SATURDAY [ticketed]

Dino-Saw is a roaring, fun adventure full of handmade dinosaur puppets.  

Stiltskin's beautifully crafted storytelling theatre show is suitable for budding palaeontologists under 8yrs and their families. 

Baby Dino hatches from his egg and sets out on an adventure. He meets lots of friends on his way, including Danny Diplodocus, the football fanatic. Left alone, Baby Dino is visited by Leaf, who flies him away to see marine reptiles, a volcano, and the rescue of Tallulah Triceratops.  

Meet the baby dinosaurs and their parents, including Baby Dino's mum... are you brave enough?

How do you fix Earthly Matters?

God is hosting a seminar in Inner Mongolia. You’re invited.

Shasha returns to China from the UK and comes out as gay, her Christian mother, Song, doesn’t take it well. Thank God—divine intervention is here to save the day. God forces Song to relive a buried past—an intense “friendship” with her daughter’s schoolteacher, Yi, that might have been more than it seemed.

Things spiral. Fast. And God? Not as all-powerful as They think.

“Be Gay, For God’s Sake” is a sharp, satirical, time-bending drama about queerness, family, and the pursuit of happiness across continents and generations.

Inspired by real events, the play interrogates the tension between East Asian queer experiences and a Westernised perspective. When shaped by different worlds and times, can a mother and a daughter truly understand each other?

The love story of Tristan and Isolde is retold in this original production, with live music and acting,performed by beloved musicians from Totnes and beyond. Our tale is set in Cornwall. Tristan, nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, finds his destiny entwined with his Uncle's wife in a love that proves to be their downfall. Experience this ancient story of romance and mischief in a new adaptation that blends theatre, storytelling and song. A performance that stitches together the old world and the new, of  a love story that carries across ages. Adults and Kids welcome.

Dancing, genies, animals, mother-in-laws and ghosts. Messages - phone calls, zoom calls, voice notes - reporting a nightmare of bombed hospitals and schools, children lying like rubble in the collapsing streets. Performed by some of their original creators, 19 plays by children from Gaza and the West Bank, written pre-October 7th 2023, are woven into a continuous 90-minute play, continually interrupted by messages from the genocide. Welcome to Gaza is produced by the Hands Up Project, and compiled and directed by award-winning playwright, Peter Oswald.

Half the population of Gaza is children.

Everybody knows about October 7th and its aftermath. Few people know in detail

much about the life in Gaza before that. So, just in historical and sociological terms,

the plays are important. But to me plays are more than that – they are living voices.

The voices in these plays are brightly alive – under immense pressure grabbing the

chance to speak to the world out of the prison, the death cell, of Gaza.

Working with these plays is like handling some strange substance that’s fallen to

earth in a meteorite. What exactly is it? Will it explode? If you breathe it, what will

happen to you? Can the human heart cope with it? I am very happy the experiment

is underway.

AFTER THE SERVICE: TALES OF LOVE AND LOSS

A new series of monologues based around the universal themes of Love and Loss, this work takes an honest look at what so many of us find difficult to deal with. The loss of love.

Told with humour, openness and honesty, three generations tell their stories.

A young woman comes to terms with the loss of her baby, the memories of her bullying days fresh in her mind. Is this what she deserves? Is this her comeuppance?

A middle aged man who lost his life-partner to the Blood Scandal finally feels he is getting some kind of closure, the stigma of losing the love of his life to the AIDS epidemic a burden he has carried for 28 years.

An elderly woman returns from her husband's funeral service to a quiet and empty house, and a very different existence. 47 years with the same person. So what now?

'We live, and, if we are lucky, we love. And one day, it’s taken from us, with no explanation. And we have to get on with it. We have to live. What else is there?'

Through the lens of these human experiences, the audience is gently guided into reflections of their own journeys of love and loss. A moving and thought-provoking, the imprint of the love we have experienced remains in our hearts always.

A Hilarious Waste of Time”

Master of the absurd, Oli Weatherly, is on a quest for salvation and he needs your help. Join him for an hour of surreal comedy and clowning; and enter a world inhabited by a wizard and a man who dreams of being a stick. Tragedy, mystery and the ridiculous collide in this one-man odyssey, which is guaranteed to leave you wondering where on earth you have just been; and whether you have returned as the same person who went in. 

Now is the time to seize the moment. Now is the time to join the fun. Now is the time ….for ‘Stick or Wizard?’ 

