EDINBURGH 2026: Interview: Rachel O'Regan on FEMIFRINGE

BWW catches up with Rachel O'Regan to chat about F-Bomb Theatre's FemiFringe guide at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Tell me a bit about F-Bomb Theatre.

We’re an award-winning feminist theatre company based in Scotland, and we formed out of seeing that there was a gap in the representation of women and people of marginalised genders. Not only on stage but also behind the scenes. Obviously, following a long tradition of great companies that have come before us, like Stellar Quines, for example. So we formed as a student company back in 2021 with our first show, Afterparty, which was really successful for us. We managed to sell out the entire run, which we really didn’t expect. But that pretty much solidified for us that that’s something audiences want. 

Since then, we’ve been a legit company, and we’ve had multiple productions at Fringe and elsewhere. Essentially, what we are trying to do is advocate for women and people of marginalised genders in theatre, whether that be on stage or behind the scenes.

What is FemiFringe, and how long has it been going?

FemiFringe has been going since 2022. That was a big year for us because we won the Fringe First that year. It started out kind of strangely. Back when we used to be on Twitter, there was this one user who was kind of kicking off on everybody’s posts about Edinburgh Fringe. They were complaining that there was too much representation of feminist work at the Fringe. Which we were kind of baffled by. What, where?! Obviously, there is a lot, but it's a programme of 3500 shows. A lot of people were getting annoyed with this person who was responding to a lot of tweets. So we decided to spin it around and make it a positive. 

With Edinburgh Fringe being the largest performance festival in the world, it is the biggest opportunity for women and people of marginalised genders to have that platform. So yeah, it's a FemiFringe. Here are a lot of shows we think people will be interested in. I feel like it represents a gap in the searchability of this work. There is no filter on the Edinburgh Fringe website where you can search for work that's led by women, trans, intersex or genderqueer artists. So how do you find that work if that’s what you’re interested in and those are the artists you want to support? If those are the stories you want to see yourself represented in, then how do you find them? 

The first time we did it it was very much a smaller version. It was a PDF that we posted on our website. We were very ambitious in 2023, we decided to go to print. Which looking back, I don’t know who we thought we were. We were like “we’ll just raise the money it’ll be fine!”. That was the first time that we went to print and for three years after that we’ve been doing it as a print guide. The way that it works is that it's basically open access, so you can submit your show completely for free, and then anyone who is interested in that work can pick up a copy of it for free. We distribute thousands of copies of the FemiFringe guide all around Edinburgh, which we’re really proud of, especially because we’re unfunded and don’t have major sponsors. We’d love them but we don’t have them yet. 

And that kind of brings up to this year because it's been growing exponentially since we began, but we had to make the decision as an unfunded company, that it was becoming unsustainable for us as we kind of get our funding project to project. A lot of the time the core F-bomb team are working unpaid. Which is fine, we love to do it and to make these projects happen but on the other side of things we’re getting to a point where we can’t sustain it for ourselves. So we made the decision, we love the print guide but it is goodbye at least for now. Here’s a version which we think is even more useful which is the digital platform that we’ve created. It is completely searchable and has a lot of filters that are searchable so you can really tailor the shows to your own experience of what you want to see.

What criteria can you currently search by?

There’s sort of all the information you can get on the Fringe website, I’d say the big difference with us is that we have a filter called intersections. That links into intersectional feminism, it’s all well and good to say we have this many shows by women and marginalised genders but there’s a lot of different experiences and different lives experiences being represented there. So you can also search it by if you want to see a working class artist or if you want to see work that’s disabled-led or artists of colour. There are some on there that don’t currently exist elsewhere like for example working class is one of the biggest barriers to people participating in the arts so that was really important to us. 

We have one for artists who are emerging in their careers midlife because we think that there is a big focus on young people and associating emerging artists with being under 25 or 30. I think its important, especially for woman and people of marginalised genders who maybe having caring responsibilities or whatever it might be that you might not get the chance to come into your artistic career until later so that’s one we’re proud to have on there as well.

What are some challenges of bringing Scottish work to the Fringe?

We’ve been really lucky in that our work has been well received and we’ve had the opportunity to get funding through Made in Scotland Showcase last year. I think its still really difficult to get funding through other streams and to put on work that is well supported where everyone is properly paid. 

The more funding streams that are available for Scottish work at the Fringe, the more we’re going to see people in our industry who might not get a voice otherwise. I try to find as much Scottish work as I can, it’s not too hard because I know a lot of people so I go and see my friends stuff. A lot of the time they are my friends but they’re doing it on sort of £5 and a dream which makes you resourceful but its kind of that anxiety ridden Fringe experience that people shouldn’t have to go through. 

What’s next for F-bomb theatre?

Monumental will be returning in some form, I don’t know how much I can actually say about that just now! But it will return in some form and we’re really excited about that. We want to do Monumental everywhere because having looked into it, it’s not just an Edinburgh problem. The gender disparity in public monuments, we’d love to work with local artists around Scotland and the UK to bring those stories to life again. People can keep an eye out for that, we’ll make an announcement soon. 

The FemiFringe is available here.

Get Broadway News on WhatsApp

Receive the latest updates, breaking news, and exclusive coverage from Broadway directly in WhatsApp.

Don't Miss a Scotland News Story
Sign up for all the news on the Summer season, discounts & more...