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Elton Reimagined: Jess Robinson’s Joyful, Bonkers, Brilliant Tribute

July 27, 2026 at 5:19 pm · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews, Music ·Tagged Assembly George Square Gardens, Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, Elton John, Elton Reimagined, Jess Robinson

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Jess Robinson has never been content to simply imitate. She transforms. Whether she’s channeling divas, pop icons, or political figures, Robinson’s work is about reinvention — finding the emotional truth inside the performance. Her new Fringe show, Elton Reimagined, takes one of music’s most flamboyant legends and rebuilds him through a kaleidoscope of voices. It’s cabaret, comedy, and confession rolled into one glitter‑drenched hour.

We talked about voice, vulnerability, and the joy of going all‑in.

Elton John is a towering musical figure. What made you want to pull him apart and rebuild him?

Partly because I love him, and partly because I was curious. I’ve spent my whole career asking, “What if?” What if Barbra Streisand sang this? What if Kate Bush got hold of that? What if somebody looked at a familiar song through a completely different lens? Elton’s catalogue is so rich that it can survive being stretched, twisted and reimagined. The songs are incredibly well written — you can take them a long way from the originals and they still stand up.

You’re known for vocal precision. What’s the hardest Elton vocal trick to nail?

Oddly enough, it’s not really Elton’s voice. I don’t do men… well, not in that way. The challenge is finding the point where Elton disappears and somebody else arrives. People think impressions are about getting the voice right, but they’re actually about making hundreds of tiny decisions — where someone places a vowel, how they shape a phrase, how much breath they use. It’s like being a vocal detective. And because these are songs people know so well, the audience can tell instantly if you’ve got it wrong.

Cabaret lets you play with theatricality. What’s the moment in this show where you go full spectacle?

Lady Gaga performing Crocodile Rock definitely qualifies. Without giving too much away, there’s a point where I look at myself and think, “Well, this escalated quickly.” The audience is swept along in total giddiness.

Elton’s music is emotional, flamboyant, and deeply personal. Which song unlocked the show for you?

Your Song. I know that’s a slightly obvious answer, but there’s a reason it’s become such a classic — it’s deceptively simple. Once I found a version that felt fresh and personal, I suddenly understood what the whole show was trying to be. Everything else grew from there.

You’ve always blended comedy with musicianship. How do you keep both in balance without one overpowering the other?

For me, the music always comes first. The comedy invites people in, but the music has to earn its place. I never want the audience to think, “That was a funny impression.” I want them to think, “Wow, that’s so clever,” or “[sniff] — I didn’t expect to feel something there.” The biggest compliment is when people laugh one minute and find themselves unexpectedly moved the next. That’s the sweet spot.

What’s the unexpected angle on Elton that audiences won’t see coming?

How vulnerable he is. We tend to think of Elton as the glasses, the costumes, the confidence and the huge personality. But underneath all that, there are songs about loneliness, longing, heartbreak, insecurity and survival. The older I get, the more interesting I find that side of him.

Cabaret crowds are wonderfully chaotic. What’s the energy you hope they bring?

Everything I had in mind when I created the show — abandon, joy, playfulness, curiosity, and a willingness to come with me. There are moments where people think they know where we’re heading and then suddenly we’re somewhere completely different. The best audiences are the ones who surrender to the journey a bit. Also, laughing in the right places and standing ovations never hurt.

What’s the costume, prop, or musical flourish you’re most excited about?

Probably the fact that we’ve gone all in. There’s no point doing Elton by halves. There are feathers, surprises, glorious new arrangements I made with Matthew Floyd Jones, and a fun but mildly terrifying moment with a washing line and 25 quick‑fire impressions picked on the spot by the audience.

If Elton himself walked in, what moment would you want him to see?

Barbra Streisand singing I’m Still Standing — it’s an emotional rollercoaster. It’s camp and musically clever. And then he can stay for the finale. Not because it’s the biggest moment, but because it’s where all the threads come together. It’s joyful, emotional, slightly bonkers and completely sincere — which feels quite Elton, actually.

What’s feeding your creativity right now — albums, artists, obsessions?

At the moment I’m in one of those lovely periods where several creative worlds are colliding. Earlier this year I published my book Life is Rosi, which tells the parallel stories of my grandmother and me through our diaries at the age of twenty‑three. I’m exploring whether that might become a stage show or a film, which is exciting. I’m also recording my favourite reinterpretations from Elton Reimagined for an album release — and the fact that it’s coming out on vinyl makes me disproportionately happy. There’s something wonderfully tangible and romantic about vinyl that feels right for these songs. Beyond that, I’m always fascinated by voice, storytelling and transformation. Whether it’s a song, a character, a memoir or an impression, I’m interested in what happens when you take something familiar and look at it from a completely different angle. In fact, I also have a TED Talk coming up in September, which I’ll be honing and rehearsing during the Edinburgh Festival.

Jess Robinson: Elton Reimagined 🎭 Assembly George Square Gardens | Edinburgh Fringe 2026 🕗 7:30 PM | T

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Eleanor Morton: Diving Deep with The Mermaid

July 27, 2026 at 4:38 pm · Filed under Comedy, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews ·Tagged Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, Eleanor Morton, Monkey Barrel, The Mermaid

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Eleanor Morton’s The Mermaid dives headfirst into myth and modernity, blending folklore, feminism, and absurd humour. The show follows a self‑aware mermaid navigating the contradictions of beauty, desire, and identity — part stand‑up, part storytelling, part social satire. Morton, known for her sharp wit and surreal imagination, uses the mythical creature as a mirror for how women are seen, shaped, and sometimes submerged by culture.

We spoke with her about mythology, body politics, and finding comedy in the deep end.

A mermaid at the Fringe — myth meets modernity. What drew you to this creature as a lens for comedy?

I discovered when I was working on Haunted House, my 2024 show about ghosts, that it’s much easier to structure a show around something you love talking about rather than trying to write the jokes first. I love mythology and history and folklore, and mermaids also feel very modern — they’re still a hugely popular symbol, something little girls want to be. You can even become a professional mermaid and spend your day in a silicon tail waving at tourists. Mermaids are timeless symbols of what it means to be human, and there’s so much comedy in that.

Your work often blends surrealism with sharp social commentary. Where does this show sit on that spectrum?

That’s a good way to describe it — half‑weird, half‑serious. I’d say it sits squarely in the middle. Even if I tried to write something purely fantastical, my cynical side would creep in. Mermaids are beautiful and fun, but they’ve also always been used as social commentary, especially about women. In the 16th century Mary Queen of Scots was depicted as a mermaid in graffiti, symbolising her supposed loose morals — ironic, because mermaids don’t actually have sex. The sea and its creatures are endlessly fascinating, and mermaids have a dark past tied to politics. Basically, my motto is: if you’re not laughing, you’re learning.

Scotland has a long tradition of folklore. Did any particular myth feed into this show?

Originally I had a whole bit about selkies — the Scottish mythical creature that turns from a seal into a beautiful woman — but it had to get cut for time. We’ve got lots of watery creatures: selkies, kelpies, which are river‑dwelling horses that drown people, and obviously Nessie. My favourite is the Blue Men of the Minch, blue mermen who cause storms and shipwrecks.

You’re brilliant at creating characters who feel both absurd and painfully real. Who is your mermaid?

She’s me — someone who always wanted to be a mermaid when I was younger, even though I didn’t really enjoy swimming or the sea. It’s about the dichotomy between the sexy Ariel‑like mermaids of pop culture and the ugly, darker ones of myth, and how both shape how we see women: what we think we should be versus what we really are.

What’s the moment in the show where the surreal cracks open and something true slips out?

I talk a lot about how men see women, and how mermaids symbolise that. Patriarchal culture loves to see women as either Madonnas or Whores, and mermaids float between those ideas. They lure sailors to their deaths but they’re also pretty and demure. I link that to how men are taught not to trust women — especially beautiful women — because secretly, underneath it all, women are monsters. It’s also an excuse to do jokes about the manosphere and women having crushes on weird cartoon characters.

You’ve always had a knack for political undercurrents. What’s the quiet political heartbeat of this show?

Probably the idea that women are expected to be one thing instead of a multitude, and how much our bodies are used against us. I grew up in the mid‑2000s — a terrible time for body image as a girl. I talk about how disconnected we are from our own bodies and how culture relies on that disconnection to keep us insecure and buying stuff.