Winner Audience Choice Award (Wandsworth Fringe)

Winner Hot Ticket Award (Halifax Fringe (Canada) 

★★★★LondonBoxOffice

★★★★Edmonton Journal

“Hands up. Has anybody ever seen a ghost?” Exeter Uni 2006. Strapped for cash, Daniel joins a group of students performing a psychology experiment to create a ghost and begins to lose his grip on what is real and what isn’t. Inspired by the true events “Is Anybody There?” Is an interactive, documentary theatre piece about how our minds can lead us astray.

A fantastically funny retelling of the medieval classic The Green Knight with the sub-text made text! (Spoiler art: it’s gay.) 

Sir Gawain’s been peer-pressured into chopping off the Green Knight's head. And now they have to let the miraculously still-alive Green Knight return the favour. Disaster! King Arthur reckons this is grand as Gawain needs to be more masculine anyway and everybody knows there's nothing manlier than a good head chopping off... so there's really no way out. 

Created and performed by award-winning (Charlie Harthill Award, Pleasance Theatre 2025) and critically-acclaimed “storytelling genius” 

(The Scotsman) Niall Moorjani, associate directed by Cecily Nash, and produced in association with Scotland’s award-winning, touring literary theatre company Some Kind of Theatre, this new adaptation fabulously queers an Arthurian classic for the modern world.

A show 38 years in the making, DEATH* by PowerPoint fuses a fear of the end with wonderings of what’s next and a grave sense of humour, all delivered through the most exhausting medium of all: PowerPoint (just don’t tell Bill Gates). 

A particularly bad dream during his childhood left Liam terrified of death. Join him as he reflects on his actual encounters with death through the loss of friends and family over the years, to see if he can finally make peace with the one human experience that connects us all. 

“A beautiful study of bereavement and grief delivered with delicate, sensitive wit”

Fringe TheatreFest

Enjoy the dark comedy tale of our troubled performer Dave The Cat and his backstage journey from Jesus’s Donkey to his shock dismissal minutes before the opening night of the original production of Cats. A blow our mysterious performer has never recovered from.

First performed at the Edinburgh Fringe where it played to packed houses, CAT The Play has been a smash hit in the UK, Europe, New Zealand broken box office records on the London Fringe and sold out every return to Edinburgh. In 2017, CAT The Play made its West End debut at London’s Ambassador’s Theatre to critical and popular acclaim. After packed shows in Auckland, Bristol and Bath Theatre Royal Ustinov Studio, Cat the Play has been selected for the New York Solo Festival in November.  

“An absolute riot! …I actually thought I was going to hyperventilate, just remembering it makes me laugh. It was so funny. Far too wonderful.”

Elaine Paige (Musical Theatre Legend), BBC Radio 2

..This theatrical diary of one man’s determination to be in the moggy

musical, and the consequences of getting there, is a madcap delight, both surreal

and gritty, musical and dramatic, comedic and tragic….one to remain in the Memory.’

Richard Kieswick - Grease the Musical International Tour and West End. National Theatre Playwright in Residence, Royal Court Theatre Young Writer’s programme. Richard performers at the UK’s only 

The Raven is a solo performance art theatre adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic poem—an elegy to loneliness, grief, and transformation. Currently in development, The Raven fuses physical theatre, poetic text, and live video, reimagining Poe’s haunted narrator as a man caught in modern inertia: overstimulated, isolated, and dead in life, until a bird taps and then real death...maybe.  Created and performed by Charles Sandford, The Raven sits on the edge between performance art and theatre, asking: What part of us is frozen? And what is it that knocks, calling us to change? 

Murmur is a multi-sensory, cross-artform performance and installation piece which explores and amplifies mycelium communication and the deep subconscious. Mycelium are the branching, fusing networks of fungi. It is as mycelium that fungi live the majority of their lives, unseen, underground. Much like us as artists. Blending movement, costume, music and projection to amplify natural phenomena, Murmur invites you into a hidden and otherworldly sphere where communication takes place on a vibratory level. 

Alex Harris and Jo Crook are the directing duo behind Dartington Playgoers’ production of Education, Education, Education by The Wardrobe Ensemble, performed at the Royal Seven Stars on the 12th and 13th of July. 

Both have a wealth of experience on stage and behind the scenes, particularly in the world of education. Alex played Davey in Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth for Playgoers last year, while Jo directed KEVICC’s acclaimed 2016 production of Les Misérables in Totnes.

