Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Blizzard (WIP)
Piotr Sikora
Genre: Clown, Drama, Physical Theatre, Puppetry
Venue: Nic 8 (Nicolson Square Gardens) at Hoots @ Nicolson Square
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
A Polish clown soldier sets off to fight the most important battle of his life. He takes with him fake snow, a horse, an orange, a knife, a bottle of vodka and above all, a lot of hope. He leaves behind the love of his life.
Review
Piotr returns with Blizzard this year after taking the world by storm with his last punk rock clown show, Furiozo. This time he’s a lost soldier, a wrecked creature and a hopeless romantic. In a tiny dome tent, he performs this epic one-man show which manages to take you through decades within an hour. It is quite literally a one-man show because it’s Piotr performing, Piotr changing lights, Piotr playing the music, Piotr operating the snow machine, Piotr welcoming the audience and Piotr doing everything else that a show requires. He shifts between different roles and shows us how much he truly enjoys doing what he does. And that’s the true joy of this show.
The world is Piotr’s playground. Every object, every person, every sound and every prompt is his opportunity to play more, and through play, connect more deeply with the audience. Entering Blizzard is like entering a child’s imaginary world, where every new idea leads to another exciting situation, until the child gets caught in the mess of it all. The true joy is in watching him hold on to his imagination and sense of play. And the mess he creates gives space for beauty to emerge, like the moment when the snow machine went wild and once it ended, the snow remained on the tip of his nose, reminding all of us who were still trying to watch it critically, that it indeed is a clown show. Piotr keeps his inner child alive, so that all of us can meet ours.
Blizzard is a work-in-progress clown show that evolves and changes with the audience that comes on any given day. Our show had both extremes – the ones who are unabashedly participatory and loud as well as the ones who are shy and introverted. Piotr knows how to play with both of them and turn moments with them into laughter. He uses melodrama, pop culture clichés, puppetry and lots of physical theatre to take us into the Polish soldier’s epic world.
The most enjoyable aspect of Piotr’s theatre is the simplicity with which he creates. Every moment is lived in its entirety. He doesn’t rush to finish the show. He doesn’t care to move on to the next scene if the current one is being enjoyed by us. He will find new ways to play. He picks on what makes you laugh and doubles down on it. What he cares about is to make a human connection. And he refuses to leave till that goal is met. There’s something beautiful about that silly pursuit!
And within all of this madness and play, there is a beautiful story of love and yearning that he manages to share with us. Not that we needed, because he already gives us more than enough, but the story feels like a gift for going on this journey with him. Much like Furiozo, Blizzard leaves you open-hearted, feeling that the world is stupidly beautiful and that every difficult choice we make in trying to make it better is worth it.
Piotr is slowly becoming my favourite clown, and dare I say, one of the most important clowns of our times. He inspires hope, beauty and a childlike innocence that makes the increasingly divided world a little more trustworthy.
If you arrive a few minutes before the show, you’ll see a lone Piotr setting up his props and equipment for the show and slowly meditating into his clown state. A few minutes after the show ends, you’ll see a lone Piotr sweeping the floor and packing up all the equipment into one suitcase. And between these two moments, he manages to take an entire room of people on a journey of human ridiculousness they’ll never forget.