The Fringe can feel like a sea of noise. How do you carve out your own tide?

It’s easy to compare yourself to others — ticket sales, reviews, all that — but you’ve got to focus on your own thing and ask, “Is this better than it was yesterday?” I go see plays and things outside comedy, and I revisit places I grew up around because they feel far from Fringe madness.

What’s the strangest thing you discovered while writing The Mermaid?

That in the original Little Mermaid story by Hans Christian Andersen, she’s only twelve, and the prince makes her sleep in a basket outside his room.

If someone comes in expecting pure silliness, what deeper thing might they accidentally find?

Hopefully an undercurrent — I’d hate to say empowerment because it sounds cheesy — but maybe a celebration of women’s bodies. That sounds very hippie‑feminist, but honestly, straight men will enjoy the show too. There are some pictures of boobs.

What’s inspiring you right now — art, music, weird internet corners?

Mostly weird internet corners. I’m obsessed with The Broken Veil podcast — a spooky, immersive show that’s hard to define genre‑wise. Joel Morris and Will Maclean have made this incredible radiophonic‑workshop‑style experience with basically no money. It reminds me why creating things for the sake of it is so good for us.

Eleanor Morton: The Mermaid 🕐 1 PM | Monkey Barrel Cabaret Voltaire 1

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Alice Fraser: Finding Light in the Dark with Oh Man!

July 27, 2026 at 4:08 pm · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews ·Tagged Alice Fraser, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, Gilded Balloon, Oh Man!, Philosophy, solo show, Stand‑up Comedy

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Alice Fraser’s Oh Man! is a masterclass in emotional excavation — a show that balances razor‑sharp wit with philosophical depth. Known for weaving comedy through grief, absurdity, and the strange tenderness of being human, Fraser invites audiences into a space where laughter and heartbreak coexist. As she returns to the Edinburgh Fringe, her latest work asks what it means to stay hopeful when the world feels unrecognisable.

Below, our conversation moves between the personal and the universal — a dialogue about storytelling, resilience, and the art of finding light in the dark.

You’ve always blurred the line between stand‑up and storytelling. What does that hybrid form let you say that straight comedy can’t?

It lets me hold contradictions in the same breath. Comedy alone can deflect pain; storytelling can drown in it. When they meet, you get something closer to truth — laughter that doesn’t erase the ache but makes it bearable.

This show feels like a reckoning — a conversation with the world as it is now. What moment or feeling first sparked Oh Man!?

A sense of exhaustion, honestly. The world felt like it was shouting all the time, and I wanted to whisper back. The show began as a quiet question: how do we stay kind when everything around us rewards cruelty?

You often use humour to approach grief and moral complexity. How do you decide when to let the audience laugh and when to let them sit in silence?

You don’t decide — you listen. The audience tells you when they need air. Sometimes silence is the most generous thing you can give them.

There’s a philosophical undercurrent in your work — from ethics to empathy. Which thinkers or ideas have shaped how you write and perform?

I grew up on philosophy podcasts and Buddhist texts. I love the Stoics for their clarity and absurdists for their chaos. Mostly, I’m drawn to anyone who admits they don’t have the answers.

You’ve performed globally, but the Fringe has a particular energy. What does returning to Edinburgh mean for you at this stage of your career?

It’s like coming home to a house that’s constantly being rebuilt. Every year the walls shift, the neighbours change, and you still find your way back to the kitchen table.

Your shows often feel like letters to the future. What do you hope audiences carry with them after Oh Man! ends?

A feeling that the more broken things get, the more we need to look after each other. That tenderness isn’t weakness — it’s rebellion.

Comedy can be a kind of truth‑telling. What truths are you most interested in revealing right now?

That we’re all ridiculous and sacred at once. The truth isn’t tidy; it’s messy and human and full of contradictions.

You’ve spoken about the tension between sincerity and irony in modern culture. How do you keep sincerity alive onstage without it feeling sentimental?

By being specific. Sentimentality is vague; sincerity is precise. If you tell the truth exactly as you felt it, people recognise themselves in it.

If someone walked into Oh Man! expecting a traditional stand‑up hour, what do you hope they walk out with instead?

A sense that comedy can hold more than punchlines — that it can be a conversation, a confession, a shared breath.

What’s the idea or story that still feels too big, too dark, or too tender to tackle — at least for now?

The real story is too dark to tell until I’ve found the light in it. That’s the work — finding the light.

Alice Fraser: Oh Man! — 8:45 PM, Gilded Balloon Teviot, Edinburgh Fringe 2026 Tickets here

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Sissy Boy: Jake Bickford on Taboo, Identity and Fringe ’26

July 26, 2026 at 6:04 pm · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews, LGBT+interest ·Tagged Bristol theatre, digital identity, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, Fourth Monkey, Fringe ’26, Jake Bickford, kink and power dynamics, London theatre, masculinity, one‑man show, Sissy Boy, taboo themes

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We had questions for Sissy Boy, and before getting into Jake Bickford’s answers, it’s worth grounding what the show actually is. At its centre is a Bristolian teenager on the cusp of leaving home for uni, caught between the safety of his childhood bedroom and the far less stable world of his online relationship with a dominant older partner. The play moves between humiliation, confusion, bravado with the lads at the local, and the private corners of the internet where he tries to make sense of desires he barely has language for. It’s a one‑hour, one‑man coming‑of‑age comedy that isn’t afraid to prod at taboos — not for shock value, but to ask what we hide, why we hide it, and what it costs to keep parts of ourselves unseen in a world that’s changing faster than he can keep up.

With that in mind, here’s the full interview:

I’ve spent the afternoon going through your material, and before we get into the questions, I want to say this: it’s always refreshing when a company reaches out with work that actually has something to say. There’s a clarity of intent in Sissy Boy — a willingness to sit in the murkier corners of identity without flinching — and that makes the whole exchange feel worthwhile. Below is a polished, press‑ready version of your interview, with each question bolded and your answers following cleanly underneath.

Your play digs into the “private, often contradictory spaces where identity is shaped” — what part of that inner world was hardest to put on stage?

Just like with any kind of closeted environment, creating a sense of believable secrecy while maintaining it as a safe sanctuary for the character is always a challenge. Sissy Boy is a teenager living in constant fear of being discovered by his family and friends, so his bedroom had to reflect that sense of a fragile safe haven, seen in details like his double password‑locked laptop and costumes hidden deep in boxes under his bed.

Like most teens, Sissy Boy doesn’t have a literal safe or secure lockbox; instead, he relies on the illusion of safety — those hastily stashed boxes under the bed could just as easily be found. While we aimed for a minimalist staging plan due to fringe constraints, the remaining essentials reflect his current state: our most private and intimate selves are often stored away in the hidden corners of our bedrooms.

You describe the piece as “darkly funny and disarmingly candid.” How did you decide where humour ends and discomfort begins?

While this story is not autobiographical, it does contain elements drawn from situations in my own life — experiences that, fortunately, I can now look back on and smile at, no matter how dark or damning they felt at the time. In British culture especially, one of our greatest strengths is the ability to turn our most tragic moments into scenes of dark comedy, which is why this show draws inspiration from works like Baby Reindeer and The Inbetweeners.

Much of the emotion in the piece comes from how comedy around taboos is double‑edged. People become so accustomed to making light of their own experiences that they can’t help but laugh — even when they perhaps shouldn’t. I’ve always found this repression and reluctance to show sadness deeply compelling. It’s something we explore in Sissy Boy, encouraging the audience to question whether they’re laughing out of joy, discomfort, sadness, or simply awkwardness.

The show moves between Bristol, London and the digital world. How did those three landscapes shape the character’s emotional geography?

At its core, this is a coming‑of‑age story about a teenager stepping into adulthood and, in turn, into himself. Sissy Boy dreams of becoming an actor, not just out of ambition but out of a sense that the only way he can fully express who he is will be through being someone else.

Moving from Bristol to London is framed as both destiny and escape. He’s excited to leave home and “finally be left alone,” driven partly by the desire to train and prove himself, and partly by a curiosity to explore the more private, taboo corners of his identity. But once he arrives, that sense of freedom becomes complicated. The pressures of training are far greater than he expected, and the past continues to pull at him through fractured friendships back home.

