Collective Arts Community Trust has announced the return of Collective Fringe, an artist led festival that platforms emerging and upcoming creatives. Growing out of the creative environment of Collective Acting Studio, one of the UK’s fastest-rising actor-training studios, the festival will present four powerful new productions, alongside an opening Scratch Night of early-stage work, offering a snapshot of emerging talent at different stages of development. Designed to challenge the status quo in the UK’s talent-development pipeline, the festival will give emerging and mid-stage theatre-makers the freedom to take risks, experiment and grow.
Collective Fringe offers audiences and industry the rare chance to encounter work at every stage of development in one festival framework, from fully realised productions to early creative experiments. The festival is already proving its impact: artists from the 2025 cohort are continuing to collaborate beyond the programme, with two writers joining the Bush Theatre Writers’ Group and another securing development funding supported by Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
With their ethos rooted in equity, collaboration and community, Collective Fringe centres early-career artists, Global Majority artists, disabled artists and those from underrepresented backgrounds. Led by Festival Director Paul Harvard (History Boys, National Theatre; GHBoy, Charing Cross Theatre), alongside Dramaturg Sabrina Richmond (My Cape is Invisible, Pleasance; Hands off my womb! Chapel Playhouse), Associate Producer Prashant Tailor (The Birds, Lyric Hammersmith; Manfred, Birmingham Hippodrome), and Producer Laura Battisti, their team brings experience from across the West End, The National Theatre, The Royal Court Theatre, RSC, and major independent stages across London.
We sat down with the artists from the shows that will be performing at the Collective Fringe.
Rukhsati by Saqib Deshmukh
This play is beautifully set in the toilets of a wedding hall—what inspired you to choose such an unconventional location for this tender exploration of former lovers?
I've always wanted to write a two-hander based in South London/Tooting and had these two characters in my head from the play 'RUNNING' that I wrote more than 30 years ago as a Aajkal Theatre production in Manchester. This particular scene involved a young Pakistani man in a girl’s toilets in a school chatting to his girlfriend who he assumes is in a cubicle, but she has evaded him. The young man is called Tariq and the young woman Nighat, and that scene was one of my favourites especially as we had to build a toilet cubicle on stage when we performed it at Abraham Moss Theatre in 1991. The actor Shahid Ahmed was in that play and played the character of Tariq the Pakistani wide boy from Cheetham Hill.
Some characters never leave you and neither do certain plays. A few years earlier I'd watched a play called 'SOUL NIGHT' by Tunde Ikoli. It was a simple two hander involving a black and white couple in a toilet of a nightclub with the DJ and the sound system in the background. It made an impact on me, as from a simple situation Tunde carved out a whole world of missed chances and regrets. When it came to writing that scene in 1991, I'm sure the way he set the whole play in a lavatory was something that resonated with me. Now in 2026 as I develop 'RUKHSATI' both the plays and the characters come to mind. I wanted to find out what happened to Nighat and Tariq. Did it work out for them? Were they happy and content and what has changed? By revisiting all this I'm also revisiting myself and my history and those days of bhangra all-dayers and illicit couplings. I'm also back in the khazi with this play being set in disused toilets above an old wedding/Shaadi hall in Tooting.
The themes of love, faith, and family expectations are prevalent throughout the play. How do you weave these elements together while keeping the dialogue relatable and humorous?
It's about showing characters in their fullness and in 360 degrees. So the themes are always there but the way they are expressed is through humour and sarcasm in particular. The comedy in ‘RUKHSATI’ is quite cutting and works on different levels depending on who you are and your understanding of South Asian values and culture. The strap line is that the play is about love, life and lotas (which is what Muslims use to wash their bums after doing a number 2) and I really wanted to make sure that it was something that was funny, down to earth but had this critical and challenging commentary.
It sounds like you’re really tapping into shared experiences. Can you share how the characters’ backgrounds influence their perspectives on love and relationships in the play?
Definitely - some of the story is semi auto-biographical but it's also the story of my peers and the generation of working-class South Asians that I come from. it's this second-generation immigrant background that frames the characters of Tariq and Nighat in the play. This was the generation that had either come here as children from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka or were born here. The play captures some of the struggles of my parent's generation with ours and asserting ourselves in this country. Our youth culture was largely in secret - Bhangra all dayers for example and the same for illicit relationships before folk settled down in conventional marriages.
How do you ensure that the humour isn’t at odds with the more serious moments in the play?
