REVIEW: FLOP — Phaedra Brown's Ode to the Art of Trying

There is a particular kind of bravery required to walk onto a stage and be deliberately, precisely, expertly bad at walking onto a stage. FLOP, the world premiere work by choreographer and performer Phaedra Brown, asks exactly that of itself, and delivers it with a commitment that is as rigorous as it is disarming.

Presented by Dance Makers Collective as part of Sydney Fringe Festival 2026 at New Theatre in Newtown, FLOP runs forty minutes and contains almost no dialogue. It doesn't need any. Brown has constructed a physical language that speaks with considerable eloquence about something most of us know intimately and rarely admit to: the exhausting, relentless, frequently humiliating business of trying to hold it together.

The work opens in uncertainty. Brown enters, or attempts to. There is an awkwardness to how she holds herself, how she occupies the space, how she moves through it. She tries again. A different entry, a different posture, a different attempt at composure. Each one fails in its own particular way. The self-consciousness is palpable, the posing studied in its imprecision. Traces of eighties dance routines surface and dissolve, adding a layer of cultural déjà vu to the discomfort , being the muscle memory of an era that insisted on confidence even when none was available.

What becomes clear, gradually, is that FLOP is not simply about awkwardness. It is about everything that gets in the way. The stage accumulates with props, clothing and clutter, arriving in waves that interrupt and overwhelm. Each time Brown clears the space, it fills again. The mess is relentless, as demands tend to be. She keeps moving through it, still attempting grace, still reaching for the appearance of control, even as the floor around her argues otherwise. It is a precisely observed portrait of the gap between how we wish to appear and the reality of what keeps piling up.

A large cardboard box appears. Brown pushes it around the stage with the particular determination of someone who has accepted they must carry something without quite knowing where to put it. The image needs no explanation. Emotional freight is emotional freight, whatever shape the container.

The piece builds to a kind of collapse. It's not dramatic, not catastrophic, but honest. Brown flops. Tries to find a form. Finds an imperfect one. Tries again. The title, it turns out, is both the subject and the instruction: to flop is not to fail finally, but to fail on the way to the next attempt.

This work succeeds because of the quality of physical intelligence behind it. The awkwardness Brown performs is the product of a performer of considerable precision. Every stumble is placed, every hesitation timed, every misfire calibrated. To perform incompetence at this level requires a command of the body that most performers spend years developing. The comedy that emerges from this (and there is genuine comedy) never undercuts the work's deeper undertow.

Sound designer and composer Maddy Briggs provides a score that moves with the work's rhythms, supporting without overstating, leaving room for the silences that Brown uses with particular skill.

Brown has described FLOP as a love letter to the flop era, to the joy, devastation, and compassion that comes with human effort and failure. Having seen it, that description holds. It is also, quietly, a truly honest pieces of dance theatre on offer at this year's Fringe.

Forty minutes. No interval.

FLOP. Performed at New Theatre, Newtown. Sydney Fringe Festival, 17–19 September 2026. Presented by Dance Makers Collective.

(Images: Nat Cartney)