The online world reflects a sort of limbo where the mask he has to wear in both cities is taken off and Sissy Boy can finally be honest about his place in the physical world. The lack of landmarks and structure in this online domain gives us the opportunity to focus on the character’s true emotional state rather than trying to paint a scene of the world around him at that time.

You talk about “late-night chatrooms, anonymous relationships and real-world encounters.” What did you want to reveal about how men actually behave when no one is watching?

We wanted to shine a spotlight on the issue of young people (particularly young men) and their access to pornographic material, and how this can shape their development and interpersonal relationships. From an early age, Sissy Boy is exposed to grooming and harmful situations that are beyond his control, leaving him without the space to safely and securely explore his own sexuality.

Within dynamics of feminisation and domination, feelings of self‑disgust and shame can often emerge, even in consensual adult contexts. Experiencing elements of this at such a young age, compounded by his own mental health struggles in a modern, hyper‑connected world, is something we felt important to explore with care and nuance.

The play confronts masculinity without broad slogans — “not in broad terms, but in the private… spaces.” What’s the most uncomfortable truth you found while writing it?

One of the harshest realities I’ve come to recognise is how little support many men feel able to offer. From my own experience, the sense of being powerless to help friends and family in crisis is something I’ve struggled with for years — and, even through writing and performing this play, I’m not sure I’ve become much better at it.

That’s why I wanted Sissy Boy to speak particularly to male audiences, both young and old, and to encourage reflection on our own internal “boogeymen.” There’s no simple formula when it comes to mental health, and no guaranteed outcomes, but I hope this play can contribute to an ongoing conversation about how men can better support the people they care about, now and in the future.

You’ve said “we must strike while the iron is hot and push this kind of divisive and original theatre.” What feels most urgent about telling this story right now?

Everything with the manosphere, nationalism, and privatisation is rampant in our country, all of which is feeding far‑right views and reforms. Gender enforcement is a crucial one: when this play was written back in 2022, Sissy Boy would have had more opportunities to explore not only his sexuality but gender as it’s discussed in the play. It would still have been taboo, but now it feels even tougher, as laws like the Birth Sex Requirement are only a starting point for anti‑trans legislation.

The production is intentionally stripped back — “performance-led… leaning into language and immediacy.” How does that minimalism change the way you perform the piece night after night?

We draw a lot of inspiration from the audience, as you never know who’s going to walk through the door. While it isn’t a stand‑up show, it is a coming‑of‑age comedy, and we welcome all kinds of audience interaction. The piece is intentionally divisive and explores themes that may make people uncomfortable, so the more reaction we get, the more Sissy Boy has to play with. As an actor, responding to that energy is one of the most exciting and rewarding parts of the performance.

The character’s online persona blurs with his lived experience. What’s the moment in the show where that collapse feels most dangerous to you?

The most dangerous moment comes when Sissy Boy enters his first long‑term relationship, where he can no longer hide his online history and interactions. It’s a fear many people have faced, and something we wanted to portray with kindness rather than as another moment of humiliation for the character. You become quite attached to these characters as you write them, so it always feels meaningful when grace, understanding, and compassion are offered to someone living such a closely guarded life.

You trained at Fourth Monkey and you’re now three shows into building your own company. How did that devising background shape the writing of Sissy Boy?

My drama school gave me a strong foundation in devising work with minimal time, budget, and resources. During my second year, we were heavily impacted by Covid, and much of the in‑person physical training we had expected was no longer possible. This was a tough situation for any establishment doing acting to handle, not to mention a school built on physical performance.

We had no choice but to push through. Much of our work was created with little to no staging, costume, lighting, or budget, and in some cases we were even attempting to act via Zoom. It was far from ideal, but it forced a level of resilience and resourcefulness that has stayed with me.

I’m especially grateful to Poppy, our Head of 2nd Year, whose direction and support during that time made a real difference. And ultimately, I’m proud that my co‑founder and fellow student, Jesse Lamb, and I were able to carry that resilience into building something of our own — even if it wasn’t quite the lesson the school intended to teach us.

The play asks “what it costs to keep parts of yourself unseen.” After performing it, do you feel you’ve paid any of that cost personally?

Therapy would probably have been cheaper than doing the Fringe, there’s no doubt about that. But it’s an opportunity unlike any other, and I knew it would have to be something big to make it worthwhile. This is the hardest I’ve ever worked in this industry, as a writer, producer, and actor, and I know it’s only going to get tougher from here.

I’ve poured my heart and soul into this piece, and I hope people enjoy it and find something to reflect on. But even if they don’t, I can be proud that I didn’t take any shortcuts and gave it my best shot. So yes — I’ve put a lot on the line to get Sissy Boy to where it is now, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My dad once told me as a kid that “Bickfords don’t quit,” so I’m ready to take this festival by storm and meet some amazing people.

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Boobytrapped: A Sharp, Funny and Emotionally Honest Dive into Identity and Masculinity

July 21, 2026 at 10:29 pm · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews, LGBT+interest ·Tagged Boobytrapped, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, Freddie Hayes, Gay club setting, gender identity, LGBT+ interest, Looksmaxxing, queer theatre, Trans theatre, Waverley Care

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Boobytrapped is sharp, funny, emotionally exposed, and built on the kind of lived experience that can’t be faked. When I first read Freddie’s answers, what struck me wasn’t just the craft behind the writing, but the clarity of purpose. This is a play that knows exactly why it exists and exactly what it wants to say — about bodies, identity, masculinity, queerness, and the strange, messy business of becoming yourself in a world that insists on telling you what you are.

There’s a generosity running through the interview too. Freddie doesn’t dodge the difficult parts — the frustration, the fear, the absurdity — but he also refuses to let heaviness swallow the humour. That balance is hard to pull off, and it’s part of what makes boobytrapped feel so alive. It’s a story built from real conversations, real contradictions, and real encounters with people who don’t always get it right. And that honesty gives the play its charge.

Below is the full interview with with writer, Freddie Haberfellner.

1. Your script treats a bodyswap not as a gimmick but as a way of exploring identity and perspective. When did you realise this supernatural twist could become the foundation of the story?

First of all, thanks so much for having me! The idea for a bodyswap play kind of just landed in my brain one night! I was roughly eight months on testosterone and somewhat starting to pass, had just received a date for top surgery (with more than a year’s wait ahead of me) and was spending more time around cis gay men. As a result, I was thinking a lot about what makes someone a man, how differently the world treats you based on how you’re perceived, all the different ways in which all of us attempt to affirm our gender and identity. On one hand, I was really surprised by how much I had common with the cis gays, how easy it was to feel like I was one of them and how welcome some of them made me feel. On the other hand, I was really shocked by the casual misogyny, bodyshaming and transphobia I encountered. I asked myself what I would have been like as a cis man, or how these guys would cope with being trans even for a day… and so the bodyswap seemed like the perfect way to find out!

2. Simon and Kevin wake up in one another’s bodies — but they also confront one another’s insecurities and assumptions. Which aspect of that dynamic was the hardest to write honestly?

Finding Kevin (the cis man)’s voice was definitely the biggest challenge, balancing his humanity whilst portraying the toxicity and prejudice I’ve experienced from a lot of cis gay men. I think the early drafts really reflect how much I was struggling because he barely spoke and when he did he mostly just said ‘What?’ He was really missing nuance, perhaps because I’ve been quite pissed off with (some) cis people for how they treat the trans community, or how even the ones who say they support us won’t show up as much as we need them to at this critical moment in time. But, as a writer, it’s not my job to tell people off! I had to figure out why Kevin treats Simon badly and find empathy for his pain, too. At the end of the day, we need to be hard on systems, not people – often easier said than done!

3. The show arrives at a moment when trans people are often spoken about rather than listened to. Did writing boobytrapped feel like a way of contributing your own perspective to that conversation?

Yes, absolutely. Putting on plays – both my previous show F*ckboy and now boobytrapped – is definitely my small way of standing up for my community. To say it’s frustrating to see the way we’re being spoken about would be an understatement, and the fact that the voice of misinformation and, let’s be real, hate speech is so loud and supported by some very powerful people is terrifying. We’re seeing over and over again that decisions concerning trans people’s basic human rights are being made without a single one of us being consulted, without unbiased research that is readily available actually being considered. I hope trans people like myself feel seen, understood and affirmed, but I’m also hoping that cis people seeing the show might learn a thing or two, and leave the theatre ready to double down on their support for the trans community.

