20 January – 14 February

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This show belongs to the FRINGE WORLD Festival 2026 season. This season is now over.

Stop the Heart
FRINGE WORLD Festival 2026

Stop the Heart

Don’t talk to strangers or you might fall in love... with a Trump-supporter?!

This Japan-set love affair questions the politics of pleasure and ethics of loving someone with misaligning values.

Based on a true story. 

Laura Goodlet directs Fletcher Scully in a poignantly conflicted solo performance, where he eagerly enters into a sexually explicit holiday romance in the rainy streets of Tokyo. Once he learns more about his lover’s political affiliation, he must decide whether to follow his head or his heart.

Which is stronger: the brain or the body?

Expect raves, sex and a few tears in this award-winning one-man show.

This work was supported by the Australian Theatre for Young People's (ATYP) Peer 2 Pier program with free development space.

Presented by: Fletcher Scully

Fletcher Scully is a queer theatre-maker of Native American descent from Sydney. He holds a Bachelor of Performing Arts from WAAPA and a Certificate of Speech & Performance from AMEB. In 2025, he was a Best Emerging Artist nominee at Sydney Fringe for Stop the Heart, which won the FRINGE WORLD Tour Ready Award. His other works include Cowboys & Indians (WAAPA/Blue Room, 2024) and Saturn Fairy in The Monologue Collective (KXT/Shopfront, 2022), which was nominated for Best Production for Young People at the Sydney Theatre Awards and is published with Playlab. As dramaturg, he has worked on Your Blood Isn’t Better Than Mine (Blue Room, 2024) and Generator: Tomorrow (WAAPA, 2023). Fletcher’s art is auto-fictitious and intersectional, unpacking his experiences as a young diasporic queer man.
Theatre & Performance • Theatre
New South Wales • Western Australia Premiere
 
Previous Award Winner
Reviews
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Suitability & warnings

Content rating: MA15+
Family friendly: No
Strobe Lighting
Sexual References
Coarse Language: Occasional
Sex Scenes
Drug Use
Loud Noises

Presenter

Presented by: Fletcher Scully

Fletcher Scully is a queer theatre-maker of Native American descent from Sydney. He holds a Bachelor of Performing Arts from WAAPA and a Certificate of Speech & Performance from AMEB. In 2025, he was a Best Emerging Artist nominee at Sydney Fringe for Stop the Heart, which won the FRINGE WORLD Tour Ready Award. His other works include Cowboys & Indians (WAAPA/Blue Room, 2024) and Saturn Fairy in The Monologue Collective (KXT/Shopfront, 2022), which was nominated for Best Production for Young People at the Sydney Theatre Awards and is published with Playlab. As dramaturg, he has worked on Your Blood Isn’t Better Than Mine (Blue Room, 2024) and Generator: Tomorrow (WAAPA, 2023). Fletcher’s art is auto-fictitious and intersectional, unpacking his experiences as a young diasporic queer man.