Six shows selected for EdFringe Charlie Hartill fund

Six shows will receive funding totalling £50,000 for this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe as part of Pleasance Theatre Trust’s Charlie Hartill fund.

The fund offers financial and mentoring support each year to theatremakers and comedians across the UK. 

It usually supports four shows but is backing six this year due to the "overwhelming quality of talent". 

This year’s winners include queer-led theatre collective Stroud and Notes for its new musical Public the Musical, which follows four strangers who get trapped in a gender-neutral public toilet. 

Other winners include November Theatre’s Pitch, which explores the relationship between football and the queer community, and The Thelmas’ Santi and Naz, which explores queer love, identity and loyalty against the backdrop of the Indian partition. 

Elisabeth Gunawan and Created a Monster’s show Unforgettable Girl, which centres on a woman who is sold as a mail-order bride, and won Gunawan The Stage Debut Award for best performer in a play last year, is the fourth winner.  

There will also be two Comedy Reserve shows featuring new acts from comedians Abby Wambaugh, Ele McKenzie, Jin Hao Li, Kyrah Gray, Micah Hall, Shalaka Kurup, Vlad Ilich and Will Robbins.

Past Charlie Hartill theatre winners have included New Diorama Theatre artistic director David Byrne and Unpolished Theatre, which won an Olivier for its show Flesh and Bone in 2019.

The fund was established in 2004 in memory of Charlie Hartill, who was a writer, performer, ex-president of the Cambridge Footlights and a director of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for eight years.