4. The show is playful and funny, but it’s also set against the backdrop of debates around gender identity and the social climate referenced in your press materials. How do you balance humour with those heavier themes?

My therapist would tell you that humour is just how I cope with any difficult situation (I think they might be on to something there!). But being trans is silly, because being a human being is silly! Going through puberty again as an adult, dealing with the emotional and hormonal rollercoaster of that whilst holding down a job (or several)… it’s a goldmine for comedy in my opinion. But I think it’s so common in the queer community or any marginalised group to find the laughter in dire situations in order to maintain hope. Translated onto the stage, I always find that if a play is only sad, serious or heavy with no moments of joy and levity I’ll eventually check out emotionally, so it’s really important to me as an artist to always find the silliness and through that, perhaps, the humanity of a moment. And there’s more than enough trans tragedy out there: the prevailing narrative for too long has been that our lives are hard and miserable, full stop. While it’s true that our lives are made harder than they need to be, being trans is also an incredible gift that has brought me so much joy.

5. Body-swap stories often hinge on empathy and understanding. What questions did you most want audiences to ask themselves through Simon and Kevin’s journey?

One of the reasons I wanted to write this play was the insecurity I witnessed in myself and pretty much everyone around me regarding our own bodies. Wanting to look different, be different – bigger, smaller, more muscular, softer, harder… however we look, we always seem to think someone else looks better. I’ve been looking into the looksmaxxing movement and I’m simply horrified by the damage these young men do to themselves in order to reach some ‘ideal of masculinity’. But, of course, some people are of the opinion that I as a trans man am mutilating my own body by accessing gender-affirming care. I strongly reject that notion, yet it can’t be denied that there are similarities. So why do any of us feel the need to change our bodies? Why do we have these fixed ideas of what men and women look like? Why do our bodies determine how we are treated, what language people use about us? And how can we make peace with ourselves and the bodies we find ourselves in?

6. After touring Fckboy across Europe and receiving several awards, what part of that experience fed most directly into boobytrapped?

I love this question! I’ve absolutely loved performing F*ckboy but it’s also a very challenging and exhausting show to do. It is just my little self on the stage and I’ve definitely felt the pressure of that. So I think I was really craving collaboration with other performers and I’ve definitely found that with my wonderful co-star Ermis Makides as well as the whole team. My good friend Romeo Lau has been beyond brilliant as a director, Ro Winchester’s contribution as intimacy director has made some really difficult scenes easy and fun, and Callie O’Brien’s sound design really brought it all together. We’ve genuinely had such a blast workshopping and rehearsing this show, as well as previewing it at Prague Fringe. Plus, we’re all trans and non-binary people and it’s just been so special to be in a room with brilliant queer creatives who’ve poured so much love into my latest brain creation!

7. The gay-club setting feels vivid and central to the story. What drew you to that environment as the place where this extraordinary situation begins?

As so many transmasc people did, I grew into my queerness in sapphic spaces and I was very lucky to find some incredible community there with true care and togetherness. Once I realised that I was a) a man and b) really into men, I started spending more time in spaces predominantly frequented by cis gay men and, genuinely, I was really surprised by the difference in vibe. By no means are sapphic spaces perfect but, in my experience, they’re better at making everyone feel safe and welcome. So there was something really intriguing about starting the show in a place that, at first glance, is more welcoming to one of the characters than the other but, once you look closer, maybe isn’t the best place for either of them to be. A central theme of boobytrapped is definitely about feeling at home in your own body, but there is a wider theme of feeling at home in general. The gay club is the first of several potential homes we visit throughout the show. Slight spoiler here, but the characters also end up in the club’s accessible toilet which is where the body swap happens. I felt that was a necessary nod at the current attack on trans people’s right to use public toilets (as well as other gendered spaces).

8. The partnership with Waverley Care adds another dimension to the production. How did that collaboration come about, and what does it mean to you?

As a company, our goal isn’t just to make theatre but to use our art to inspire social change, to bring people together, make them feel less alone and raise awareness of queer struggles. Collaborating with a charity has been a goal of ours for quite some time and I’m so thrilled that we get to support Waverley Care’s vital work. Whilst sexual health isn’t a direct theme of the show, there definitely is a lot of talk about sex so their work almost feels like an extension of the play! We’ll have informational leaflets available to our audience members to hopefully raise awareness of HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and general sexual health, and audiences will have the opportunity to donate too if they can. I’m also really excited to be doing a writing workshop with some of their service users. The focus will be on using your lived experience to create art but keeping yourself as emotionally safe as possible in the process. With two plays inspired by my life under my belt, I’ve learnt quite a lot along the way, and have also seen how empowering it can be to create art in this way. So being able to share this experience with other queer folks is an immense privilege.

9. Simon and Kevin’s relationship is messy, tender and often funny. What surprised you most about writing two characters with such different perspectives on masculinity and identity?

From the offset I knew that I wanted the play to be a romcom – there’s a dire lack of love stories especially for trans men – but I also knew that there would be some real obstacles for the characters to overcome. I didn’t want to trivialize or downplay the transphobia that happens at the beginning, but was also determined to show that people can learn and grow when given the opportunity. Whilst writing, I had a lot of wonderful conversations with my AMAB friends which really helped me to see all our similarities. The way we are all insecure about our bodies, about whether we’re desirable, whether we’re doing gender correctly (whatever that may mean)… With time, I realised that the two characters really are quite similar even though their struggles manifest in very different ways. They’re both damaged, they both make mistakes and hurt each other, but I’ve been genuinely surprised by the moments of care and softness we’ve found in between all the body swap madness.

10. If audiences leave theSpace on The Mile having seen the show, what do you most hope they take away from the experience?

I really need this on a shirt because I say it so often, but with any play I do I’ll genuinely be happy if I’ve made one person feel less alone. What I hope is that people leave the theatre with a strengthened sense of empathy – for themselves as well as each other. I hope their bellies ache from laughing. And I hope the cis audience members especially will have learnt a thing or two about the trans experience, and I hope they feel inspired to bring that knowledge into conversations going forward to help us raise awareness and fight the horrific amount of misinformation circulating at the moment. I hope trans and queer people seeing the show feel seen and held, and perhaps a little more in love with their own brilliant bodies.

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SELEDKA at the Fringe: Uliana Klimchuk on Art, Displacement and Defiance

July 21, 2026 at 6:33 am · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Edinburgh International Festival, Interviews ·Tagged displacement, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Kyiv, Lily Afghani, SELEDKA, Solo Performance, Ukraine, Uliana Klimchuk, UNCSA

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There are interviews that arrive already humming with urgency, and Uliana Klimchuk’s is one of them. Some artists talk about war from a distance; she talks from the middle of it, carrying lived experience into every line she writes and every room she walks into. SELEDKA isn’t just a play—it’s a pressure valve, a reckoning, a refusal to let anyone else tidy up the truth of what displacement feels like.

What struck me most while preparing this piece was how naturally Uliana moves between clarity and candour. One moment she’s discussing the mechanics of institutional support; the next she’s describing Kyiv summer days punctured by missiles. Her answers don’t posture. They don’t reach for grand statements. They simply insist on honesty, and that insistence becomes the spine of the work.

This interview isn’t just about a show heading to Edinburgh. It’s about ownership—of story, of identity, of the right to define home even when history tries to redraw the map. It’s also about collaboration, resilience, and the strange, stubborn hope that theatre can still make people look up from their routines and feel implicated in the world again.

You describe SELEDKA as a political satire born from the “cultural chasm” between Ukraine and contemporary America – when did that gap stop being an irritation and start becoming an artistic obligation?

Every single day in my life, as well as millions of other Ukrainians in the past 4 years, was marked by war. The feeling that I need to talk about it boldly has been growing since day 1. I think I needed to accumulate all of the stories from home, moments of ignorance abroad, people really willing to learn all over the world, but being able to fully comprehend what it’s like to live with war, stories of my family, friends and strangers being so resilient and joyful, happy to share another day summer day in Kyiv, even if it’s followed by missiles and terror at night. I couldn’t have written the play if I didn’t live through it myself, haven’t met all of the courageous people, and wasn’t hurt by the indifference of others. So at a certain point writing became a necessity, because all I had to say was too much to keep in my head. Besides, I really believe asking questions and learning about someone else’s reality, even if it puts us in an uncomfortable position, is what’s gonna ultimately help us be better people. Better citizens of the Earth.

