KINDER at The Lantern Theatre

KINDER will head to the Brighton Fringe this May. Following acclaimed runs at the Melbourne, Adelaide and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, Ryan Stewart (Bacon, Melbourne Fringe 2023; Single Out, Melbourne Queer Film Festival 2022) brings a newly imagined version of their smash-hit debut, finding poetry in panic and comedy in chaos, when a library reading hour completely derails. With sharp wit and surprising tenderness, KINDER riotously explores childhood, gender ideology and the global rise of reactionary politics, revealing how stories and language can be misinterpreted and weaponised. Chaos ensues when barely digestible (and wholly intolerable) drag-clown Goody Prostate learns the ‘reading' they've been booked for is actually a children's storytime hour. Forced to improvise a new act for an unimpressed audience of unruly children and bewildered parents, Goody spirals into a chaotic interrogation of nostalgia and the truth of ‘growing up'. Blending monologue, fierce lip-syncing and wild costume changes, KINDER is as silly as it is serious, using drag as both a disguise and a magnifying glass to question memory, storytelling and the experience of coming of age. Writer and Performer of KINDER, Ryan Stewart, comments, We're incredibly excited to finally be touring our newly reimagined production of KINDER, following an incredibly successful award-winning Edinburgh Fringe debut in 2025. Since first premiering this show in 2024, the world has become a far more hostile place to navigate and live freely as a queer person, and we are seeing history beginning to repeat itself through the fascistic leanings of what used to be proudly democratic governments. This is a work that is centred on forgotten stories, memory, and childhood, and it invites us all to imagine a queer futurity for generations to come that is centred on community, rather than a rugged individualism that has fostered division for so long.

KINDER is rooted in Stewart’s own experiences growing up as a queer person with undiagnosed neurodivergence, finding refuge in books, stories and imagined worlds. Inspired by ongoing debates around drag storytimes, the production examines how language, stories and the very act of reading can be misinterpreted and weaponised in today’s political climate. Shifting between drag, clowning and cabaret, KINDER turns a chaotic children’s storytime hour into a riotous yet timely theatrical meltdown.