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Some Fringe shows don’t just tell a story — they hit a nerve. Good Girl is one of them. It’s direct, open, and unexpectedly funny even when things get heavy. Mimi Collins doesn’t hide behind performance tricks or distance herself from the material. She steps straight into it and shows what it really takes to put yourself back together after everything falls apart.
What follows is a conversation about betrayal, identity, kink, consent, and the strange, stubborn hope that keeps people standing even when the ground gives way. It’s not tidy. It’s not polite. It’s real — and that’s why it lands.
Alix’s breaking point — Your show begins with infidelity but quickly becomes about the reaction rather than the betrayal. Why do you think so many people are more shocked by their own responses than by the crisis itself?
How we expect ourselves to react in certain situations is a core part of our sense of self. If you were to see a crime being committed, for example, most people would say they’d intervene. That’s who they think they are. But what happens if, when confronted with that reality, they don’t?
The truth is, we often don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do. And that’s an incredibly unnerving thing to face. When Alix realizes her reaction to this betrayal is nothing like what she would have guessed — nothing like what she would advise others to do, or what her younger self would tell her to do — it rocks her entire world. Her core identity. And it’s really hard to find your footing again when you’re suddenly standing in quicksand.
Emotional self‑deception — You portray Alix as flawed, contradictory, and sometimes complicit in her own pain. What made you want to resist the “pure victim” narrative?
The only way to connect with people is to tell the truth. The truth is what allows the audience to connect with the characters. And the truth is, there is no pure victim. Just like there is no pure villain. We are flawed. We make mistakes. We handle hard situations imperfectly. And all we can do is wake up tomorrow and try to be better than we were the day before.
Therapy as storytelling — The piece unfolds through therapy sessions, late‑night confessions and “hey girl” texts. How did you use these forms to reveal the logic of someone trying to hold a collapsing marriage together?
The three avenues sort of act as a filtration system. They offer different amounts of external input. The “hey girl” texts are external information with a calculated response, therapy sessions are external conversations designed to spark internal dialogue, and the late-night confessions — well, that’s just Alix and her audience. That’s where she gets to be completely unfiltered. Say the inside thoughts out loud. The things you’d never say in daylight — not even at a whisper. The audience allows her a space to give voice to her deepest fears and most shameful secrets. And by giving voice to them, they lose their power. And she might just be able to find herself again.
The nude photo moment — Posting a nude online is a huge turning point. What does that impulsive act unlock for Alix that nothing else could?
Well — let’s be frank. Infidelity can really do a number on your self-esteem. And while infidelity rarely has much to do with the person on the receiving end, it is not unreasonable for that person to wonder — is it me? Am I simply undesirable? And, listen, I am not advising people to post nudes online. But… if you do, you’ll get an answer.
But to push beyond the initial impulse, posting a nude online offers Alix a new vantage point from which to see herself. It almost allows her to try on a new skin. And in discovering what this new person she’s playing as craves, she becomes more aware of her own needs. Needs she has been minimizing for a long time, that very much deserve to be tended to.
BDSM as sanctuary — The kink community becomes the safest, most honest space in the story. What surprised you most when exploring BDSM as a site of healing rather than taboo?
Oh, I found so much about the BDSM community to be surprising. But the most surprising thing is probably the length and depth of the conversations surrounding each and every facet of “play” or “a scene” — terms used to describe encounters (often but not always sexual) in the BDSM space.
Participants in the BDSM community talk. All the time. They have to. There’s no other way to build the trust and the consent necessary to safely play in these spaces that explore taboos.
And the welcome and open exploration of these taboos is what removes the shame around them. Shame is such a destructive force in so many relationships, and perhaps the most common precursor to deception. So removing that from the mix only enhances participants’ ability to trust one another.
Consent vs. marriage — The show contrasts the instability of a socially “acceptable” marriage with the radical communication of kink. What does that say about how society defines healthy relationships?
A lot of societal milestones (job, marriage, house, children, etc.) are in place to determine status — socially or otherwise. We put a lot of emphasis on this status. Which means we’ll fight for it even when it isn’t actually serving us. It also means we often don’t question if it’s actually what we want, until it’s too late.
We assume we want to get married, buy a house, and have kids. Because that’s what we’re taught is the pinnacle of achievement from a young age.
But the kink community assumes nothing. Everything is a question — pet names, sexual acts, aftercare, all options are presented as equal, with no pre‑conceived judgment attached to the answer — because these are not questions we’re taught to have answers for. And if you can let go of the shame, as I talked about before, and really answer honestly, you can discover a LOT about yourself.
Autobiographical risk — You describe the piece as “largely autobiographical.” What boundaries did you redraw for yourself while writing something so emotionally exposed?
This is a hard story to tell. But I think it’s one that a lot of people will see themselves in. There were a lot of times in the writing of it that I wanted to fictionalize something as a means to protect myself, as a shield. To create some distance. But then the story would suffer. And that feels like a disservice to the people who need to hear it.
So I was constantly redrawing my boundaries to expand them and break them down. If I’m going to do this, I’m going all in. There’s no use in softening the blow, we’re in it now.
Working with Ellie Pyle — You and director Ellie Pyle have a long creative shorthand. What was the darkest or most vulnerable territory she pushed you into that you wouldn’t have gone alone?
It’s because of Ellie that I’m performing this piece. That was not the original plan. But I did an early staged reading before we found an actress and she said, “You have to do this. It’s gotta be you.” And — devastatingly — she was right. It’s my story. I have to tell it. I would not have made that choice without her… erm, stern encouragement.
That said, she took incredible care of me. If you watch the show, you’ll learn about the stoplight safeword system often employed in BDSM. (Green, yellow, red — you get it, right?). And she, hilariously, co‑opted this for rehearsal. We’d run a tough scene and after it she’d ask, “color?” And if I said “green,” she’d know we were good to push on. But “yellow” meant we’d take a break, and “red” meant we needed to pivot to something else. It was both a really smart and clean way to check in with me, and also… very very funny.
Staying too long — The show asks why people stay in relationships that no longer serve them. What’s the most uncomfortable truth you discovered while exploring that question?
There are a lot of hard truths to face in this piece! But the most uncomfortable one is that we often stay in spaces that no longer serve us because we don’t think we deserve better. Or — crucially — that better exists.
But we do. And it does. It might not be what we envisioned, and that vision of how you thought your life would be is really hard to let go of. The grief for the future you imagined is heavy. But you have to remind yourself that that future never really existed. And you can’t find the actual future that’s meant for you until you let the other one go.
Pain into pleasure — The press release says the story is ultimately about turning pain into pleasure. What does that transformation look like for Alix by the end of the piece?
Well to find out properly, you’ll have to come see the play. But, without giving too much away, that transformation looks like finally facing the pain head on, owning it, and dealing with it, so as to make room for pleasure.
Good Girl 10.20pm, Gilded Balloon Patter House 5th–31st August
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