SUNDAY AT THE TOTNES FRINGE FESTIVAL

The woods are calling; step beneath the canopy and follow the scent of sugar! Two children find themselves abandoned in the forest and encounter a house of confectionary that is more than what it seems. Hansel & Gretel tells the classic Grimm's tale through mesmerising shadow puppetry, storytelling and music. For adults and children (recommended 4+).

The Clockwork Moth are a multimedia arts duo, in collaboration with other artists, who specialise in shadow theatre. Highly intricate, funny and atmospheric, Hansel & Gretel is a new reworking of a 2019 commissioned by The National Trust for Wray Castle in the Lake District.

"...twilight entertainment, a place of dim light and mysterious figures emerging from the night. I almost envy the very young children in the audience; this will be something to linger in their dreams, a sibilant whisper interrupting their future lives as adults. Whispering of magic in the dark." 

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 to Edinburgh.

In 2017, Cat The Play made its West End debut at London’s Ambassador’s Theatre to critcal 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

15+ scenes of a sexual nature. Swearing. Lycra

Dangerous Dave, infinitely more ‘daft’ than ‘dangerous’, and his ridiculous sidekick, Herbert Lemon, present some of the most mind-bindingly silly stunts ever performed . . .  ever! Marvel as this miniature superhero fights his way out of a wet paper bag . . . climbs the slippery pole of peril to plunge into a domestic food processor . . . escapes from the pickled egg jar of DOOM . . . and becomes the fearless inhuman Cannon Ball!!

'Dangerous Dave has got to be one of the zaniest, funniest, family shows I have seen in a long time’ - Natalie Kidman - Black Country touring.

'Transcends the boundary between adult and kids’ entertainment - fantastic!’ - Glenn Tilbrook.

Dangerous Dave appeared on CBBC's ‘The Slammer’ - July 2004.

In the 1930s, Mary Davis astounded British audiences with her apparent psychic abilities. Some believed she had a true gift; others were certain she was a clever fraud. But what if she was simply ahead of her time in understanding the human mind?

‘Can I Actually Read Your Mind?’ revisits Mary’s most astonishing demonstrations brought to life through live performance, modern psychology, and a touch of modern magical methods. Blending original techniques with contemporary insight, this show explores whether her methods still hold power today.

Are we more sceptical than our ancestors? or can we see past the facade? Step inside to witness the impossible, and decide for yourself.”

Lucy has moved back to the village after getting an unexplained illness. Watching the world from  her window each day, the sounds of village life slowly become ‘irritants’ that prick away at the rage  she’s been harbouring all these years. When her obsession helps solve a local burglary, she is swept  out of her convalescence chambers into the hub of village life to help tackle crime. But her rage  isn’t going anywhere, and soon she’ll be faced with the thing that will surely send her over the edge.  

Bringing her dry wit and upbeat style, this is a one woman show written and performed by Louisa  Beadel. It’s for Agatha Christie fans, it’s for people intrigued by small communities, it’s for people  who want to bend their moral compass for a while and explore what it means to express rage.  

Louisa is an actor and musician from Totnes, Devon. Her credits include Call the Midwife (BBC),  Fame (West End/UK tour), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Old Vic), King Lear  (Shakespeare’s Globe), and Fisherman’s Friends the Musical (UK/Canada Tour).  

It’s may 1997. Tony Blair has won the election and Katrina and the Waves have won Eurovision.

Channel 5 is a month old. No one knows who jarry Potter is. Britain is the coolest place in the world. At the local secondary school it’s a different story. Miss Belltop-Doyle can’t control her year 10’s Mr Pashley has been put in charge of a confiscated tamagotchi, and Miss Turneris hoping that this muck-up day goes smoother than the last. Tobbias, the german Language assistant, watches on.

Things can only get better.

Education, Education, Education is a love letter to the schools of the 1990’s and ask big questions about a country in special measures, exploring what we are taught and why, and where responsibility lies.

