Josh Glanc

He walks out looking like a lounge singer who lost his sleeves, complete with a thick mustache and total, beaming confidence. Before anyone figures out the game, he is belting a pop hook or holding unblinking eye contact with someone in the second row. Then he fluffs an entrance on purpose, cuts the backing track, and walks off to start the entire routine again from scratch. The bit is never just the gag. It is the discipline with which he resets the exact same opening four times until the room breaks and sings the chorus with him.

Glanc is a staple of the international fringe circuit, filling rooms from Melbourne to Edinburgh and London. He belongs to the circle of physical performers who replaced detached irony with loud, communal play. Instead of grilling the front row about their jobs, he drafts them as backup singers or co-conspirators.

Solo shows like Family Man turn that energy into an organized frenzy of prerecorded audio, fast costume swaps, and manufactured panic. The routine risks running thin when a repetitive gag outlasts its welcome, but he avoids cynicism entirely. He wants the audience inside the joke, not laughing at him from a safe distance.

Glanc spent five years as a corporate lawyer in Melbourne before leaving to train under Philippe Gaulier in France. That clown training shows in every beat: he treats a quiet room or a botched cue not as a stumble, but as the best moment to dig in.