It can be hard to sustain this and make sure that the comedic elements don't detract with some of the serious messages but that's the challenge of writing pieces like this. I like to think that ‘RUKHSATI’ has many layers to it and that we are multi-dimensional folk who can switch from being happy to sadness easily enough.
I also think using humour is a good way to tell a story and bring people with you on that journey. We live in times of mass distraction in terms of social media and attention spans so you need to grab people's attention. Making folk laugh makes them more ready to accept the more serious moments of the play and the themes that it grapples with.
Lastly, what message do you hope the audience takes away from this experience?
It depends on who the audience is! If they are South Asian that there is sense of affirmation and our stories being told. Getting it staged means so much to me and particularly so all of us 40/50 something's from this community can wallow in nostalgia and whilst it will make more sense to those who are South Asian and Desi I think there's enough there for everybody. I'm also conscious that I wanted to write two meaty parts that older actors would enjoy getting their teeth into. The fact that both are Pakistani is important to me as I don't see us being treated as multi-dimensional human beings in the media and it's not the greatest time to be a Muslim either.
It depends on who the audience is! If they are South Asian that there is sense of affirmation and our stories being told. Getting it staged means so much to me and particularly so all of us 40/50 something's from this community can wallow in nostalgia and whilst it will make more sense to those who are South Asian and Desi I think there's enough there for everybody. I'm also conscious that I wanted to write two meaty parts that older actors would enjoy getting their teeth into. The fact that both are Pakistani is important to me as I don't see us being treated as multi-dimensional human beings in the media and it's not the greatest time to be a Muslim either.
Ego’s Killing the Mandem by Richard Adetunji
Richard, your play presents a vivid courtroom drama centred on Ego itself. Can you share the inspiration behind this unique concept?
It all started with a conversation. A conversation literally about whether Ego was killing the mandem. The room was divided, there were great opinions for both sides. Some people took a more literal view while some explored the question from a psychological perspective. So on an unsuspecting evening one night at the National Theatre, a group of black boys from Trybe House Theatre (a theatre company for young black men with the aim of giving them a form of self-expression through theatre), gave birth to Ego's Killing The Mandem.
Grief and youth violence are monumental themes in your work. How do you approach telling these stories while maintaining sensitivity?
In all my writing, and as we've developed the play we've constantly tried to lean into nuance. For many people, when they think about youth violence, there are pre-determined connotations that enter their mind. But in exploring this issue of youth violence, the play has become about so much more than that. As you've mentioned it's about grief, and how as black men we show that grief. The play is about friendship and ambition, self-expression and mental health, inequality and of course - black boy joy.
How did your collaboration with National Theatre Public Acts influence the development of this play?
This all started with public acts, the National Theatre's nationwide community theatre project, created by Director Emily Lim. In 2023 they staged an incredibly ambitious retelling of The Odyssey, told in five parts, all around the country. Trybe House Theatre were fortunate enough to be one of the partner theatre companies and our staging involved creating a piece of theatre in response to the themes of Homer's Odyssey. We thought about the way that the 'powers that be' governed our lives without our consent like the Greek gods in the story. How government policies, policing and even our own internal thoughts may play a part in how we show up in the world. It was in those conversations and performance that Ego's Killing The Mandem was born. The National very kindly after that gave us space for a year to workshop and develop the piece, culminating in a rehearsed reading at the National back in December 2024. The play has been on a long journey since then and the current version we have today is very different to the one we shared back then; but we wouldn't be here at all without the support of National Theatre Public Acts.
It all started with a conversation. A conversation literally about whether Ego was killing the mandem. The room was divided, there were great opinions for both sides. Some people took a more literal view while some explored the question from a psychological perspective. So on an unsuspecting evening one night at the National Theatre, a group of black boys from Trybe House Theatre (a theatre company for young black men with the aim of giving them a form of self-expression through theatre), gave birth to Ego's Killing The Mandem.
Grief and youth violence are monumental themes in your work. How do you approach telling these stories while maintaining sensitivity?
In all my writing, and as we've developed the play we've constantly tried to lean into nuance. For many people, when they think about youth violence, there are pre-determined connotations that enter their mind. But in exploring this issue of youth violence, the play has become about so much more than that. As you've mentioned it's about grief, and how as black men we show that grief. The play is about friendship and ambition, self-expression and mental health, inequality and of course - black boy joy.
How did your collaboration with National Theatre Public Acts influence the development of this play?
