Name: Heartbreak Hotel
Start: 2026-07-14T09:00:00+10:00
End: 2026-07-14T10:15:00+10:00
Location: Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne

The sold-out RISING hit Heartbreak Hotel returns to steal your heart again.
Karin McCracken is someone you want by your side on that walk down lonely street to Heartbreak Hotel – a weird, fun place to confront your heartache.
After a sell-out season at last year's RISING festival, Wellington-based company EBKM brings back their cathartic comedy that explores what heartbreak does to our bodies and minds. It’s a room with a view, that lets us in with pitch-perfect sketches, vulnerable slices of memoir and plenty of philosophical wit.
Dressed in lavender tassels and backed by covers of breakup songs (Elvis, Celine, the real heavy hitters), Karin takes us on a tour through the aching limbo of a serious break up. She evokes famous novels and scientific research. She confronts her exes, all of whom are played by the virtuosic Simon Leary. She follows her friend to the Berlin club scene. She even shrinks us down to a cellular level in an attempt to take a clinical look at the what the hell is going on. But how much can you really intellectualise the feeling of making tacos on your own?
This is one for the broken hearts. One for the open hearts. The old hearts and the young hearts. Something for anyone who wants a hilarious, honest take on the human need for connection.