On The Verge
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Welcome to On the Verge 2026
Welcome to On The Verge 2026: an online festival of original student work.
This year’s festival showcases six original short films; conceived, written, directed, performed, edited, and produced by students from MA/MFA Classical & Contemporary Text. On The Verge invites students to deepen their individual practice while embracing generous collaboration, creative risk, and bold ideas. Drawing on everything they’ve developed throughout the course—and the talents of the people around them—students are challenged to step into the unknown and create something entirely original.
The brief is simple: create a piece of original work designed to live online. This year, every group chose to make a short film, pushing themselves in a medium many of them aim to build careers in. After a year focused largely on live performance, this term offers the chance to develop screen skills, reflecting the realities of today’s industry, where adaptability across stage and screen is increasingly essential.
The projects are created with very few resources by design. Students have access to the equipment available at RCS, but no additional budget. Their greatest resource is each other: fellow CCT students, collaborators from across RCS and, for the first time this year, artists from the new MA/MFA Production Design/Management programme. Some teams have also welcomed early-career industry professionals into the process, bringing experience and insight that enriches the learning for everyone involved.
On The Verge is what happens when a group of artists, standing on the edge of something, decide to jump.
Brian Ferguson
Head of MA/MFA Acting/Directing Classical & Contemporary Text
P.S. As you watch these films, the students are immersed in rehearsals for our upcoming live productions of Pomona, Travesties and Blithe Spirit. Directed and performed by the cohort, these productions will be presented in repertoire in the Chandler Studio Theatre from 2–5 September. We’d love to see you there if you can join us.
Watch On the Verge 2026
Payment In Kind
A fun game night takes a turn when two friends are forced to decide how much of themselves they will give to their relationships.
Beginners
It’s ten minutes before opening night. Tensions collide as a stressed stage manager scrambles to maintain order in an increasingly chaotic pre-show panic which threatens to derail the show (and everyone’s mental sanity).
Heaven's Basement
A closeted conservative ventures on a crusade into a queer house party to bring her sister home, only to find her sister has already found her family.
Cairn
Filmed across 100 miles of Scottish wilderness, three estranged friends trek through the Highlands, where guilt, conflict and buried grief force them to confront what they’ve been running from.
Tasseography
David and Yasmeen turn to her grandmother’s ritual of reading coffee grounds to find comfort when faced with infertility and a sense of disconnect from homeland.
About On The Verge
On The Verge has been part of the RCS performance calendar for over 10 years, during which time many of the artists have gone on to tour their work nationally and beyond. It is a showcase of new work by our MA/MFA Classical and Contemporary Text Acting and Directing students, celebrating big ideas and big ambition – a step into the unknown.
Our 2026 edition of On The Verge will take place in August 2026 and will be entirely digital, available to view on this page from Friday 7 August. The work is wide-ranging, exploring stories, ideas and questions from the deeply personal to the socio-political and beyond. The projects are united in a shared desire to explore what might be possible both in front of and behind the camera.
Meet the Students
Upcoming CCT Productions
The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland presents
Blithe Spirit
A Masters for Actors & Directors
Our MA/MFA Acting/Directing Classical and Contemporary Text programme is for actors and directors who use their social, moral, and ethical values to animate their practice.
Our actors and directors look beyond traditional and contemporary artistic approaches as they broaden and deepen their individual practice, and flourish as both learners and creative practitioners.
Graduates include Jeremy Crawford, Ayana Bey, Debbie Hannan and Eklovey Kashyap.