I Promise This Isn't About You (it's about the show we're opening this Wednesday)
Sarah Matthew's award-winning and two-time-Green-Room-nominated exploration of youthful abandon returns to Trades Hall for two weeks only.
I hope you've been having a fantastic first week of Fringe. Fuck Your Funding, our new play about Australia's failing cultural infrastructure just closed last it's week long season in Solidarity Hall to a packed audience of 140 folks (how fucking cool!!!). I'm still thinking through how it all feels so I don't want to write too many premature words but just wow! It was so cool seeing people respond so positively to the work! Did it fix our arts sector? No. Was it ever going to? No. Was it a crunchy way to feel our way through the crisis? Definitely.
But like a fringe maniac, we refuse to rest. This week we are opening a second show, also as part of Melbourne Fringe—the return of our critically acclaimed 2025 production, I Promise This Isn't About You (Even If It Feels Like It Is).
This gorgeous show is written by Sarah Matthews, an emerging playwright, and follows a bunch of young people fucking up their lives on the precipice of adulthood. It's set in a bathroom at an end-of-lease house party, but we've staged it in the car park at Trades Hall. I'm absolutely enamoured by the energy in that space, and the way that the sounds of the Fringe revellers in the courtyard below meld with the show to make it feel like you're really sitting just outside of a party.
This show won the 2025 Melbourne Fringe Crowd Pleaser award, and earned two nominations at the 2026 Green Room Awards; one for Sarah Matthew's writing, and one for Carly Watson's directing.
Tickets are starting to move quickly, so I'd encourage you to book in quick to this critically acclaimed hour of bacchanalia and young adult hedonism. Limelight Arts Journal called it "the ultimate fringe festival experience" so... you basically kind of have to see it.
Here's how to get cheaper tickets to the show:
Get 25% off your tickets to I Promise This Isn't About You with the code PIGEONPIGEON33. You can also snag tickets for $24.50 when booking in a group of 6+.
And as always, if you're in a position where you can't afford tickets right now, let me know and I'll organise a free ticket for you. No questions asked. :)