosure: what we choose to share, what we conceal, and how much our sense of self is shaped by how we are received by others. It gives theatrical form to experiences that are often difficult to articulate directly - longing, reinvention, self-consciousness, and the pressure to become the person you imagine the world might love.

Beneath the spectacle, the bows and the ongoing performance of likability, Almost begins to ask a difficult question: if the version of ourselves being loved isn't really us, what does that love actually mean? As the performance spirals further into confession, with Almost sharing increasingly vulnerable secrets and eventually standing before the audience stripped of every last bow, they slowly start to wonder whether, if people only love the version of them designed to be lovable, that love can ever feel fully real. As the show unfolds, Almost finds themselves caught between the desire to be genuinely known and the instinct to become whatever feels most lovable.

Innocent and mischievous, funny and touching, Here Comes Almost expertly combines absurdity, vulnerability and play, showing that connection isn't through becoming closer to perfect or more exceptional, but simply through allowing ourselves to be fully human.

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