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Image featuring text overlapping a photograph. Top of the image: #1 Clown Comedy with Victor & Priscilla, with the TO Fringe logo below it. A blonde woman and a man with short dark hair, both cross-dressed in Victorian clothing and wearing red cone-shaped party hats, gesture with their hands, mouths and eyes open with excitement and delight. Two fans, with a draped black patterned fabric, hang on the blue, star-covered fabric background.
Image featuring text overlapping a photograph. Top of the image: #1 Clown Comedy with Victor & Priscilla, with the TO Fringe logo below it. A blonde woman and a man with short dark hair, both cross-dressed in Victorian clothing and wearing red cone-shaped party hats, gesture with their hands, mouths and eyes open with excitement and delight. Two fans, with a draped black patterned fabric, hang on the blue, star-covered fabric background.
Photo: #1 Clown Comedy with Victor & Priscilla. Eric Amaral & Julie Vanderlip.

Wacky clown antics Wacky clown antics

as gender-bending vaudeville performer siblings ponder a new career path.

Photo: #1 Clown Comedy with Victor & Priscilla. Eric Amaral & Julie Vanderlip.

Home Events Performance TOFringe: #1 Clown Comedy with Victor & Priscilla

TOFringe: #1 Clown Comedy with Victor & Priscilla

From Wednesday, July 2 to Sunday, July 13, 2025: #1 Clown Comedy with Victor & Priscilla comes to the 2025 Toronto Fringe Festival at VideoCabaret in Leslieville. Follow the further adventures of a 19th century gender-bending clown family who audiences have come to know and love from crowd-pleasing productions of Victorian Closet Drama at Alumnae Theatre and Victor & Priscilla Go to the Circus at Theatre Gargantua.

“Silly fun! Oscar Wilde meets the Marx brothers!”

Zany, cross-dressing, historically inaccurate Victorian-era clown siblings Victor and Priscilla return in a new razzle-dazzle romp – and, this time, they’re thinking of quitting vaudeville to become upper-class toffs of the ton*. Can their fantabulosa drama mama Sophy and clever cousin Bunbury win them back into the family theatrical troupe?

Written by a trio of female playwrights over-educated at the University of Toronto: Aaliya Alibhai; multi-award-winning Natalie Kaye; and Natalie’s sister, multi-award-winning playwright Nina Kaye (named “one of our city’s best emerging playwrights” by Mooney On Theatre), this play promises to make you think as well as laugh. This silly comedy of manners features the Polari language, a nearly forgotten theatrical slang also used as a Queer secret code in a time when homosexuality was outlawed.

Directed by Kyra Keith, with dance choreography by Jonathan Benedicto and Natalie Kaye, and puppets by Dora-nominated designer Michelle Gram, #1 Clown Comedy with Victor & Priscilla will entertain you with song, dance, witty wordplay, slapstick, drag and puppets while touching on the deeper theme of LGBTQ+ history. The cast features Michelle Gram, Eric Amaral, Julie Vanderlip and Parker-Elizabeth Rodenburg.

Touching, heart-warming and intelligent – as well as ridiculous, bizarre and absurd – these silly clowns will have you laughing in this newest installment of their family adventures!

* “Toffs of the ton” refers to Victorian-era fashionable society (ton) notables (toffs).

A man wearing a long auburn wig with pink flowers in it and a blonde woman, also with pink flowers in her hair, sit side by side. Both are cross-dressed in Victorian costume and he holds a closed white fan in his right hand. He has a troubled look on his face, mouth open to speak, while she listens with compassion.

(Photo credits: #1 Clown Comedy with Victor & Priscilla. Eric Amaral & Julie Vanderlip. The image on the Events page also includes Julie Vanderlip & Eric Amaral.)

 

Event details

Presented by: #1 Toronto Fringe Clown Comedy 

Type of event: clown theatre performance

Written by: Aaliya Alibhai, Nina Kaye & Natalie Kaye 

Directed by: Kyra Keith 

Dance choreography by: Jonathan Benedicto & Natalie Kaye 

Cast: Michelle Gram, Eric Amaral, Julie Vanderlip & Parker-Elizabeth Rodenburg. Read about the cast here.

Puppet design by: Michelle Gram 

Dates & times: Performances take place throughout the Toronto Fringe Festival – which runs from Wednesday, July 2 to Sunday, July 13, 2025 – at the following dates and times:

  • Wednesday, July 2 @ 6:15 PM ET
  • Friday, July 4 @ 6:30 PM ET
  • Saturday, July 5 @ 12:30 PM ET
  • Tuesday, July 8 @ 4:00 PM ET
  • Thursday, July 10 @ 9:30 PM ET
  • Friday, July 11 @ 7:45 PM ET
  • Sunday, July 13 @ 2:45 PM ET

Duration: 60 minutes (no intermission)

Cost: C$15.00 plus fees, with discounts for kids and pass holders

Location: VideoCabaret’s Deanne Taylor Theatre, 10 Busy St., Toronto, ON, M4M 1N8, Canada

Trailer: Watch the trailer

Booking link: Book your tickets here.

Contact details: #1 Toronto Fringe Clown Comedy, aaliyalibhai94@gmail.com, torontofringeclowncomedy.weebly.com

 

Content warning: PG-13, appropriate for older children.

Accessibility: The venue is wheelchair-accessible.