This all started with public acts, the National Theatre's nationwide community theatre project, created by Director Emily Lim. In 2023 they staged an incredibly ambitious retelling of The Odyssey, told in five parts, all around the country. Trybe House Theatre were fortunate enough to be one of the partner theatre companies and our staging involved creating a piece of theatre in response to the themes of Homer's Odyssey. We thought about the way that the 'powers that be' governed our lives without our consent like the Greek gods in the story. How government policies, policing and even our own internal thoughts may play a part in how we show up in the world. It was in those conversations and performance that Ego's Killing The Mandem was born. The National very kindly after that gave us space for a year to workshop and develop the piece, culminating in a rehearsed reading at the National back in December 2024. The play has been on a long journey since then and the current version we have today is very different to the one we shared back then; but we wouldn't be here at all without the support of National Theatre Public Acts.
The themes of justice and its definitions are central to the narrative. What insights do you hope the audience will take away from the play?
I really hope that audiences leave the play with a bit more empathy for the challenges young black men face in the UK. For audience members that maybe aren't black, working class, from Londonetc. I hope that their worldview would be widened somewhat to think about the ways that groups in society are viewed differently. The notion of what constitutes justice is a challenging one, and I'm not quite sure we get to an answer in the play, but hopefully audience members will leave questioning whether there's a part they have to play in bringing and end to youth violence.
Asylum King by Paz Kaiba and Isik Kaya
The play deals with heavy themes like institutional power and media complacency. How do you balance these serious topics with humour?
The humour in this story isn't so much "comic relief" as it is an instrument to expose, with most of it deriving from the absurdities of the system and its bureaucracies, and how the characters interact with them. It's not really meant to soften anything. For us, humour is a way of finding something shared, like a moment of recognition or laughter, which creates a more grounded bond between the audience and the play and feels much more genuine than trying to lecture an audience – which we are in no position to do. Once you’re grounded in that shared space, we find it becomes much easier to access the harder topics that are being addressed on stage.
What inspired you to write this darkly comic political thriller?
The inspiration came from real encounters we had with people seeking refuge as part of our community and volunteer work, and through spending time with people who are trapped inside the UK asylum system. Within that context we started asking more and more questions and kept experiencing the same thing: Every layer you peel back reveals something so absurd or so dark that you think it must be a mistake, but it isn’t. It’s political. It’s designed. Its deliberate. This play grew out of those conversations, and out of the stories of people who have lived through what feels like a Kafkaesque nightmare, and our frustrations with the acceptance of our current housing practices and treatment of asylum seekers.
The inspiration came from real encounters we had with people seeking refuge as part of our community and volunteer work, and through spending time with people who are trapped inside the UK asylum system. Within that context we started asking more and more questions and kept experiencing the same thing: Every layer you peel back reveals something so absurd or so dark that you think it must be a mistake, but it isn’t. It’s political. It’s designed. Its deliberate. This play grew out of those conversations, and out of the stories of people who have lived through what feels like a Kafkaesque nightmare, and our frustrations with the acceptance of our current housing practices and treatment of asylum seekers.
The play deals with heavy themes like institutional power and media complacency. How do you balance these serious topics with humour?
The humour in this story isn't so much "comic relief" as it is an instrument to expose, with most of it deriving from the absurdities of the system and its bureaucracies, and how the characters interact with them. It's not really meant to soften anything. For us, humour is a way of finding something shared, like a moment of recognition or laughter, which creates a more grounded bond between the audience and the play and feels much more genuine than trying to lecture an audience – which we are in no position to do. Once you’re grounded in that shared space, we find it becomes much easier to access the harder topics that are being addressed on stage.
Can you tell us more about the main character, the journalist? How does she evolve throughout the play?
Francesca Marlowe, a local journalist, is our way into this world;, we learn about the story, the clues, the suspects, through her eyes. In the beginning she starts of chasing a headline, having been stuck in the local news for too long and looking for a spectacular story that will finally allow her career to take off. At first, the murder she is investigating is just that; A Story. But with every interaction she has with the locals, and as she becomes more familiar with both the case and the conditions asylum seekers are living in, something begins to shift. She begins to realize the human cost behind the headlines she has been chasing, and that what she’s stepped into is far bigger, messier, and more morally complicated than she ever expected.
