Comedian Kate Smurthwaite has won the 2025 Fringe World overall award for Best Children’s Event at Fringe World in Perth for her family-friendly science show Evolution Revolution

Kate describes Evolution Revolution as a completely different kind of science show for the whole family because the audience are in it. They’re the questions and the answers. Audience members find out how closely related their family is to the great apes and test their knowledge of weird and wonderful animals, including humans.

Written and hosted by comedian/scientist Smurthwaite, whose TV credits include appearing on Breaking The News and Question Time and writing for Have I Got News For You? and The Revolution Will Be Televised.

The show is an adaptation of an adult show called The Evolution Will Be Televised that she performed at Edinburgh Fringe in 2014, which was nominated for a Creative Carbon Scotland Award for by the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts. 

The idea to adapt the show to a younger audience struck during the pandemic when as comedy clubs closed down she went back to her roots and taught maths and science online to young people around the UK and around the world.

Kate says “I studied evolution as part of my Environmental Sciences degree. I loved it. I got quite obsessed with it. It taught me so much about the world around me but it also taught me so much about me. That’s the thing about evolution - the proof of it and the wonders of it are right here in all of us. And yet most mutants (that’s all of us by the way) barely understand it at all.”

The show will now tour to Adelaide Fringe and Newcastle Fringe before returning for UK dates and Edinburgh Fringe 2025.

EVOLUTION REVOLUTION at ADELAIDE FRINGE

8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 22, 23 Mar at Piglet open air stage, Gluttony, 

all shows 3pm.

Tickets: https://gluttony.net.au/shows/show/963/evolution-revolution

EVOLUTION REVOLUTION at NEWCASTLE FRINGE

29, 30 Mar at Souths Merewether, John Fleming

all shows 1pm.

Tickets: https://newcastlefringe.com.au/events/evolution-revolution/

Picture: Jason Matz