The play asks who gets to claim ownership of a country. That’s a huge, loaded question. In performance, do you want audiences to feel unsettled by it, or implicated by it?

We don’t want to prescribe an experience to the audience, that’s why theater is so compelling, because everyone takes it in their own way. But the hope is that the audience will feel like they can’t turn away from it any longer. And I believe both of these options are a part of one. You can’t feel implicated without feeling unsettled. The world is full of bystanders, I am one sometimes, and so is everyone else. It does not make us monsters, but it definitely provides us with an opportunity to act. To change something. To stand up for what we believe. War is a macro-issue, and because of that it very easily gets overwhelming. We aren’t in charge of war, the government is, therefore we can’t end it. But the truth is, even asking the smallest question can change someone’s life. Ask and continue being curious. Opportunities to help will present themselves. And if we can’t stop the war, we definitely can help people suffering from it. If you don’t know what’s the best way to help, asking that question can create connection, therefore a sense of security and make tangible changes. Seledka, however, forces the audience to question where they stand by arguing for the “other” side, calling it righteous and inevitable. The history is painfully repetitive and we’ve learnt a while ago that all villains believe in their cause thinking they’re saving the world. So does Seledka. The audience then is asked to check in with their values, beliefs and simple acts of will. Do they follow his orders or do they sabotage the troupe?

You’ve lived through invasion, displacement, reinvention – Kyiv to Bulgaria to North Carolina. How much of SELEDKA is theatre, and how much are you refusing to let anyone else narrate your story?

The war has forced people to leave what they love behind. Millions have fled and some never came back. What most Ukrainians now consider the “norm”, should’ve never happened to anyone. But every day our people are exercising their resilience and freedom by just going to work, drinking coffee at a local cafe, watching plays and going to a rock concert. People are living their life to the fullest in the face of danger. That is the most outstanding act of bravery. As for myself, I won’t let Russia tell me where my home is or how to live my life. I come back to Kyiv whenever I have a chance. I use the curfew inflicted by war to spend time with my loved ones under the same roof. The blackouts in the city as an opportunity to connect the way we used to, not through instagram. I have never seen people as kind, generous and loving, as Ukrainians during times of need. Russia tries to turn us against each other, but for the past 4 years we’ve been standing strong and united. That is real defiance. And even though my studies brought me to North Carolina and now my work is taking me to Edinburgh, Kyiv is the only place I call home, and I have never yet been to a city where I felt like I could stay, but my hometown. That is why the play is partly a love letter to the country, the city and the people who bring its streets to life.

SELEDKA has already travelled from Winston-Salem to Washington D.C. to New York. Did American audiences respond with curiosity, confusion, or that particular brand of polite distance people adopt when war feels far away?

I think because the war, not just this one Ukrainian, but any of them really, feels so far from America, people were really moved hearing real stories, to hear more than news headlines. Many have never met anyone from Ukraine, and most definitely haven’t heard stories from people who lived there, so the play changed their world view and the sense of distance between these worlds. Americans most definitely didn’t know a lot about Ukraine, what it looks like, what the weather is like and sometimes even where it is on the map. Good thing, that lesson is learned very quickly during the show. I am very curious to see the audience response in Edinburgh as people in Europe are more aware of the fact that Ukraine is serving as a man shield for the Union. And I have no idea what the reception of the play would look like, but I know it will make people reevaluate the importance of the end of war.

You talk about similarity – that “we are more similar than we think if we learn from our history.” Do you find that audiences resist that idea, or do they secretly crave it?

Audiences do crave it, the mass media just puts way too much effort into creating chaos between people. As a result we all feel separated, scared to offend if we try to relate, forced to live our lives as a routine where we don’t take in what’s going on around us. However, all the great books, movies and stories that we’ve been passing on through generations show the same thing. History is circular, humanity has repeatedly struggled with the same patterns over and over again, and we won’t get any further if we let ourselves forget what we’ve already been through. So to share that experience with thirty or so strangers in a theater, to face the same villain, to really take in the stories of those who have been standing up for the villain is an act of unity we all crave for.

Your director, Lily Afghani, works heavily with themes of immigration and displacement. What happens when two artists shaped by uprooting collaborate – does it create clarity, or does it create friction that becomes the work?

It creates a safe space. Lily being half Iranian, half Mexican and so passionate about both cultures and their heritage is the best person who could’ve possibly directed SELEDKA. They know what it’s like to talk and bring to stage things that are hard to discuss, let alone live through. We started out as friends, and many times we shared conversations followed by tears and a bond between us, because we didn’t turn away from something hard. So our collaboration thrives through that need to connect, to share things that’ve been overlooked and make a difference. Our rehearsal process is a balance of a friendly check in (that tends to last too long, cause we’re having too much fun) and then another conversation about what’s going on in both our worlds politically, what’s the overlap and what did we not yet know. Then we explore how these themes fit into the story that we’re telling through this play. The third person in our small team is Jake Bryant, a phenomenal actor, great singer, writer and luckily for us, producer in this case, is another classmate of ours from University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and a crucial part of this production. I am very thankful to UNCSA and the life that they brought us all together, because I couldn’t have managed to share this play with the world without Lily and Jake, and if I miraculously did, it wouldn’t have been as much fun.

The show was supported by the Thomas S Kenan Institute for the Arts and developed through UNCSA’s season. How did institutional support shape the piece? Did it give you freedom, or did it sharpen your sense of responsibility?

We are immensely grateful for the support from both Kenan Institute and UNCSA as they were there from the very beginning, not only supporting us financially, but guiding us in the effort to build a show from scratch. They let us figure out how to produce a show starting from creating a budget and making sense of Excel sheets formulas, but were always there when we needed advice and were the foundation for our partnership with Producer Hub who is serving as our Fiscal Sponsor. These organisations connected us with people who knew infinitely more about the Fringe, producing and marketing, and, really, all of the other aspects of creating your solo show. Ultimately they have granted us freedom to make choices and not go into debt, which is an outstanding opportunity for artists just out of college and for that I will forever be grateful.

Your background in pop singing is fascinating – pop is often dismissed as light, disposable, unserious. Has that training influenced how you deliver political material onstage, perhaps through rhythm, breath, or emotional precision?

Thank you for this question, because I never really thought about it. First of all, the teachers in my conservatory were all very tough and direct. One of my favourite stories from that time is when I got to my first voice lesson, my teacher gathered her class and after listening to me sing made them tell me one thing they thought was bad about my performance. Perhaps not the best teaching technique, but it informed the way I move through life now. That is all to say, there was nothing light or unserious about pop singing. I think it gave me an amazing training in terms of voicing what I think is important, because singing somehow is one of the scariest things I’ve done. Not only are you conveying the message of the song, but you’re doing it with your own voice. One of the most vulnerable and nerve-wrecking experiences. But having to do that in the pressure of my school where all 18 girls in my class wanted to be the next pop-star has given me the sense of confidence, without which I wouldn’t be able to share the story of Ukraine at the most renowned Theatre Festival. The vocal training has prepared me for the endurance and stamina one requires for a solo performance. And love for music has instilled in me pride for my country and its culture, the incredible music that our artists make inspires me to share that with the world and doesn’t let me stop until the whole planet knows about how talented and courageous Ukrainians are.

You’ve worked with major performers – David Harbour, Ivanna Sakhno, Kelly AuCoin, Jessica Hecht. Did seeing your writing interpreted by actors of that calibre change how you approached SELEDKA?

Most definitely. First of all, seeing your work being brought to life by people you’ve admired long before you thought you wanted to write is a very overwhelming experience. But not only did these people give voice to my characters, some of them became my life long mentors. People who I look up to and who are always there to give back to those just staring out. First of all, they really made me feel like what I have to say is important and should be told. For that I have to thank Laura Cahill, the leader of Young Playwright Ukraine, the group that brought all of these people together and created a platform for young writers like me. One of the mentors I met through that platform is a London based writer, Suzanne Heathcoat, who has given me feedback on the initial stages of SELEDKA and has been there to support it all the way through. The Alum of UNCSA, a Tony Award winner for his play “Oslo”, JT Rogers, has encouraged me and Lily to be the brave artists that we want to be, he has advised me on the writing and was always quick to respond to any email with an absurd question I had. I cannot overstate the impact these people have made on my growth as a writer and an artist, and I only hope to build a career as successful as all of them did, giving back to the next generation.

