AY AM! to Make Edinburgh Festival Fringe Debut with Clown Maya Ricote
The clown show features witches, songs, and a freezer as its centerpiece at the festival.
Maya Ricote will make her Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut with AY AM! - a clown show about what happens when you pick form over substance. It's about feeling! About pleasure! It has witches! It has songs! It has a climax! The front row might get a little splash!
The show opens with a freezer on stage. Lonely freezer, it seems. Door opens, Swash! Inside, is a perfectly preserved woman with Hot & Dangerous Hot Curves, who suddenly wakes up. Who, what, where the hell am I? And then... She understands... or remembers...(that brain has been Frozen). She finds herself bound by a contract with a talent agency... And she has signed. She'll be 25 forever... but at what cost? Tan. Tan. Tan.
Maya wants one thing: she wants to be seen, understood, and heard (3 things). She wants a voice and freedom to do what she pleases (fine, 5 things). And this witch disguised as a marketing genius, years ahead of her time, convinces Maya that she's done all the research and SHE and ONLY SHE, can make her a star, (just as long as she undergoes a couple of procedures and waits for the time to be right (Witches love Caveats)). That time is Now.
AY AM! explores the pressure to perform, not just as an artist, but as a woman. Through the show, we feel how inherently stupid it is to try to find freedom by pleasing others. In GENERAL, I (Maya) would say, it's about the deep importance of really feeling every feeling, and the gift that it is to show that to others, without any masks. I'm saying, that's the only way to really live. Maya (I) explores this in the stupidest and biggest way possible, but YEAH it's definitely ABOUT Something. And it's RELEVANT. Don't you think? Hello?
Maya Ricote began her career as a telenovela actress, working in Mexican television before moving into theatre and clowning. Having grown up surrounded by strict ideals of beauty and performance, she found herself drawn to clown as a way of reconnecting with play, honesty and freedom on stage. She trained at École Philippe Gaulier in France and has since developed her skills with leading practitioners including Dan Lees, Julia Masli and Phil Burgers (Dr Brown), Lucy Hopkins, and Paulina Lenoir. She is the winner of the London Clown Festival 2025 Clong Award, Finalist of Sketch off 2026, and was part of the winning team at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Clown Olympics (Team Mexico).
Co-created with Dan Lees, (master clown muso) winner of The Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality 2022. He has directed shows for Julia Masli, the Duncan Brothers, Viggo Venn amongst many other contemporary clown artists.
Maya Ricote: AY AM! performs at Pleasance Courtyard - Cellar from 5th - 30th August at 10:40pm.
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