“The audience is your final collaborator.”
WHO: Christie Lee Manning
WHAT: “Welcome to the party you always wished you were invited to. Step into the heart of a 90s college dorm hang, complete with live musicians and the greatest hits of the decade. Nine girls arrive for one last night together before their lives change forever. With each track played, we get a new glimpse into their world; through impromptu music videos, deep female friendships, and unfiltered emotion by the bucketload. This isn’t your typical dance show – it changes every night, with the girls’ fates being revealed to them, and you, in real time.”
WHERE: Big at theSpaceTriplex (Venue 38)
WHEN: 19:00 (50 min)
MORE: Click Here!
Is this your first time to Edinburgh?
Yes! It’s our first Fringe, and I’m already wondering why anyone ever thought putting thousands of theatre-makers in one city was a sensible idea… because it’s brilliant. As a director and choreographer, I love that everyone comes here to experiment. You see shows you’d never normally buy a ticket for, and some of the biggest surprises come from taking a complete gamble. That’s what makes the Fringe special—you never quite know what you’re going to get. Which, to be fair, is also a pretty good description of our show.
What are the big things you’ve learned since 2025 and have you absorbed any of the lessons yet?
I’ve learned that the audience is your final collaborator. As a director, you can spend months believing something is the answer, then an audience politely proves you wrong. We premiered I Made You a Mixtape in London and I went home after opening night thinking, “Well… that didn’t land the way I’d hoped.” I barely slept, came back the next morning, completely rearranged the running order, terrified the cast, and suddenly the show clicked. That experience really reinforced one of the philosophies behind our company. We make work that’s built to respond, so it would be pretty hypocritical if I wasn’t willing to respond myself.
Tell us about your show.
I wrote and directed I Made You a Mixtape, and it’s produced by Lauren O’Sullivan and Response Theatre Company. Response was born out of a question I’d been asking for years as a choreographer: what if dancers approached movement the way Meisner actors approach text? Instead of deciding what a dance should means, what if they discovered it in the moment? That eventually became the Response Method and, as far as we know, we’re the UK’s first Meisner-based movement company.
The show premiered in London earlier this year, and I’m actually really glad it did because it changed dramatically once we put it in front of an audience. We reshaped the running order, refined the audience interaction, and finally found the version that looked a lot more like the show I’d been imagining… and a lot less like my sleep-deprived notebook.
Edinburgh feels like the next chapter rather than the finish line. Every night we learn something new because every audience gives us something different to respond to. We’d love to keep touring the show after Fringe and eventually take it to North America. It feels like the beginning of the show’s life, not the end of it.
What should your audience see at the festivals after they’ve seen your show?
We’ve actually been terrible Fringe punters so far because we’ve been so busy opening our own show (and incredibly lucky to squeeze in some extra performances, including performing at the theSpace press launch) so our “must-see” list is currently more of a “we desperately WANT to see” list.
We absolutely have to shout out GTN Ensemble and their show How to Feel Feelings. They came to see us last night, loved it, and they’re actually coming back tonight with more of their cast, which might be the nicest compliment you can get at the Fringe. They just really got what we’re doing, they’re the loveliest humans, and now we’re ridiculously excited to see what they’ve made.
And then we’ve completely fallen in love with Julia Atkin, behind Crying at my Podiatrist. Tragically, she’s performing at the exact same time as us, so we can’t see it, which is honestly very rude of the Fringe scheduling gods. But everything about her and the show makes me think it’s going to be fucking phenomenal, and I’m deeply jealous of anyone who gets to see it. So on whichever night you’re not in our dorm, go cry at the podiatrist instead.
That’s probably been one of my favourite things about Fringe so far: you start championing people before you’ve even seen their work because you’ve met the humans behind it. And when you find artists who really get what you’re trying to do, you want everyone else to discover them too.
LIKE WHAT YOU JUST READ? FOLLOW US ON TWITTER! OR SIGN UP TO OUR MAILING LIST!
INTERESTED IN BEING INTERVIEWED TOO? CLICK HERE!