This play is a firm favourite for them, with its gritty reality, sharp humour, and unforgettable characters. 

Set in 1997, it portrays a time that resonates personally: when we were young, hopeful, and inspired by the wave of change promised by a new Labour government. 

Their version of Education, Education, Education is both a celebration and a critique and perhaps a little too close to the bone.

Originally a short story, If Ye Love Me, won the Moth literary prize in  Eire. Reshaped into a film during Covid and extended into a play. A nameless troubled man is recalling 1957; the experience of boarding school and how it his perception of his parents. The film was made in the upper room of Birdwood House which is where it will be shown. After the film, the actor reads the second part of the short story.

Originally a short story, If Ye Love Me, won the Moth literary prize in  Eire. Reshaped into a film during Covid and extended into a play. A nameless troubled man is recalling 1957; the experience of boarding school and how it his perception of his parents. The film was made in the upper room of Birdwood House which is where it will be shown. After the film, the actor reads the second part of the short story.

‘Remember the Celebrities’ is the wonky brainchild of Devon artist and performer Steve Sowden, a brand-new pageant, spectacle, and haunting that combines original music and filmed vignettes with (sometimes quite reliable) narration and decidedly heightened brain wave activity.

Amidst the clackety racket of pathology, scepticism & culture war, the funky brain at the centre of this story makes a last-ditch attempt to commune with the increasingly distant, inattentive, hyperactive & disordered world beyond its borders. Although it might not succeed in its mission, perhaps there's joy to be found in the ritual of trying?

The River Taw talks with watery words; tinners, salmon, millers, goddess & saint. Travel the River Taw through time & landscape with reimagined tales, gossip, poetic thought & transporting sound. Storyteller & poet, Katy Lee, swam, walked and canoed the Taw from source to sea, from Dartmoor to Barnstaple gathering stories and local knowledge. Tightly scripted poetry and travelogue is interspersed with more traditional oral storytelling – making each performance unique. The performance is accompanied by music specially composed by Dave Smale. Katy also worked with film-maker Jess Pearson & photographer / canoe builder, Vince Large.

Prepare to laugh (hopefully?) or prepare to loudly smile at all the pauses we’ve left where we hoped you would laugh (we’ll take it.) 

Womeny Women Girls is a split hour of stand up bright to you by Cristina Varga and Hayley Ashton. We are two fresh faced up and coming comics on the South West scene. We’re mostly just bored of being the token diversity acts so we’re making you listen to a whole hour just about us!

With Cristina dedicating this chapter of her life to becoming a true Janner, we get a peek into her life navigating British societal norms and stereotypes.

Hayley is desperate to monetise her insane family lore, giving you ridiculous anecdotes and daft life observations. 

We’re inviting you into the ridiculous world that is our brains, bringing you stupid joyous authentic stories, and hopefully making you laugh a bit along the way!

BONKERS! is Jackie Juno’s brand new comedy show about LOVE AND SEX.

Part stand-up, part poetry, part audience participation (entirely voluntary, worry ye not!) - no two versions of the show are ever the same. 

Rather like sex itself, the show is fun, messy, hilarious, beautiful, uniting and deeply, deeply loving. Come and join in the fun and games. Everyone is welcome!

Possibly Jackie’s most outrageous show yet. Combining her love of word-play and her natural ability to put folks at ease and bring out the funny in everyone.

“My sides are still aching from last night”

“Had me in stitches”

“Hilarious! the perfect medicine”

Que Pasa?’ is a blend of poems, stories and live music that explores themes of home and belonging, inhabiting those borderlands between ‘here’ and ‘elsewhere’. The phrase ‘Que Pasa?’, simply translated, means ‘What’s happening? What’s going on out there?’ In seeking to answer those questions, the hour-long programme ranges freely across different countries and cultures in ways that are simultaneously entertaining and thought-provoking, suffused with warmth and humour. The subjects of the poems by Waters and Fogg encompass nature and family, politics and love, and much more besides, while the music, which weaves in, around and through them, features a set of jazz compositions featuring alto & tenor sax and bass clarinet each played live over pre-recorded backing tracks, all performed by Yockney

A show 38 years in the making, DEATH* by PowerPoint fuses a fear of the end with wonderings of what’s next and a grave sense of humour, all delivered through the most exhausting medium of all: PowerPoint (just don’t tell Bill Gates). 