Francesca Marlowe, a local journalist, is our way into this world;, we learn about the story, the clues, the suspects, through her eyes. In the beginning she starts of chasing a headline, having been stuck in the local news for too long and looking for a spectacular story that will finally allow her career to take off. At first, the murder she is investigating is just that; A Story. But with every interaction she has with the locals, and as she becomes more familiar with both the case and the conditions asylum seekers are living in, something begins to shift. She begins to realize the human cost behind the headlines she has been chasing, and that what she’s stepped into is far bigger, messier, and more morally complicated than she ever expected.
How do you approach the theme of silenced voices in your work?
With a great deal of care and suspicion, particularly of our own position. I think that by constructing something, like a narrative, a play, a piece of art, around a void, an absence, a missing thing, you centre it and highlight what is missing. We are wary of “giving voice” as a concept, because I feel that it often recentres the speaker rather than the silenced. There’s thousands of people in refugee accommodation, each with a story they could tell of things most of us can’t even imagine, and we think the aim of plays like these has to be to open space, rather than taking space, by wedge the door of public discourse open wide enough for those voices to get in and be heard on their own terms.
With a great deal of care and suspicion, particularly of our own position. I think that by constructing something, like a narrative, a play, a piece of art, around a void, an absence, a missing thing, you centre it and highlight what is missing. We are wary of “giving voice” as a concept, because I feel that it often recentres the speaker rather than the silenced. There’s thousands of people in refugee accommodation, each with a story they could tell of things most of us can’t even imagine, and we think the aim of plays like these has to be to open space, rather than taking space, by wedge the door of public discourse open wide enough for those voices to get in and be heard on their own terms.
What do you hope the audience takes away from the show?
That its worth asking questions of the systems we live in, and its worth speaking out against injustice, and like in all good detective stories we have to keep digging and asking questions, and stay critical, and rebellious enough to get to the truth. We want people to feel a little bit hopeful that change can happen, and they are a part of that process, the same way they are part of the system now.
That its worth asking questions of the systems we live in, and its worth speaking out against injustice, and like in all good detective stories we have to keep digging and asking questions, and stay critical, and rebellious enough to get to the truth. We want people to feel a little bit hopeful that change can happen, and they are a part of that process, the same way they are part of the system now.
English Ako by Jules Chan
Jules, your story expertly touches on the theme of identity. What inspired you to explore the challenges of belonging between two cultures?
There are many questions floating around the idea of being English today and what that can mean for people. Of course, coming from a different country I have had to come to terms with what identifying with two different cultures can mean for a young person growing up and how that affects their relationships with themselves and the society they live in. Identity sometimes can be a broad term, but in this story, I study how it can affect our choices, behaviour, thoughts, our character, our sense of purpose and our sense of connecting with people - to name but a few. Most of all, I also question what it means to be Filipino today. What being Asian is. How can we navigate a political existence that we were born into (addressing stereotypes) and still feel like it is ours to live freely? This play explores the modern image of being east asian, to simply share that a life growing up in England can be a radical experience. It is being Asian, or indeed, Filipino.
The protagonist invites us into a world filled with both humor and tension. How do you strike the right balance between lightheartedness and the emotional weight of his journey?
I think to simply enjoy the protagonist's journey as well and to celebrate every moment. The fact that he gets to tell the story is already a celebration, the rest is just a part of his story that happens. The difficult moments don’t define him necessarily, it is that he chooses to continue to celebrate who he is despite his circumstances. So, I try to focus on that while also not sentimentalising his pain to ensure that it is all a part of the story being told. The audience gets to witness how he processes his life and goes along with him.
The Shakespearean lens through which you view the people in your life is particularly unique. Can you elaborate on how this perspective shapes your storytelling?
It comes from trying to engage with Englishness and how there is an inherent hierarchy within the system that can often feel like it qualifies someone to be or not to be English. See what I did there? Jokes aside, I hope it comments on how culture can be a costume, a behaviour that helps people engage and identify with each other. For example, I’m interested in, let's say; speaking Shakespeare in both a Midlands accent and also an RP accent, as heightened language is often seen to be spoken by those that have a ‘posher’ accent. So I do this in order to question how this shifts our perception of the individual and how language can be a common ground despite our socio-economic background. Or indeed, how language can validate our acceptance to the community of that culture.
Writing about personal and cultural experiences can be challenging. Were there any particular moments during the writing process that were particularly difficult or cathartic for you?