SELEDKA arrives at the Fringe at a moment when audiences are hungry for authenticity but exhausted by crisis. What do you hope they carry out of the Snug or Playground 3 – a political awakening, a cultural bridge, or simply a deeper sense of human proximity?

The hope is that the audiences will leave with a sense that they’re a part of the history of whatever happens next. That their small actions have the power of helping someone. That history is currently being written. We live in unpredictable times when every day things turn around, when the dangers are far more overpowering than they were 70 years ago and when humanity and kindness are a far more valuable currency than any other existing one.

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A Public Display of Affection: Jonathan Wilson on Memory, Survival and Quiet Rebellion

July 18, 2026 at 6:48 pm · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews, LGBT+interest ·Tagged A Public Display of Affection, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Gilded Balloon, Jonathan Wilson, LGBTQ+ history, queer theatre, Solo Performance, The Snug, Toronto queer history

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Jonathan Wilson arrives at the Fringe with A Public Display of Affection, a piece that slips between testimony, memory, and performance with the ease of someone who has lived every inch of the story he’s telling. Rooted in Toronto’s queer history of the 1970s and ’80s, the show doesn’t behave like a museum piece. Instead, it breathes—funny, dangerous, tender, and defiantly ordinary in all the ways queer life has always been. Wilson begins as the “queer elder” at the lectern, but the façade doesn’t last long. What follows is a reckoning with survival, desire, chosen family, and the quiet rebellions that once made even holding hands feel like an act of resistance.

As he brings the work to Edinburgh, Wilson isn’t simply exporting a Canadian story. He’s returning to the country his parents once called home, folding questions of belonging, memory, and inheritance into a performance that refuses nostalgia and insists on truth. In an intimate space like Gilded Balloon’s The Snug, the show becomes less a lecture and more a conversation—one that asks younger queer audiences to imagine their own futures while remembering the people who never got the chance.

This interview explores how the piece evolved, what histories risk being erased, and why Wilson believes humour, imperfection, and community are as essential to queer survival as any political victory. Counter Culture asked him to explain.

You’re bringing a critically acclaimed Toronto production to the Fringe. What shifts when a show rooted in 1970s and ’80s Toronto queer history suddenly meets an Edinburgh audience with a completely different cultural memory?

I’ve learned that although the street names change, the emotions and the struggles are the same. Edinburgh audiences probably haven’t heard of Yonge Street or the St. Charles Tavern in Toronto, but they understand first love, shame, chosen family, and trying to build a life when the world keeps suggesting you shouldn’t exist.

The piece begins as a formal “queer elder” talk and then unravels into something far more intimate and dangerous. Was that structural rupture always part of the concept, or did it emerge as you explored how testimony differs from nostalgia?

It wasn’t planned at all. It happened organically when I discovered I was a terrible historian. The play began as a series of readings for students studying queer history, and I felt an unspoken pressure to be a “good” example. Thankfully, the darker, funnier, and more truthful stories of my friends kept interrupting. The moment I stopped trying to be an authority and started becoming a witness, the play finally knew what it wanted to be.

The press release describes the show as a journey through love, loss, lust, and survival. Which of those threads proved hardest to balance without tipping the piece into sentimentality?

Survival. It’s very easy to turn surviving into a sort of sainthood, but of course we weren’t saints. We were messy, funny, horny, selfish, generous, frightened kids trying to get through another day. But we weren’t simply surviving. We were falling in love, dancing until sunrise, making terrible fashion choices, flirting outrageously, and creating families from scratch.

You chart moments where even holding hands felt like rebellion. How do you stage that kind of quiet defiance in a way that lands with audiences who’ve grown up in a more visible, though still imperfect, queer landscape?

By resisting the urge to make it look heroic. Holding someone’s hand shouldn’t be brave. The tragedy is that it was. It should be gloriously ordinary. I hope younger audiences don’t leave thinking, How courageous they were. I hope they leave wondering why something so beautifully mundane was ever considered dangerous. So much queer history is presented as a warning. I want this show to be an invitation to imagine a long life and an earned elderhood.

Critics have called the show “a forgotten slice of Toronto LGBTQ history brought to life.” What part of that history do you feel is most at risk of being rewritten or erased today?

The ordinary lives. The street kids I loved. My chosen family. The young people on the margins who can still disappear, even within a so‑called respectable queer history. We remember the marches, the police persecution, and the court victories, as we should. But we forget the shared rooms, the back‑alley bars, the friendships, the first kisses, the tacky wallpaper, and the people who never became famous enough to be remembered.

You blend razor‑sharp humour with devastating honesty. Given your background in Second City, improvisation, and comedy, how did you decide where humour helps the story, and where it would undermine it?

Laughter opens us up to hear truth — but importantly, the laughter isn’t there only to soften the truth. It is part of the truth. Queer people have always laughed at funerals, flirted in impossible circumstances, and found joy where no one expected it. That’s an important part of our history too.

Your past work includes My Own Private Oshawa, The Normal Heart, and The Lion King. How does A Public Display of Affection sit alongside those roles in terms of emotional weight and personal investment?

There’s nowhere to hide. When you’re playing Ned Weeks in The Normal Heart or Timon in The Lion King, someone else has written the words. This time, every laugh, every silence, and every difficult memory belongs to me. It’s easily the most exposing thing I’ve ever performed. Even my earlier solo work reflected the version of myself I was capable of sharing in my thirties. This show is what that story looks like after another thirty years of living.

Bringing the play to Scotland feels less like exporting a Canadian piece than finally bringing my own family story home. My parents left Scotland for Canada in the early 1960s, so growing up, Scotland was always referred to as “home.” I’ve written some of that tension into this new version of the show, and it has taken me somewhere even more personal than I expected. Because of course… there’s no place like home.

The show insists on remembering at a moment when queer histories risk disappearing beneath progress and assimilation. What’s the one memory you felt absolutely had to remain unfiltered?

The feeling that disappearing was always a possibility. Not in some abstract political sense. Literally. Friends vanished. Spaces vanished. Entire generations vanished. The danger isn’t forgetting the dates. The danger is forgetting what it actually felt like to be alive.

Gilded Balloon’s The Snug is an intimate space. How does that closeness shape the performance, especially when the material moves between humour, danger, and testimony?

You can’t fake intimacy in a space like The Snug. There’s nowhere to perform at people. I’m simply with them. Some nights it feels less like theatre and more like a conversation that’s wandered somewhere unexpectedly honest. Those are usually the best nights.

If you could speak directly to younger queer people encountering this history for the first time, what’s the one uncomfortable truth you hope the show gives them permission to hold onto?

You don’t owe anyone perfection. Every generation inherits unfinished work. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll disagree with the generation before you. One day you’ll probably horrify the generation after you. Welcome to the club. But don’t confuse having more rights with no longer needing each other. Community isn’t something history gave us. It’s something every generation has to build again.

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Patient 13: A Darkly Funny Journey Through Illness, Independence and Magic Mushrooms

July 17, 2026 at 6:51 pm · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews ·Tagged cancer storytelling, Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Patient 13, psilocybin treatment, psychedelic therapy, solo show

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Patient 13 is a story that starts in a hospital ward, detours through a psychedelic clinical trial, and somehow lands in a place that feels both devastating and oddly hopeful. It’s the kind of show that makes you rethink the neat narratives we build around illness, independence, and the people we let close enough to hurt us.

Talking to Gail, you get the sense she’s spent years turning chaos into clarity — not by sanding down the rough edges, but by holding them up to the light. The humour is sharp, the honesty disarming, and the reflections feel lived‑in rather than curated. What follows is a conversation that moves between trauma, mushrooms, medical authority, dating, and the strange business of becoming a new version of yourself while the old one is still watching.

“I got rid of all the toxic people and there was no one left.” Were you laughing at the absurdity of that line, or grieving the truth inside it?

Both, the line exposes the nuance and extremes of human relationships: isolation v independence; trust v self care. As a “chronically” independent person, my impulse is to retreat when I feel I can’t trust someone. Sometimes that is the right decision, sometimes not. In the real events of Patient 13, I struggled to find the balance. What are the right boundaries? What happens when “there is no one left?” I had to ask myself if I went too far. After all, no one is perfect. We can’t do everything alone and it is possible to grow in a relationship.

