This Edinburgh Fringe, theSpaceUK presents a powerful range of LGBTQ+ theatre that is direct, imaginative and emotionally honest. These productions span science fiction, autobiographical monologue, satire, drag, poetry and puppetry. Together, they explore friendship, sexuality, resistance, gender, and memory. This is theatre made by and for queer voices, with nothing watered down.
Fever Dreams, Sci Fi and Queer Futures
Shallowspace Cryotech Feverdream sets its story deep in space where memory and identity collapse into data. It is a trans-led sci fi horror piece that questions what it means to be a body in a digital void. Ants and Other Strong Things takes place thirty years in the future where a surveillance regime has turned against queer people. A love story unfolds in secret under constant threat. A Xerox of a Deer brings surrealism and humour in a puppet show about roadkill, repression and rural Irish queerness. It is strange, affecting and entirely its own.
Sex, Shame and Survival
Grooming My Ass is a solo performance from Ryann Lynn Murphy that recounts trauma, twink identity and gender complexity through a psychedelic lens. Sharp and unfiltered. ROADKILL by DYKEish mixes talk of sex and supermarket aisles with resistance and joy. It celebrates trans survival without compromise. Sauna Boy offers a candid portrait of gay sauna culture. A semi autobiographical show about sex, work and intimacy in places often left out of public conversation.
Identity, Memory and Coming Out
Tell Me Where Home Is (I’m Starting to Forget) is a coming of age story about longing, nostalgia and cartoon crushes told with wit and feeling. Outing follows Jamie as he hesitates between proposing to his girlfriend and admitting he is gay. A fast moving queer romcom of indecision and tangled feelings. Made of Magic by Jude FireSong blends spoken word, visual art and storytelling in a reflection on rage, community and chosen kinship.
Queer Icons and Cultural Upheaval
Mad About the Boys pays tribute to Coward, Porter and Novello with music, dry humour and vintage class. Pictures of Willy explores queer fatherhood, stormtrooper fantasies and sex after parenting with warmth and comedy. In Jack, a musical twist on the Jack the Ripper tale, the victims take the spotlight. This dark punk show flips the story and challenges myth with a queer voice.
Drag, Dystopia and Clubland Macbeth
Mother, Maiden and Crone features three queer clubland witches, a drag queen, a DJ and a shot boy — facing down the collapse of a hen night world in a loose reworking of Macbeth. The Gay Social Network presents a queer dreamscape of Zuckerberg, misogyny and democratic decline. Somehow it all holds together and hits close to home.
Trans Rage, Beatles Breakups and Sketch Chaos
Someone Has Got to Be John from the makers of Speakbeast turns a Beatles tribute into a reflection on grief and transmedicalism, filtered through psychedelic metaphor. Something Like a Brother is fifty minutes of sketch comedy, dancing, puppets and chaos. It is unruly, queer and never plays it safe.
Summary
From queer science fiction to surreal puppetry, from intimate solo pieces to political satire, theSpaceUK brings together a striking LGBTQ+ programme that refuses to conform. These are stories of resistance, celebration, confusion and desire. Nothing is diluted. This is theatre that welcomes with honesty and speaks with its whole voice.