It was both difficult and cathartic. As a writer, I had to make sure that the moments I chose to write about were specific to the story as many events can contribute to it. The moments that emerged, almost without my will, were brought forward from my memories and I had to find a way to slightly dramatise it and find a sense of detachment. There were many tears shed during the writing process as writing often helps me explore and rediscover how I truly felt about something or in this case, asking myself ‘what really happened in that specific memory/moment?’ Revisiting some narratives and reshaping what happened in the past was incredibly empowering and cathartic. While the pain came from realising that I had kept and held on to certain narratives for so long and that it changed the way I saw the world. Ultimately, there is a lot of freedom when you allow it to shift and to share it to people - and that is totally worth the journey.
As your protagonist navigates the complexities of his life, what messages do you hope readers take away regarding family and the nature of brotherhood?
Try and re-explore who your family are, re-acquaint yourself with why they became who they are and how they like to be seen and how they see the world. They are all just figuring it out day by day. Everyone has a story and oftentimes we assume that we truly know our family members but outside the role of mum or dad or brother, they are a human being trying to adapt and survive just as much as we are. Most of the time, their love comes for free but I think we can do a bit more to understand why they became who they are. There is love in that search for deeper understanding.
There are many questions floating around the idea of being English today and what that can mean for people. Of course, coming from a different country I have had to come to terms with what identifying with two different cultures can mean for a young person growing up and how that affects their relationships with themselves and the society they live in. Identity sometimes can be a broad term, but in this story, I study how it can affect our choices, behaviour, thoughts, our character, our sense of purpose and our sense of connecting with people - to name but a few. Most of all, I also question what it means to be Filipino today. What being Asian is. How can we navigate a political existence that we were born into (addressing stereotypes) and still feel like it is ours to live freely? This play explores the modern image of being east asian, to simply share that a life growing up in England can be a radical experience. It is being Asian, or indeed, Filipino.
The protagonist invites us into a world filled with both humor and tension. How do you strike the right balance between lightheartedness and the emotional weight of his journey?
I think to simply enjoy the protagonist's journey as well and to celebrate every moment. The fact that he gets to tell the story is already a celebration, the rest is just a part of his story that happens. The difficult moments don’t define him necessarily, it is that he chooses to continue to celebrate who he is despite his circumstances. So, I try to focus on that while also not sentimentalising his pain to ensure that it is all a part of the story being told. The audience gets to witness how he processes his life and goes along with him.
The Shakespearean lens through which you view the people in your life is particularly unique. Can you elaborate on how this perspective shapes your storytelling?
It comes from trying to engage with Englishness and how there is an inherent hierarchy within the system that can often feel like it qualifies someone to be or not to be English. See what I did there? Jokes aside, I hope it comments on how culture can be a costume, a behaviour that helps people engage and identify with each other. For example, I’m interested in, let's say; speaking Shakespeare in both a Midlands accent and also an RP accent, as heightened language is often seen to be spoken by those that have a ‘posher’ accent. So I do this in order to question how this shifts our perception of the individual and how language can be a common ground despite our socio-economic background. Or indeed, how language can validate our acceptance to the community of that culture.
Writing about personal and cultural experiences can be challenging. Were there any particular moments during the writing process that were particularly difficult or cathartic for you?
It was both difficult and cathartic. As a writer, I had to make sure that the moments I chose to write about were specific to the story as many events can contribute to it. The moments that emerged, almost without my will, were brought forward from my memories and I had to find a way to slightly dramatise it and find a sense of detachment. There were many tears shed during the writing process as writing often helps me explore and rediscover how I truly felt about something or in this case, asking myself ‘what really happened in that specific memory/moment?’ Revisiting some narratives and reshaping what happened in the past was incredibly empowering and cathartic. While the pain came from realising that I had kept and held on to certain narratives for so long and that it changed the way I saw the world. Ultimately, there is a lot of freedom when you allow it to shift and to share it to people - and that is totally worth the journey.
As your protagonist navigates the complexities of his life, what messages do you hope readers take away regarding family and the nature of brotherhood?
Try and re-explore who your family are, re-acquaint yourself with why they became who they are and how they like to be seen and how they see the world. They are all just figuring it out day by day. Everyone has a story and oftentimes we assume that we truly know our family members but outside the role of mum or dad or brother, they are a human being trying to adapt and survive just as much as we are. Most of the time, their love comes for free but I think we can do a bit more to understand why they became who they are. There is love in that search for deeper understanding.
The Collective Fringe 2026 runs from 21st - 26th January 2026. You can find full details, venues and booking details at https://collectiveactingstudio.co.uk/collective-fringe-2026/
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