Guest Author - Page 5

August 2025 marks the 20th edition of the Camden Fringe. Well, sort-of. Remember 2020? We were in the midst of taking applications and booking shows when the pandemic hit, so that particular version had to be abandoned. But 2025 at least marks the 20th time we’ve organised a fringe festival. To be honest, we’ll probably be celebrating our actual 20th birthday next year as well.

I’m Fifi Garfield and I’m an actor. I’m also deaf, I was born deaf and have been using sign language as my primary source of communication all my life. I use British Sign Language - BSL - daily, hourly, every minute! It’s how I communicate with people and how I access the world.

Le Nozze di Figaro is a piece I’ve been living with as long as I can remember. To me, it might be the best opera ever written: it makes me laugh, it moves me to tears, the plot twists still fill me with delight, and all the characters have potential for complexity and depth. It is the only piece I’ve ever revisited: this production will be my third, and not only do I not get tired of it, it seems to get more exciting each time.

Someone once told me writing a musical with an original story would be like climbing Everest. This turned out to be not entirely true. A mountaineer at least knows Everest is there to be climbed. That it has a top to be reached. That it will not disappear under him halfway up. None of these comforts are afforded the writer. You have to have a really good reason for abandoning the reassurance of a pre-existing story.

It is without doubt that the plays that we attribute to Shakespeare are genius. They examine what it is to be a human and have survived centuries and multiple adaptations precisely because of this fact: love, jealousy, hatred and grief are all the same regardless of whether your father was a Duke from Verona or a Welsh coal miner. 

Horror is one of my favourite genres, and one of cinema’s most profitable genres, but it’s still rarely attempted on stage. There are a handful of big horror stage hits - 2:22 A Ghost Story, The Woman in Black, Ghost Stories - which are gripping and entertaining, but tend to be, as the titles suggest, a particular kind of ghost story, operating on a system of jump scares, sudden blackouts and pre-recorded screams.

Creating Conversations After Sex was a raw, intimate, and often challenging process—much like the show itself. At its core, the project began with a question: What happens in those unguarded moments between people when they think no one is watching?

Since the earliest times, theatre that speaks to the state of the nation has always been a cultural mainstay, and plays that speak to the practise of politics seem to have enduring popularity – from David Hare’s The Absence of War to Alistair Beaton’s Feelgood, along with the works of Mike Bartlett, Peter Morgan, Jonathan Maitland and of course James Graham.

I grew up in a small northern town—now known to the world as the real Happy Valley. It’s a place of two sides: a creative, hippy-dippy haven filled with wacky parades and free hugs, yet also a town weighed down by thick clouds, hidden struggles, and an undercurrent of mental health crises.

I started CNC in 2010, towards the tail end of my Masters degree at The Courtauld Institute of Art – where I’d also studied for my undergraduate degree in History of Art.  I stumbled into PR, almost by chance, while working on the East Wing Collection exhibition.  So much hard work was going into the exhibition that I decided I wanted more people to see this and so I started emailing journalists. 

Relish Theatre was initially established in 2015, like many companies, to take a production to the Edinburgh Fringe. What started out as a feisty new-writing company has grown and evolved over time into the pretty specific niche we have now carved out for ourselves.

About a year ago our director, Anna Marshall, came across a call-out from a company we have long admired, Told by an Idiot. They were looking for an Associate Company to make a piece in response to the climate emergency. We got a text from Anna saying, “Hey team, there’s an opportunity up from Told by an Idiot at the moment…” Her idea for the show? A story about a group of cockroaches who survive the apocalypse and share their perspective on how the world ended. “Think Six meets Operation Mincemeat meets Kafka’s Metamorphosis”…we were sold.

Til Ungdommen er baseret på norske Linn Skåbers bog af samme navn, hvor hun har talt med norske teenagere om, hvad der fylder i deres liv. Alt fra følelser, svigt og forelskelse til pres fra forældre. På scenen bliver bogen bragt til live af Adam Schmidt, Anna Hawa Kamuk Mnasi, Asbjørn Hays Thøgersen, Emma van der Vleuten Busk og Emil Hyldeborg. Alle 5 leverer en stærk præstation med både nerve og nærvær, der på hver sin måde adskiller sig fra hinanden. 

In Argos Archives, the main character, ‘Woman’, invites the audience to have their fortune told by flicking through the pages of the Argos catalogue. Using the ancient practice of stichomancy (the jury is still out on the correct pronunciation!) Woman takes control of her life and offers the same for our audience, through the comforting order offered by the Argos catalogue. The audience will go on a journey with Woman, accompanying her through the archives of her life, conducted by the ‘book of dreams’.

A few months back I bought a bag of mushroom powder off Instagram to improve my focus. It didn’t work. I’m always looking for a magic fix for my messy brain, especially now I’m a mum. Before I had kids I used to write into the night. I could work better when the rest of the world was settled and daybreak seemed like a natural deadline. I was free to set my own schedule and didn’t really give it much thought.

On January 23, 2025, the world lost a bright light. Our local theatre community lost a talented performer. I lost my dance partner, audience buddy, dear friend and the third part of our dressing room Pentatonix tribute band. Ethan Ramos was all of these things, but most of all, he was the best human. 

When I ventured into the world of playwriting, I found myself in completely new territory. Unlike painting, the written word invites evolution. A play is never truly “done.” It transforms, grows, and contracts.

In 2024 I was Carne Deputy Director at Jermyn Street Theatre. The role was designed to teach the recipient about the day to day running of a theatre with the view to one day leading a building.

I started thinking about what would become Belly of the Beast in 2019. The year had seen protests, by parents, outside schools which had proposed teaching an inclusive curriculum. I couldn’t stop imagining how it’d feel to be an LGBT student and have, possibly, the parents of my friends essentially protesting against me.