For 2026, we’re delighted to introduce a NEW Artist Choice Award.
We asked all participating 2026 Fringe Festival artists to vote for their favorite show (not including their own). The five shows with the most votes are this year’s winners.

The Groundhog

Savannah Reich

The Professor gives an excruciatingly detailed lecture on 1993’s Groundhog Day while slowly losing their grip on reality. A tour de force monologue for one talking clown (like Groucho) and one silent clown (like Harpo). Content warning: Academia, art education, teaching the worst class of your life.

“This show rocks… It’s a love letter to the students that live in artists everywhere.”

Tuzluk

izzy sazak

takes the audience on a wild ride, unpacking the awkward beauty of growing up mixed, caught between two empires worth of daddy issues. Tuzluk deconstructs the neo-liberal hero-man; mixing geopolitics with an examination of identity to tell a story of making peace with one’s fortune.

“Their characters are razor sharp, and their connection with the audience is a true marker of their brilliance as a clown.”

FORIEGNER

Koan Brothers

A dizzying solo that simultaneously explains—and refuses to explain—Sohrab Haghverdi’s experience as an Iranian asylum seeker. A paradoxical, autobiographical, anti-identity, anti-comedy clown show inspired by Andy Kaufman’s hijinks and Sufi mystic Rumi’s call to kill yourself (بمیرید).

“I will never be the same…”

My Allowance

Thomas Choinacky

This intimate tabletop performance reveals the power of objects to hold histories, secrets, and erotics. Private collections of Beanie babies, leather hats, and chastity cages shapeshift from common to subversive. An up-close, curious exploration of the desires embedded in earning your allowance.

“The performance reminded me of the sacredness of objects, how much they can hold, beyond just being props.”

Dickie Dickie Dicky Donnie

BETTY (MK Tuomanen, Shelby Richardson, Paul Kruse)

Fringe veteran MK Tuomanen and Minneapolis artists Shelby Richardson and Paul Kruse merge clown, drag, and rich visual design to explore the shocking history of Practice Babies, when post-WW2 American universities used orphans to train future mothers.

“Distal appreciation of human behavior mirroring the experiment.”