Royal Holloway’s drama department has been a major presence at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe festival. There was comedy from Ginger and Black, Bourgeois & Maurice (pictured), and Max and Iván; and theatre including productions of Crave and Our Country’s Good by Royal Holloway Theatre and Sans Walk Project, and new work including Killing Alan (Rough Fiction), Crush (Iron Shoes), and Beachy Head (Analogue - pictured). In all there are SIXTEEN shows with recent Royal Holloway drama graduates among their creative teams. All of these shows have been acclaimed for their originality, professionalism, and their engagement with the languages of contemporary theatre, whether it is the radical queer cabaret of Bourgeois & Maurice, the elegantly realised pair of monologues in Crush or the multimedia exploration of the meaning and effects of a suicide in Beachy Head. The cultural reference points are broad: Max and Iván’s show, Televisionaries, presents an imagined alternative night’s television programming, while Killing Alan is a contemporary reworking of Gawain and the Green Knight. Crave places Sarah Kane’s text in the setting of New York’s Florent restaurant-diner, while Timberlake Wertenbaker’s 1988 classic Our Country’s Good is located in the catacombs beneath the streets of Edinburgh.

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is extremely competitive but these shows have been garnering four- and five-star reviews across the Festival press and Crush has already been awarded one of the extremely prestigious Scotsman Fringe Firsts. The department extends its warmest congratulations to all of our brilliant graduates and wishes them further success as they develop their performance careers.