This summer two EMERGE Performance residents, Raina and Charlie, took their one-person shows for a fantastic Edinburgh Fringe run.

Now they are back, rested, and gearing up for new adventures, we checked in with Raina and Charlie to find out how they got on at this world-famous fringe festival.

Charlie Day, artistic director of Fresh Life Theatre, brought his laugh-out-loud one-man show ‘Rock Bottom’ to the fringe this summer.  Based on Shakespeares' famous Midsummer Night’s Dream, the play sees Bottom arrive at the theatre, ready to perform. Finding the rest of his cast has left him, Bottom chooses to improvise the entire play. Dealing with the trauma of pushing his friends away and needing the audience to like him is a cocktail for trouble. As his plan falls apart, he is forced to come to terms with who he is.

Raina Greifer, the creative producer of Purple Crayon Productions, brought their powerful one-person show ‘Manic’ up to Edinburgh. Manic tells the story of Raina arriving at a spoken word gig to see her exes in the audience; all the questions she's had about her past sexual experiences begin to surface. Through poetry, comedy and one very awkward encounter with a cheese string, she begins to explore questions about bad sex, drunk sex and consent. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, Manic is a solo show that combines poetry, puppetry and theatre to ask whether it is possible to say you were violated without implicating a partner. Raina has since been shortlisted for the Brook and SH:24 Sexual Health Awards: Young Person of the Year.

With this being the first time either Raina or Charlie attended the world-famous EdFringe it was a mixed-emotional experience. Charlie called it a ‘Baptism of Fire’  whilst Raina spoke of finding it at times to be rather nerve-bending. With all the challenges that the pair faced, both had a successful time. Charlie, now gearing up to tour Rock bottom around New York in 2023, and Raina is planning a full UK tour of Manic with a visit to the Brighton Fringe festival in May 2023.

Are the pair put off in returning to the chaos of an Edinburgh August? No chance! Charlie is planning a return in 2023 with not one but two shows, ‘Rock Bottom’ and a new one-person show that follows Yorick from ‘Hamlet’. Raina is focusing on her UK tour in 2023. Still, she has their eyes returning in a few years' time, this time working with Blundabusa, a multi-award-winning pop-up Comedy Theatre on a converted double-decker Bus.

EMERGE couldn't be prouder to support these two incredible artists, and can't wait to see their work out on the road next year.

Was our residents' first EdFringe a success? We certainly think so!

Find out more about Raina and Charlie on Instagram @Freshlifetheatre @raina.greifer