The Radical Possibilities of Theatre: Six Shows from Edinburgh Fringe 2026

I have been home from the Edinburgh Fringe for a few weeks now, and yet I can still feel the ripple effects of the shows I saw moving through my life.

After one particularly affecting play, I came out of the theatre, went to a café, and wrote myself two notes in my journal:

1. God is real.
2. Organise your life around writing and do not let anything that does not matter get in its way.

Fairly cryptic. So what did these two notes mean to me?

Art, transcendence and political change

Whether you resonate with the idea of ‘God’ or not, what I experienced during the Fringe were glimpses of transcendence: moments of connection to something much more expansive, infinite and universal than my narrow sense of self.

These experiences have the capacity to be profoundly pro-social. When we experience ourselves as part of something larger, it can deepen our desire to protect and cherish the world. That instinct feels essential to so much of the progressive political change we might hope to make.

As for my second note to self, I felt so deeply changed by the urgency, aliveness and passion of the performances I saw that my own longing to write came vividly back online.

I have struggled to write for some time following the dispute with my publisher, weighed down by the tensions and contradictions bound up with the publishing industry and the ways books find their way into the world.

At the Fringe, though, I was reminded of the radically democratic possibilities of theatre. Many of my favourite shows this year could have been performed in someone’s living room, a community centre or on a street corner, even if they quite rightly deserved a bigger stage.

Some of my favourite plays were explicitly political and others were not, but all of them subverted familiar narratives and changed me somehow.

And if the descriptions that follow sound earnest or didactic, don’t be fooled: these were also some of the funniest, brightest and most hopeful shows I saw.

Six shows that stayed with me

1. Abbie Weinstock, Giraffe

Giraffe took me back to my years as a teacher and made me think about the ways our education system has failed neurodivergent girls, who can present differently from the stereotypes we have learned to recognise.

It left me thinking about how I can respond to and advocate for the needs of neurodivergent women and girls in the work I do now.

2. The Hotter Project, HAM

This BDSM-inspired, mostly naked retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet made an unexpectedly passionate case for veganism.

It has both solidified my own, previously rather vague, commitment to vegetarianism and made me dramatically cut down on milk and cheese.

3. Briony Martha, Parasocial Activity

For the first time, I felt I really understood something about how people can become vulnerable to online grooming, and the urgency of protecting people from online harms.

4. Nadia P. Manzoor, Jerk Off!

Through Nadia’s portrayal of intergenerational violence, she strikingly portrayed how much of our behaviour is unconsciously passed down to us, and what it takes to interrupt those patterns, personally, politically and spiritually, if we want lasting change.

5. Eva O’Connor, For Dolores

My beloved friend Eva’s play made me think about the ways friendship and motherhood are being transformed as we try to navigate these unprecedented times, and what it means to care for one another through them all.

6. Elf Lyons, A Woman on the Edge

I almost want to say there are no words to describe this show and that you simply have to see it for yourself.

But I will say this: at a time of climate crisis, genocide and profound injustice, Elf Lyons made me feel glad to be alive.

All of which is to say that I suspect theatre is going to feature much more prominently in my creative and personal life this coming academic year.

I’m beginning a ten-week playwriting course as a participant at my local theatre, Tobacco Factory Theatres, here in South Bristol, and I’m so excited to be a student again.

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