Playgoers of Dartington Hall Society, have been around since the 1940’s first created by the Elmhirsts (radical free-thinkers) to bring together the local community with professional artists, musicians, directors and writers. Creating Theatre to a high standard that involes and evokes our Community.

Performance features swearing

Joy Scrolling 

Stories, songs and moving pictures to uplift and delight

Come and share a feast for the imagination with three wonder-filled visual storytellers. They will take you on a sensory journey to magical places with stunning artwork, enthralling stories, songs and quirky puppets. 

Bronia Evers, Sara Hurley and Wendy Dacre tell stories and sing songs using ‘crankies’. A ‘crankie’ is a picture story on a scroll that is hand ‘cranked’ between two spools within a box. Linked to early moving image, crankies are a kind of slow cinema, analogue viewing for digital times. 

Join Bronia, Sara and Wendy for a unique and entertaining experience for children and adults alike. 

Recommended for 5 to 105 year olds. 

A night of comedy, music and poetry for the ages, Lost Mythos is a parish council meeting like no other. 

Fresh from their recent album collaboration, the haunting soundscapes of Mara Simpson and the words of acclaimed poet JLM Morton will take us back to a forgotten Albion. Meanwhile, comic Emma Kernahan guides us through this mythical meeting agenda, blending unruly local folklore and stories from modern rural life. Ideal for fans of history, magic, and neighbourhood Facebook groups.

To grab your seat at this gathering of the Ledbury Mythical Entities, you can send a portent, cast a curse tablet into the River Leadon, or book a ticket via the website.

A performance art theatre adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s elegy to loneliness, grief, and transformation.

A man sits alone, wrapped in memory and inertia. Like Pinocchio, he is not quite real—Poe’s haunted narrator flickers at the edges of his own shape. Surrounded by old books and flickering screens, he is dead in life, overstimulated and under-chased. In today’s world, he might be obsessively scrolling for bad news, caught in the endless echo of digital noise. Until—something taps. A bird enters. And then real death, maybe.

The Raven is a solo multimedia performance that reimagines Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic poem for the contemporary moment. Currently in development The Raven fuses physical theatre, poetic text, and live video, the work teeters between theatre and performance art, asking: What is it that’s frozen within us? What part of ourselves cannot move on? What knocks, asking to be transformed?

Created and performed by Charles Sandford, The Raven speaks to the haunted spaces of modern life: isolation, grief, technology, and the possibility of becoming whole again. It is both an elegy and an invitation.

 DOUBLE BILL 

What does it feel like? is a solo performance exploring the body as a site of experience, personal history and selfhood. The performer connects and disconnects from the world we share, navigating their way through vignettes recalled from the merging of real and imagined situations as they seek connection and understanding, attempt to explain the unexplainable, confront bodily alienation, and move through cycles of birth, decay, and renewal. This intimate, visceral journey challenges our perception of wellbeing and identity. Autobiographical somatic writings echo through the work, woven into an original soundscape created with South West musician Grace Lightman.

Every year I forget about the wallflowers. Every year they appear.

The world hurtles and roars and it’s easy to feel lost in it and I am totally insignificant and so is a mayfly and yet… and yet.

Mayfly is a new dance work exploring what remains of a moment, what lives and what is lost, in the fleeting and the constant. 

Things lie patient, things alter and things continue as they always have. In the seed and the permafrost and the child’s eye.

Featuring live electroacoustic music by Tom Parker.

Sexting in your 80s, knitting kinks and discovering Grandad’s penchant for a Sunday blow job - this stand up / poetry show unpacks explaining your queer identity (non-binary, pansexual) to your 86 year old Nan. Expect butt plugs, pegging dildos and maybe even a few stray tears from this wildly explicit, unexpectedly heartwarming solo show. Better known for their work as a writer & director (Sherlock Holmes and the PoisonWood (Watermill), Little Prince (Taunton Brewhouse) and In the Willows (Exeter Northcott & UK tour), Ledbury Poetry Slam Winner P Burton-Morgan returns to the stage in this no-holds-barred poetry show. Funny, sexy & queer - bring your Nan (but maybe warn her first.)