A particularly bad dream during his childhood left Liam terrified of death. Join him as he reflects on his actual encounters with death through the loss of friends and family over the years, to see if he can finally make peace with the one human experience that connects us all. 

“A beautiful study of bereavement and grief delivered with delicate, sensitive wit”

Fringe TheatreFest

A Hilarious Waste of Time”

Master of the absurd, Oli Weatherly, is on a quest for salvation and he needs your help. Join him for an hour of surreal comedy and clowning; and enter a world inhabited by a wizard and a man who dreams of being a stick. Tragedy, mystery and the ridiculous collide in this one-man odyssey, which is guaranteed to leave you wondering where on earth you have just been; and whether you have returned as the same person who went in. 

Now is the time to seize the moment. Now is the time to join the fun. Now is the time ….for ‘Stick or Wizard?’ 

Winner Audience Choice Award (Wandsworth Fringe)

Winner Hot Ticket Award (Halifax Fringe (Canada) 

★★★★LondonBoxOffice

★★★★Edmonton Journal

Join local pianist and raconteur Andy Hill around the Bay Horse piano for a good old-fashioned pub sing-song, playing everything from classic rock bangers to tear-jerking power ballads, nostalgic indie to Disney favourites. A former touring musician turned music journalist, Andy is well-known in Totnes for his ability to light up a room with his stylish playing and infectious sense of humour. His encyclopedic knowledge of music – especially The Beatles – is the stuff of local legend. Requests always welcome, lyrics projected onto a screen, and Andy totally encourages punters to get up on the mic and sing if they're sloshed enough.

Being little is its very own world of wonders, adventures and dramas, negotiated alongside the grown-ups who have to carry, guide, entertain and clean up afterwards. Nursery Grime tries to make sense of the mayhem of being, and raising, young children, with a rap-based interactive journey through the muckier reaches of infant life led by ma appl juic and singer Tess O’Connor.

Interactive segments between songs, utilising a range of props, invite children in the audience to dance or participate otherwise. Audience members are also invited to submit content for a freestyle element of the show.

WARNING: A surfeit of scatological, puerile toilet humour

Beneath the ruins of Totnes Castle, something stirs. When a group of children make a surprising discovery, the boundary between past and present begins to blur. Performed by the Drama Llama Youth Theatre from the Grove School, this original play blends history, myth, and imagination to explore the hidden voices of place and time through performance and song.

Written: Phil John

Directed:  Shanaz John

England 1599. In her 60's, Queen Elizabeth falls for mad, bad and dangerous Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex - a man half her age. She clings to power - and the earl tries to tear it from her grasp! Renowned lutenist Roxana Gundry will accompany words by both Shakespeare and local playwright Chris Humphreys in the story of this thrilling, doomed relationship. Come see the lovers dance their deadly galliard… all the way to the scaffold! Passion, poetry and song meet in an entertainment fit for the court of a queen - or a herb garden in Totnes!

KEVICC Performing Arts Department present a Shakespeare in Schools Open Air Performance.

Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps
– Act III, scene 2

In an idyllic town of Totnes, the young thespians of Kevicc return after a triumph on the Scottish hills (aka the Ariel Theatre) but whilst at the castle wedding, young lovers Claudio and Hero and sparring Beatrice and Benedick become entangled in a series of mischievous games & villains plots.

Coombira Drum Circle offer a rhythm, song and movement workshop during Totnes Fringe Festival that draws on community music shared 45 years ago by African artists and dancers working in Bristol schools. 

Participants of all ages are invited to join us in making celebratory sounds on a range of drums, balaphons (large xylophones), shakers and bells and explore some uplifting traditional melodies from Ghana, West Africa

Having trialled an online series of three-minute dramas during the pandemic, we have now decided to expand the idea to a live version with plays now lasting 5 minutes. Scripts have so far been received from Italy, Malaysia, and America, as well as from closer to home. Anyone can submit a script; we will pick the best twelve and show them over two evenings at the Castle Bookshop below Totnes Castle on 11th and 12th July, starting at 6.00pm. There will be six plays per evening. There is no set fee, “pay what you feel” if you wish.....

Mesmerising Mediterranean music from these two multi talented seasoned performers. Blending sounds of Grease, Turkey and North Africa on oud, concetina, bagpipes, whistle and percussion with vocals.