Melt Festival is giving queer artists a space to be themselves

Monday 20 OctoberMon 20 Oct 2025 at 12:44am

A man in a colourful shirt holds blocks against a yellow background. — "It's relatable to queer people but also anyone … who feels like they're floundering a bit," says comedian Daniel Bruschweiler about his debut solo hour. (Supplied)

Daniel Bruschweiler knows what it is like to come in second place.

The up-and-coming comedian has taken silver in no fewer than four open mic competitions, including the Melbourne International Comedy Festival's prestigious RAW Comedy competition.

But for this year's Brisbane Melt Festival, Milton's PIP (Purpose in Performance) Theatre is putting him first for his debut solo show.

Six people stand on a stage smiling at the camera. — Bruschweiler and fellow Melt performers have been meeting in preparation for the queer festival. (Supplied)

"They said, 'We not only want you to do a show, but we want you to be like the headliner. We're putting you in the main theatre.' That was a first," Bruschweiler tells ABC Arts.

The 36-year-old has been a regular on the Brisbane comedy scene for two-and-a-half years, but he says PIP's offer to stage his first solo show, Square Peg, Bonus Hole, has come at the perfect time.

The multimedia show details his gender transition and how that encouraged him to step into the spotlight.

"I think I needed to wait until I was this age to be able to do the comedy that I'm going to do. I needed to transition to have the confidence that I have in my sense of comedy," he says.

Bruschweiler set out to create a show about "not fitting expectations", whether it be those from society, parents, peers or someone's high expectations for themselves.

"It's about how I think I should be as a man, how I think I should be in a relationship, where I should be at this point in my life," Bruschweiler says.

"The central thought is that we need to stop putting such pressure on ourselves, and maybe [with] all these hardships and expectations [we] have, [they] just make you, you.

A man on a stage with a mic in front of a red curtain. — Bruschweiler has been a regular on the Brisbane stand-up circuit for more than two years. (Supplied)

"I think we have to embrace our bonus holes, basically."

While Bruschweiler says the Brisbane scene has been overwhelmingly supportive, there is a comfort in performing in an explicitly queer festival.

"I never want to talk down about non-queer audiences because I have a great time with them, but there's certain jokes that are very queer coded, that just kind of goes over their heads," he says.

Keeping in the spirit of community support, Bruschweiler is also turning his solo show into a fundraiser, selling shirts to raise money for top surgery for two close friends.

"[The shirts] say, 'laugh my tits off' and they have little surgery scars under the words," he laughs.

Making space

Starting as a singular venue event in 2015, Melt Festival has expanded to more than a dozen venues around Brisbane. PIP associate producer Jules Berry, a performer themselves, participated in multiple PIP performances before taking on their current role.

This will be PIP's second year partnering with Melt, with Berry counting 2024's offerings as the work they are most proud of to date.

A person in a red jacket smiles in front of a white backdrop — "I loved [PIP's] ethos, the vision and the role it plays in supporting independent professional artists," Berry says. (Supplied: Naz Mulla)

"What started as just two productions as part of Melt quickly grew into a full festival in its own right, with 29 shows over 13 days and more than 1,000 people in attendance," they say.

While PIP's 2025 line-up still contains unique theatre and art performances, Berry wanted to up the comedy content this year.

"PIP's mission is to inspire social change, foster creativity, broaden horizons and enrich the performing arts scene through the power of performance and purpose-driven theatre," Berry says.

"I wanted to create a safe and supportive space for Meanjin's LGBTQIA+SB stand-up comedians, where they could perform knowing the audience was truly with them."

A purple and orange lit stage with people standing on it. — PIP's performance spaces are regularly transformed to house their eclectic productions. (Supplied: Kris Anderson)

Berry says it's the diversity of PIP's 2025 line-up that excites them most.

"At the heart of each event are creatives bringing their craft to life, sharing their wildly entertaining, clever and raw stories," they say.

The unique duel-level layout at PIP gives emerging comedians a rare opportunity: to perform in a 130-seat professional theatre with nary a milk crate in sight.

"PIP offers such versatility and, importantly, it's an accessible venue, which means more people can experience the work," Berry says.

Open to all

Accessibility was front-of-mind for Zoe Oh Gee and Lily Mitchell when the rising comedians were concocting their split-bill show for Melt.

Mitchell is legally blind, which makes traversing brightly lit, makeshift stages a daunting task.

Two women embrace in front of a red backdrop. — "[Zoe and I] have kind of similar experiences of how we've gone about our queer journey," says Mitchell (right). (Supplied)

"I often feel like I get frozen in place because I can't see the edges properly or the lights, so to have the room at PIP to gallivant around, it's much more accessible to me," Mitchell tells ABC Arts.

Beyond making the venue as accessible for themselves as performers, Mitchell, Oh Gee and PIP set out to make their show, Oh, Am I?, as welcoming as possible by including Auslan interpreters.

"My roommate is deaf and they don't get a chance to come to my shows. It's really hard in the open-mic scene and you're not really sure if the space is safe to advocate for accessibility," Mitchell says.

"To have Auslan interpretation at PIP makes me feel good that they can actually access the show."

A person holds a mic on stage in front of a pink backdrop — "Whenever I do neurodiverse content, I have a few audience members come up and thank me, which reminds me why I do this crazy thing," Mitchell says. (Supplied)

While Bruschweiler's show concentrates on accepting your limitations, Oh, Am I? is about pushing past them and "the quiet triumph of claiming spaces you weren't invited to".

The show sees the pair utilise all the features PIP has to offer, from lively visual projections to physical props.

"I think, just because we're queer, or in Lily's case has a disability, or, like, I'm an engineer so it's a very male-dominated space, and that we can't do certain things," Oh Gee says.

"From a comedy standpoint it's important to have that diversity on the stage.

"It's not just background and queerness and things like that — those are all part of it — but also having different stories to share."

While Oh Gee and Mitchell say PIP's accessibility was a major part of why they pursued the venue for their show, knowing the theatre — and Melt as a festival — is a welcome reprieve from the general open-mic scene.

A woman holds a mic in front of a red and blue stage — "There's not enough queer spaces in Brisbane where audience members and performers can feel completely safe or that they're not a novelty," Oh Gee says. (Supplied)

Mitchell says her condition often makes her a target for other comics to try out their disability material.

Oh Gee says Melt at PIP allows performers who aren't your usual open-mic comics to completely relax into their performance.

"All the performers at PIP were talking and one of the things that kept coming up was that we don't have to get across the fact that we're queer," she says.