You’re invited. Truly.
Green Room Award–winning cabaret artist Miss Friby takes over a Footscray church and turns it into an immersive performance spectacle — lights, rhinestones, bar, and release.
The world’s a heavy place. This is what happens next.
Expect bold, physical performance: dance, comedy, chaos and precision, delivered by an expert cabaret artist at the top of her game.
It’s clever. It’s unpredictable. It’s a little bit dangerous.
But mostly — it’s for you.
Because we all have beasts.
DRESS CODE: INSTINCTS
Come heavy. Leave different.
SHOW DATES
JUNE 4 - 21
THURSDAY - SATURDAY 7:30PM
SUNDAYS 6:30PM
at the
BLUESTONE CHURCH ART SPACE
8A HYDE STREET, FOOTSCRAY
TICKETS 25-35
Miss Friby
Show Creator & Reckless Entertainer
Miss Friby is a Footscray-based cabaret menace known for building bold, genre-blurring live experiences that sit somewhere between theatre, gig, and beautifully controlled chaos. Her work pairs high-end design, choreography, and original sound with a sharp satirical edge — glamorous on the surface, with something slightly unravelling underneath.
Her latest creation, Beasts of Burden, has been developed through a Room to Create residency supported by Maribyrnong City Council. Given two weeks in the space, Miss Friby will turn the venue into a bespoke pop-up theatrical world — not just staging a show, but building one that seeps into the room itself. Every element has been shaped in situ, designed to feel immediate, unstable, and impossible to replicate anywhere else.
Drawing on her love of live music, soundscapes, and movement, Beasts of Burden blends cabaret, physical theatre, and absurdist ritual into a slick, off-kilter experience. With an extravagant lighting design and a team of collaborators behind the scenes, the work balances precision with just enough chaos to keep things interesting.
At its heart, the show asks a simple question: what are you carrying, and do you even know anymore? Set inside a party that slowly slips its own logic, Beasts of Burden invites audiences to sit inside the weight — not to fix it, but to recognise it.
Expect something strange, visually striking, a little bit confronting, and oddly cathartic.
Meet the Team
Fiona Scott Norman - Director Extraordinaire
Fiona is an experienced freelance director and dramaturg with a particular alignment to cabaret, comedy, big dark themes, non-fourth wall and satire. Recently awarded
her Masters in Theatre Directing (VCA), she’s had parallel careers as a stand-up comic and DJ, author, essayist and opinion writer, script-writer, DJ, creative, nonfiction writing teacher at RMIT, and broadcaster (ABC 774 and 3RRR).
A proud Westie, Fiona is about to launch Westside Stories – a performing arts digital radio show on Westsider Radio. She is joy filled to be working with dark clown and cabaret legend Miss Friby.
Daniel Annakis - Lighting & Sound Wizz
Daniel Annakis is the producer behind Xenon Productions, with extensive experience delivering live events and performance projects of every scale, he combines practical expertise with an unwavering commitment to making ambitious creative visions happen.
Daniel and Miss Friby bonded over the discovery that they are both, technically speaking, triple threats. The two have reached a mutual agreement: Miss Friby is strictly prohibited from inviting him on stage during the performance.
Daniel views this as a sensible professional arrangement. Miss Friby views it as an ongoing negotiation.
Meg Hickey - Creative Genius
Working alongside Miss Friby requires equal measures of imagination, adaptability and courage. Meg possesses all three. Whether developing concepts, shaping moments or helping navigate the delicate line between brilliance and complete catastrophe, she brings curiosity, intelligence and a willingness to venture into the unknown.
Meg is a core member of Madame Martha's Cabaret ensemble, and an immersive performer with Broad encounters, as well as a bold cabaret maker herself.
Meg & Miss Friby share a deep appreciation for bold artistic risks, impossible conversations and the belief that the most interesting ideas often arrive disguised as terrible ones.
