RCS Community at Edinburgh Festival Fringe

HESS returns in a stark, urgent revival as Derek Crawford Munn (BA Dramatic Studies, 1992) embodies Rudolf Hess reflecting on ideology, guilt, and the collapse of the Thousand Year Reich. Burrell’s play exposes enduring extremism and humanity’s capacity for denial, cruelty, and dangerous self‑mythologising.

“THE MOST RENOWNED SKETCH TROUPE OF THEM ALL” (The Independent) embark on their annual tour once again! The Cambridge Footlights are back with five of Cambridge’s best student comedians putting on a brand new show featuring their funniest sketches, directed by Classical and Contemporary Text (Directing) student Emma Beth Jones.

Trapped on the Scottish island of Cumbrae, 17-year-old Steven longs to escape and embrace his authentic self. Featuring a tour-de-force performance by Darren Brownlie (MA Musical Theatre graduate, 2008), Crocodile Rock is a hilarious and heartfelt five-star musical celebrating identity, self-discovery and the courage to be yourself.

From West End to Fringe, theatre is our passion. Using the hit music of some of your favourite musicals, five performers (MAMT’21 grads Michael Heming, Thomas A. Chan, Zola Magwood, Marion Poli, and Skye MacAusland) share the joys and frustrations of day-to-day life in theatre, from the perspective of those who make it!

Brrr is a multi-sensory installation and dance performance for young audiences with complex needs aged 10-18. Set within an inflatable dome, Brrr is an immersive exploration of winter featuring dance, sound, video and lots and lots of snow! Brrr is part of this year’s Made in Scotland Showcase.

RCS Contemporary Performance Practice graduates Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse (2016) co-write, co-direct Tether 인연, an international collaboration between Wonder Fools and South Korean company Theatre SAN. Part ceilidh, part play, it spans 60 years, weaving folk songs, love letters and war stories into a shared communal experience.

Cathy is a new comedy inspired by writer and director Eilidh Loan’s grandmother, and how she dealt with the grief in her unique way after losing her husband. Cathy, Eilidh’s grandmother, insisted that Elaine C. Smith (Diploma in Speech and Drama, 1978) must play her and so she is.

Join television presenter, author, actor, and singer Tom Read Wilson for The A – Z of Me – an irreverent, whistle-stop tour of the alphabet. The alphabet reveals the revue – and Tom – letter by letter, word by word: through songs and sonnets, through stories and smut, this A to Z of Tom is the perfect prism through which to learn about this logophile, and a delicious slice of theatre.

It’s 1911 and nobody’s ever heard of the Mona Lisa! Everything changes when Lisa steals a time machine and recruits the greatest heist crew in history: Leonardo da Vinci’s apprentice, a Victorian boy and The Vitruvian Man. With the help of kleptomaniac Pablo Picasso, they attempt to rob the Louvre.

Choose the main character of our next Academy Award winner! We filmed not one, not two, but over nine thousand biographical films. You name them – we’ve filmed their life story. Accompanied by a pianist, expect a night full of music, gasps and many, many laughs!

Inspired by the book Novas Cartas Portuguesas, this original play tells the story of three Portuguese women who challenged a dictatorship with words, courage and conviction. Produced by Flavia D’Avila (PhD Drama 2022) for Voices Collective.

A researcher from Scotland travels to Saint John, a remote British Overseas Territory in the South Pacific. Upon arrival, she finds the island is under the control of a growing religious cult. This discovery starts to shift her studies from the land to the people as the dangerous theology of the cult is revealed and the day of paradise approaches.

NON HUMAN ANIMAL is a dark comedy by award-winning playwright Kat Woods, starring Emily Tracey (MA Musical Theatre, 2022, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland). Premiering at Gilded Balloon Teviot during the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, this one-woman show explores trauma, justice, grief, mental health and survival in post-conflict Northern Ireland.

Ian is an outcast in his small highlands town of Rosedale. People his age don’t like him. Don’t trust him. The most attention he gets is from the minister, and his abusive aunt, until he finds a stone head in an old ruin… and only he can hear it speaking.

The Woman is unhappily married and habouring a huge secret. When her in-laws suddenly die, she struggles to cope with her grieving husband, and begins hoarding seaside-themed objects in Room Number 4. As the room fills with taxidermy seals, shells and quite a few fish, her marriage disintegrates and she must come to terms with a loss of her own.

Inês Soares (Artist Diploma, 2025) is part of the world-premiere production of Supposing: at the Traverse Theatre. The play follows the story of Sally after a curse has fallen on her house. Worst of all, no one will believe her. As the line between certainty and doubt begins to blur, Sally must decide whether to trust what she sees, and what happens if she’s right.