Your cancer diagnosis pushed you into a clinical trial involving magic mushrooms. What was the moment you realised this experience was theatrical?

The psychedelic trip (or the dosing, as the doctors call it) was an intense download of epiphanies — one was that I missed performing and that I should write jokes again. Years later, when I returned to NYC storytelling stages, the first story I told was one called “The Dosing.” The audience loved it, so that was encouraging. Several people have told me that it was the best performance of a psychedelic trip they’d ever seen. And it’s accurate because the doctors made me write everything down. And now it’s in the play!

The show is darkly satirical, but the trauma underneath is real. How do you protect yourself emotionally while performing something so close to the bone?

The play goes by much faster than the real life events and now I already know the ending is happy, so that’s a plus.

There’s a line in the play that also reflects my pragmatic approach, then and now: “there’s no time to cry, I’m CEO of Gail’s biggest decision ever.” So, even back then, there was/is a breakneck urgency to move forward, to deal with the decisions, the treatments and still have some fun. I’ve always tried to approach life as an adventure, even in tough times. This will make more sense when you see the show.

As an author, the experience has transformed into emotional beats, a complete narrative. While there is some trauma and sadness, it feels like I’m reliving and sharing personal growth, as lessons are learned and action is taken. Overall it’s an empowering and joyful tale, an adventure. The humor is constant, so we’re laughing together at the absurdity of life. I like to say that the show helps me do the show.

I expect that performing almost every day for 23 days in Edinburgh may present a different challenge. I plan to sit in the meadows, hug a tree, find a yoga class or a fellow human to ground me.

You describe yourself as fiercely independent. What did psychedelics reveal about the version of yourself you’d been clinging to? As I mentioned above, I may have gone too far in my independence, especially post cancer treatment. It’s not easy to return to “normal life” after facing mortality and being treated for cancer. For me at least, I wanted to have deep conversations, not just get back to the mundane routine of living. And I think I judged certain people who didn’t behave the way I thought they should. The psychedelics helped me see the bigger picture.

The psychedelics reminded me that we’re all doing our best. And that we are all connected, like it or not. This is a lesson I still have to remember. It’s been long enough that I can slip back into old patterns. Doing the show feels a bit like tripping as the profound truths need to be repeated. It’s fun and enlightening for me and the audience.

The play is also about dating while your identity is shifting. What did illness change about intimacy and desire?

Hmm. I was raised in Oklahoma, in an environment where I was taught to suppress my own feelings, to always put other people first. Over time, this manifests as being a “people pleaser,” which can lead to personal neglect and shame. So, I haven’t always been good at standing up for myself or even recognizing that I should defend my own feelings.

However, facing mortality offers a certain immediate clarity. Suddenly, I had to put myself first — it was literally life or death. Suddenly, I had to ask “is this person good for me?” rather than “how do I make them happy?” The illness forced me into a dramatic self-love that was long overdue. It also turned me into a bit of an introvert, a better listener, and a philosopher. I love this new version of myself and want to keep those elements.

You’ve said you think of your audience as “close friends.” What does friendship mean in this context?

It means we can trust each other. I’m honest about my experience, sharing my vulnerabilities, mistakes, and lessons. In the play, my audience (aka my friends) often see my mistakes before I do. Like life. As their friend, I’m warm and welcoming, protecting them from trauma by adding humor to the “scary” parts. It’s like we are living the events together. What’s more fun than hanging out with friends?! In this case, I get to do all the talking, but it’s not considered rude. When I’ve hung out with the audience after, I joke that it’s their turn to talk for an hour.

Dan Oliverio talks about institutionalised fear and loneliness. What fear felt institutional to you, and what fear felt entirely your own?

The institutional fears that I deal with in Patient 13 are things like questioning the medical authority, power figures. For example, I faced an arrogant doctor who didn’t listen, and seemed to want to scare me into following a healthcare protocol generalised to fit the masses rather than an individual.

On a more personal level, I was fearful due to the uncertainty of a contradictory diagnosis, with treatment supervised by a doctor that I didn’t trust. The question became, do I have to do everything that an authority tells me to do? I was suspicious of his bravado and condescending demeanour. It didn’t feel like I was a person to him. I was more afraid of chemo and radiation than of psychedelics.

Patient 13 arrives as the UK debates psychedelic treatment. How does it feel to have your story intersect with a political turning point?

It feels fantastic to share my story at a time when it can be most useful. It’s synchronicity, a happy accident to be relevant. I hope that the Patient 13 show helps UK audiences see one example of how psilocybin treatment might work. There are documentaries out there, but this play enables people to take a real life journey with me as a patient. Beyond entertainment, I want the show to be a service, such that it helps the audience find more clarity in their own lives and decisions.

When I participated in the study, most people in the US were skeptical about psychedelic therapy. The stigma was so strong that the hospital had a hard time finding cancer patients to participate. Perhaps the UK debate is at that stage now. So again, happy relevance.

The show grew from storytelling nights in New York. What stayed from those early versions?

The early versions were merged into a greater narrative arc. Many little situational jokes stayed, because I know they work. But the endings were cut and reshaped. Beginnings were expanded. The transitions were fun and tedious to write to ensure that they pulled the separate pieces together in a bigger story. This experience has helped me grow as a writer and performer.

If the version of you who first received the diagnosis could watch Patient 13 today, what do you hope she’d recognise?

First off, Version One of Gail would be relieved that I/we survived. Secondly, I think she’d be thrilled and impressed that the New Version Gail managed to follow through with this project and that it is entertaining and helping people. She’d like me to get rid of some toxic people.

Version One Gail would like the jokes. Even in the midst of trauma, she saw the funny. She’d like that New Version now shares that sense of humor with a broader audience. After the diagnosis and during treatment, she never wanted pity and still wanted to be a normal person who has fun. New Gail continues that tradition, which I think people can relate to on multiple levels.

Both Versions believe that you don’t stop living just because you think you might die. Sometimes “healthy” people can be inadvertently condescending to people who are fighting an illness. It’s a weird division. Patient 13 brings light to these nuances. Version one of Gail would be proud.

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Inside Spin Cycle: A Queer Love Story Caught Between Cycles

July 17, 2026 at 6:34 pm · Filed under Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews, LGBT+interest ·Tagged Counter Culture, Edinburgh Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, LGBTQ+ theatre, queer theatre, Spin Cycle

There’s something about a Fringe show set in a laundrette that immediately makes you lean in. Maybe it’s the hum of the machines, maybe it’s the way people behave differently when they think no one’s watching. Spin Cycle takes that instinct — that quiet, nosy curiosity — and turns it into a queer love story that slips between memory, myth and the mundane. It’s tender, strange, and a little bit disorienting, like overhearing a couple argue in public and realising you’ve wandered into the middle of something you shouldn’t understand but somehow do.

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Talking to the team behind it, you get the sense they’re not interested in neat answers or tidy emotional arcs. They’re more concerned with the mess — the stains, the rewashing, the things we keep trying to fix even when we know they’re already worn through. What follows is a conversation that feels as intimate and slippery as the play itself.

Spin Cycle unfolds in a laundrette — a place that’s both public and strangely intimate. What made you realise this was the perfect setting for a queer love story that refuses to stay neatly folded?

ZOFIA: A Launderette is such a liminal space. Its whole reason for existence is to be a place of transition: you enter with dirty clothes and leave with clean. I felt that it is the perfect setting for a play that exists to examine that feeling of being in the midst of transition, being somewhere between forgetting and remembering, between loving and not. I also think the phrase “air your dirty laundry” is aptly fit.

You add memory slippage, absurdism, and a wash cycle that bends time. How did you find the balance between emotional truth and theatrical strangeness?

BETHAN: The absurd space versus the tense scene work is a part of this play that’s very exciting to build on. In many ways the launderette feels like a third character, or entity. It plays a vital role in pushing Noel and Kitt to try again at the top of the play. There’s a sense the space may even have some control over their fate as a couple and maybe is pushing them to some conclusion but as we learn, Kitt and Noel can’t help but have the same conversations over and over again. Their dialogue is pacy and naturalistic and as far as we know they are emotionally truthful. Unless someone knows more then they let on?….

The play champions Irish heritage and queer, gender-non-conforming characters. How do those identities shape the emotional engine of the story?

