TheLab@91É«ÇéƬ
Experimental Performance Hub & Chris Mumbulla First Nations New Work
Sydney Fringe Festival 2026
91É«ÇéƬ ADA x Sydney Fringe festival collaboration
After a hugely successful inaugural year of TheLab@91É«ÇéƬ, 91É«ÇéƬ’s School of the Arts & Media is pleased to bring an expanded program back for 2026, in partnership with Sydney Fringe Festival.
For two electrifying weeks, Studio One at 91É«ÇéƬ’s Esme Timbery Creative Practice Lab transforms into Sydney's hottest incubator for artistic innovation.
Witness works that blur disciplinary lines, embrace technology, and reimagine what performance can be. Each presentation offers a glimpse into the future of art-making—raw, immediate, and utterly original.
The Lab @ 91É«ÇéƬ delivers experiences that will linger in your imagination long after the final bow. Book your tickets now and be part of this extraordinary experience!
The program
Week One
Sitting Ganaay
Amelia O'Leary
16 - 19 September
Through movement, sound, layered imagery and storytelling, Sitting Ganaay reflects on the cleverness, gentleness and survival of Ancestors. From language hidden within slang to stories held within trees and bodies. Drawing from intergenerational truths, the work follows a Yinarr caring for her children alone. After her children pass and no one comes to help, she enters ceremony grieving her community’s abandonment, cursing them and freezing them in time as her whistle continues through the trees.
Tell Distance
Nasim Patel
16 - 19 September
Uncanny, hilarious, and at times sinister, Tell Distance makes us question exactly how we perceive and move through landscapes. How do we 'tell distance' in a world where most of the vanishing points we see are on a screen?
By digitally duplicating and juxtaposing movement and text, it questions the accuracy and authority of dominant narratives, and further asks how the misconceptions we assume as true are produced and maintained.Â
Week Two
The Sleepover
Heat Pack with Fia Morrison
23 - 26 September
A genre-bending horror/comedy journey spanning stage and screen. Join performance group Heat Pack and filmmaker Jayden Rathsam Hua on a delightfully cursed sleepover of colourful crafts and analogue horror.
The Sleepover invites participants to join three young girls, played by the members of Heat Pack, for an ordinary after-school sleepover. Come in your sleepover best, fluffy socks are encouraged! But don’t stay up too late, your nightmares might catch up to you.
Plain Bad Heroine
Leila Harris
23 - 26 SeptemberÂ
Faust is born into a a mystical realm of metal, wire, taffeta and tulle.
An innovative, bold and experimental queer feminist retelling of Faust, combining music, poetry, movement, and textile and fibre arts. This powerful performance weaves artistic disciplines to explore intersections of knowledge, power, community, and love, and question who is the Devil and the damned.Â
About Esme Timbery
In 2019, the Creative Practice Lab was named in honour of Aunty Esme Timbery (1931–2023), her family, and the Bidjigal people, the traditional custodians of the land on which the building stands.
Aunty Esme was a celebrated Bidjigal artist and Elder from the La Perouse Aboriginal community, best known for her intricate shell work of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Her practice continues through her daughter Marilyn Russell and the La Perouse women, whose shellwork embodies deep cultural connection and resilience. Visitors can view works by Aunty Esme and Marilyn in the Creative Practice Lab foyer, a living reminder of the strength and continuity of Bidjigal creativity.