P Burton-Morgan Poetry Biog

Since 2005 P Burton-Morgan has been  founder & Artistic Director of Metta Theatre, for which they have written & directed over 30 productions. As a poet they have been published in Propel Magazine, anthologized by Arachne press, The Chimes and they’ve performed at Primadonna Festival, Hot Flush, Hook Up Culture, Diversion, Dirty Laundry and Ledbury Poetry Festival where they won the 2024 Ledbury Poetry Slam. Their debut poetry pamphlet Solitary Animal Mother was published by Fifty Foot Press in 2025.

Matt Harvey and Jazzient join forces to increase the sum of their parts. 

No, that's not euphemism, it's the closing event of the Totnes Fringe Festival where music meets humour for laughs, music, bemusement and dance! Matt Harvey has been entertaining audiences as a writer and poet, enemy of all that’s difficult and upsetting, Matt’s way with words has taken him from Totnes to the Wimbledon Tennis Championships via Saturday Live, the Edinburgh Festival and the Work section of the Guardian. Jazz/rock duo Jazzient have been moving people to dance since 2020 with their combination of saxes, guitars, vocals, looping and electronics, creating witty songs, thoughtful ambient music and dance tracks.

Matt, Pete and Bev have collaborated before with a performance in St Marys Church, however this time, there will be more with added visuals and new fusions of their works.

Prepare to party for a lively last night of laughter, music and dance in the biggest ballroom in town!

2 pm- 3pm Native Wit by Agbo Play

Ayodele Scott and David Evans

Join Ayo and David as they stitch together fragments from their West African childhoods. A spirit of playfulness, love and joy is conjured by the artists, creating a dazzling patchwork, rich in surprises.   

These award-winning artists combine drum, dance and song with clowning and physical theatre in a humorous and humane exploration of their childhoods in Sierra Leone and Nigeria.

"Agbo is an exuberant and multi-disciplinary art form which is geared to and encourages audience involvement. Thus, singing and clapping all help to jolly along the performers who act, sing and dance … in an infectious free-form style of theatre…permeated by warmth and good humour …".   Graham Wyles, StageTalk Magazine, 11 July 2024

5pm – 5.45pm. Well, Well, Well...? A specially devised play about the garden by Playground Arts. 

Join the young company for a bold new show inspired by magical tales of Leechwell past and present, be they true or fantasy…
The young company is composed of 11-16 year olds from Totnes and the surrounding area and they have devised this piece of theatre under the mentorship of Mich Sanderson and Sarah Veevers. They meet regularly at Jamming Station in Totnes. playgroundartstheatre@gmail.com

Playground Arts Young People’s Theatre A thief… a dreaming street sweeper…a seagull…. and a loaf of sour dough… Come meet the upstanding pillars of society who love to gossip but stories can easily get misconstrued in this town centre. The young company is comprised of 11-16 year olds from Buckfastleigh and the surrounding areas and they have devised this piece of theatre under the mentorship of Helen Gilbert and Sarah Veevers. They meet regularly at Moor Imagination Centre in Buckfastleigh. 

Stuart Cumberpatch – National steel guitars, harmonica, vocals

Andy Boal – National steel guitars, vocals

Stuart and Andy have been playing the blues for the last 35 years and for 7 years together.  They play 1920s and 30s Delta blues on original vintage instruments, including a collection of rare National steel guitars, and early string band/jug band and hokum music.

Their gigs are a journey back to the origins of western popular music and offer a rare opportunity to hear the authentic sounds which filled the juke joints of pre-war Memphis, Atlanta, Clarksdale and Chicago before Muddy Waters invented electricity.