RHIANNON: The characters queer identity or ‘irishness’ isn’t there to make any kind of political statement, they’re simply who the characters are. Those identities affect how they move through the world, how they understand love, belonging and themselves. The play places two different experiences of Irish and lesbian identity side by side. Noel is a working class, non-binary artist from Northern Ireland whose identity is shaped by financial insecurity, community expectation and navigating a world that wasn’t built for them. Kitt is an Irish-American who has inherited wealth and whose connection to Ireland is rooted in family history rather than lived experience. Spin Cycle, at its core is a love story and it explores how love can exist between two people whose understandings of home, privilege and self are radically different.

“Eyes lock. Hearts thump. But something is off.” What’s the “off” for you?

ZOFIA: It’s the feeling of Deja vu. Deja vu is described as “an illusion of memory whereby—despite a strong sense of recollection—the time, place, and context of the “previous” experience are uncertain or impossible.”

The show has been described as Eternal Sunshine meets The L Word. What feels accurate about that comparison — and what doesn’t?

ZOFIA: Spin Cycle and Eternal Sunshine both seek to answer the same question- why is heartbreak intrinsically tied to the joy of love? There are themes of memory and repression in both as well, although Spin Cycle remains more ambiguous than Eternal Sunshine. As for The L Word, well, there is plenty of Talking, laughing, loving, breathing, fighting, fucking, crying, drinking, riding, winning, losing, cheating, kissing, thinking, dreaming in both.

The laundrette becomes a suspended world where past and present collide. Did you imagine it as a memory, a metaphor, or a place where truth stops hiding?

BETHAN: The launderette may have more hope for their relationship than they do. It’s certainly somewhere where hard conversations are forced out. It is somewhere the truth stops hiding and it feels like somewhere that has existed forever and will continue to until the cycle reaches an end the launderette is satisfied with. The liminal space has been an important factor in creating a neutral zone for Noel and Kitt to explore their guilt, lust and ultimately loss. Thematically thinking of the setting as the launderette, are we washing something until it’s ragged and worn and finished, or are we cleansing something and rescuing stained memories?

Class quietly shapes the story. How consciously did class weave itself into the writing?

BETHAN: When we started this project it was a short twenty minute scene with a hint of a class divide. As we have lived with the characters, certain nuances emerge as obvious directions to take them both. Noel and Kitt really do clash in many ways, notably Kitts inherited wealth from her grandad and Noel inherited orange sash from theirs. It felt important to flesh out where each may have struggled or bloomed forming their identities and their place in the world.

Bethan Rose talks about a “complicit sense of voyeurism.” What do audiences recognise in Kitt and Noel that makes the play feel so familiar?

BETHAN: The couple have a struggling power dynamic and you see them fall apart in front of you, remembering and forgetting in real time. I think audiences will recognise many of the feelings they go through. There are moments where you don’t want to be listening into their conversations, like you’ve accidentally been spying on them. There are also moments where audience members will recognise patterns in the relationship and even take sides. Discomfort and familiarity arises when met with parallels to your own life.

You’re an entirely queer creative team. How did that shape the rehearsal room? BETHAN: At the end of rehearsal we all kiss.

If Kitt and Noel could step out of the laundrette and speak to you, what truth do you hope they’d finally rinse clean? RHI: If I met Noel outside of the Laundrette – I really hope that they found a good therapist to help rinse away their shame about who they are and where they come from. ZOFIA: If Kitt were able to step out of the Launderette, I would hope she could be honest about her entitlement.

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‘She Was Never the Victim’: Plexus Polaire on Reclaiming Lucy’s Story

July 16, 2026 at 5:35 pm · Filed under Drama, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Interviews, Theatre ·Tagged Bram Stoker, Dracula, Edinburgh Fringe, feminist retelling, Fringe 2026, gothic theatre, horror theatre, Lucy Westenra, Lucy’s Dream, Plexus Polaire, Puppetry

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Dracula: Lucy’s Dream isn’t just another Gothic retelling; it’s a plunge into the mind of a woman literature usually sidelines. Plexus Polaire take Lucy Westenra — often treated as a plot device — and place her centre‑stage, letting her fear, desire and disintegration shape the world around her. Their work has always lived in the space between the real and the uncanny, and here that tension becomes the point: puppetry, physical theatre and dream logic colliding to show us what Lucy sees when the lights go out. It’s dark, sensual, and strangely tender. And it asks a simple question: what happens when the girl everyone thinks they understand finally tells her own story?

We spoke with the creators about why Lucy matters, and what it means to let her speak.

What made you realise Lucy — often treated as a narrative stepping stone — was actually the emotional heart you wanted to excavate?

Lucy is a fascinating character because she goes through a real transformation. The other characters in Stoker´s novel are very much focused on themselves being “the good” who are fighting “the bad”. Lucy has more internal fight and her story opens for a more complex treatment of the theme and how we fight with dark forces within ourselves. By seeing the story from Lucy´s perspective she can break out of the role as a victim, take control of her own life, and reclaim her own narrative.

Puppetry allows you to express things human bodies alone can’t. What did it unlock in Lucy’s inner world?

I am interested in the parallel between a how myth, like Dracula, and a puppet comes to life, because it is quite similar. It´s a bit like a spiritual session with an Ouija-board, where everyone puts a finger on a glass on top of an alphabet, and then the glass starts moving on its own and spells out a message from beyond. Everyone knows that it probably someone in the group who is guiding the glass, but the small doubt, that it might be moving on its own, or by an external force, is enough to make us believe it is true.

The show is a descent into desire, fear and female emancipation. How do you navigate that tension?

The tension and the complexity of the theme is what makes it interesting, and also more truthful.

The ambition of the show is not to give fixed answers, but rather to provoke important questions.

Approaching Dracula from a female lens reveals contradictions — desire, fear, seduction, danger. Which contradiction fascinated you most?

What interests me the most is how you can lose control over a situation, and how quickly the situation can take control over you. And that a vampire can come in many forms.

You describe the Fringe as a “living, breathing organism.” What does it mean to bring a piece this dark and sensual into that environment?

It means to possibility to show for a larger audience that puppetry can be large scale performances for adults.

Lucy’s psychosis becomes a landscape audiences inhabit. What emotional truth were you trying to reveal?

The show delves into the schemes of power with the conclusion that you sometimes have to put a stake in the heart of the vampire to regain control over your own life.

Vampires are metaphors for forbidden desire. What drew you to the question of what we want but cannot say aloud?

I think that sometimes we have to face a monster to remain human. And we all have an inner vampire in one form or another; an addiction, a trauma, a destructive need…The interesting thing is to see how we can choose to break the role of being a victim of it, and retake control over our own narrative.

Plexus Polaire often deals with the secret parts of human nature. What “immortal dark secret” were you most interested in exposing?

I´m interested in the complexities, and how the dark parts are actually a part of what makes us human.

The production is visually overwhelming — puppets, video, lighting, movement. How do you keep the emotional core intact?

The life-like puppets express emotion, in combination to the five actor-puppeteers who perform on stage.

If Lucy could step out of the dream and meet you, what truth do you hope she’d finally allow herself to claim?

That it wasn´t a dream.

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Archive for Interviews

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A Public Display of Affection: Jonathan Wilson on Memory, Survival and Quiet Rebellion

Patient 13: A Darkly Funny Journey Through Illness, Independence and Magic Mushrooms

Inside Spin Cycle: A Queer Love Story Caught Between Cycles

‘She Was Never the Victim’: Plexus Polaire on Reclaiming Lucy’s Story

What made you realise Lucy — often treated as a narrative stepping stone — was actually the emotional heart you wanted to excavate?

Puppetry allows you to express things human bodies alone can’t. What did it unlock in Lucy’s inner world?

The show is a descent into desire, fear and female emancipation. How do you navigate that tension?

Approaching Dracula from a female lens reveals contradictions — desire, fear, seduction, danger. Which contradiction fascinated you most?

You describe the Fringe as a “living, breathing organism.” What does it mean to bring a piece this dark and sensual into that environment?

Lucy’s psychosis becomes a landscape audiences inhabit. What emotional truth were you trying to reveal?

Vampires are metaphors for forbidden desire. What drew you to the question of what we want but cannot say aloud?

Plexus Polaire often deals with the secret parts of human nature. What “immortal dark secret” were you most interested in exposing?

The production is visually overwhelming — puppets, video, lighting, movement. How do you keep the emotional core intact?

If Lucy could step out of the dream and meet you, what truth do you hope she’d finally allow herself to claim?

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