Show reviewed: 13/03/26

Show rating: I kissed a girl and I like it, 4.5 stars!

AURA Productions is a female led company that embraces giving platforms to LGBTQIA+, POC, Disabled and SWer Artists. This year they have produced the queer fever dream that is Sapphic Aura, a celebration of feminine sexuality, desire and sensuality aimed at the female-on-female gaze. I am an openly femme, bisexual woman who often complains I get the worst of both worlds when it comes to finding love, but through the Adelaide Fringe Festival in 2026, I’ve noticed sapphic love as an artistic subject is having it’s cultural moment. It is an opportunity for those who identify as women who love women to celebrate their queerness in a safe space at the House of Delinquents.

This particular production is full of seduction, joy, lust and the sapphic identity in a sex and body positive environment. Burlesque and the Drag communities have long been an open communities that accept those who proper society considers deviant. The Sapphic Auraartists irreverently tease, satirise and interrogate these so called dangerous ideas in a way strips back the threat of unconventional. It subverts the burlesque genre and asks for whose pleasure and desire these displays of power and passion are for.

Coming out as LGBTQIA+ is a constant act of evolution as I’ve discovered, a constant process of leaving the closet and so Lylah Bloom as a producer has tried to create a space where queer expression is given priority and privileges the female identities as performers and audience. Women’s ownership of their bodies and sexuality has been weaponised against them for thousand of years, we have been the virgin or the whore in the sight of the heterosexual male gaze. Sapphic Aura asks the question of whose pleasure is important here.

Sapphic Aura’s artists are a mix of professional, mature artists to those who emerging in their creative arts careers. Fringe festivals serve as a training ground for smaller acts and performers to meet more seasoned productions and professionals, to acquire some of their polish and industry mentorship. Lylah Bloom and Viola Verve are some of the local artists supporting the amateurs alongside Lyra La Belle.