“Can you believe a slightly feral, formally weird play about Universal Credit, by some skint gobshite from Coventry, won a Fringe First?”
WHO: Jude Green
WHAT: “A dark and unrelenting comedy about starving for your art. As negotiations with employers, agents and Universal Credit crumble, one actor drags you into a brutal and absurd takedown of the UK benefit system, the Cost of Living Crisis, and whether we value the art more than the people who make it. They’ll go down swinging, but they will go down – maybe making a play about food poverty is the only way out of it? After all, closed mouths don’t get fed. Winner of the Shedload-of-Future Fund 2026. ‘Impeccably written… a completely captivating performer’ (Liv Ello, Body Show).”
WHERE: Dissection Room at Summerhall & Old Lab at Summerhall (Venue 26)
WHEN: Varies (60 min)
MORE: Click Here!
Is this your first time to Edinburgh?
It is! I’ve never been here before, even as an audience member. It’s honestly just too expensive. I think a lot of people are feeling that, especially this year. I’ve spoken to people who’ve gone into £20k of debt bringing their show. When I was first planning the run I was getting accommodation quotes of £6k+ from some places, and then people telling me ‘oh yeah, that’s kinda normal.’ It’s really frustrating as a working-class artist. It just feels like we’re not considered, like we can’t feed the machine so there’s no room for us here. That’s why it’s been so sincerely encouraging for ‘Toast’ to get things like Shedinburgh’s Shedload of Future Fund earlier this year – I would have no business being here without it. It’s meant we could pay for the venue and (a mercifully cheaper than £6k+) accommodation. Now that I’m here I am absolutely having the time of my life.
The Fringe is so vibrant and alive, there’s so much going on constantly, and a swarm of like-minded people everywhere you look – and more working-class artists than you think, making incredible art and showing us how its done in spite of how hard it is. And then for ‘Toast’ to win a Fringe First during the first week? I’m still not really over it to be honest. Can you believe a slightly feral, formally weird play about Universal Credit, by some skint gobshite from Coventry, won a Fringe First? I guess this is the place where that kind of thing can happen. I think that’s what makes Ed Fringe great. For all its faults and exclusivity, if you can scratch out a place for yourself here then there are opportunities like nowhere else. I can’t believe the support the ‘Toast’ just from one short ten-day run (so much that we’ve had to add extra dates for the final week of the fest.)
I just wish it received more support, and that artists specifically had more access to financial support to come here. Shedinburgh’s grant is incredible, but it’s the only one of its kind. Keep It Fringe grants are much smaller and they still had their capacity slashed this year. For shows like ‘Toast’ made by people like me to keep coming here, there needs to be more financial infrastructure.
What are the big things you’ve learned since 2025 and have you absorbed any of the lessons yet?
Done is better than perfect, and if you try and make a play for everyone then it’ll end up being for no one. I’d been a little obsessive about making this well-made-play that was very perfectly formed and would change hearts and minds about poverty and benefits in the UK, but ‘Toast’ was always very defiant of that goal and wanted to be its own angry, funny thing. If people resonated with it that was a bonus. I wasted a lot of time being worried about what other people would think, not just of the play as a piece of work but of me and other people on benefits. It felt like a great responsibility and that’s intimidating. But in the end that became fuel for it. There’s this absurd performance you’re expected to do when you’re skint, especially if you’re on benefits.
You have to be mild-mannered and calm and understanding of the people and systems who bluntly don’t treat you as human, otherwise you’re labelled a scrounger, a thief, lazy, aggy, etc. All of which is just cheap language that’s used as an excuse to ignore you and refuse you access to services, wages, and rights – and the way that class and poverty intersect with so many marginalised communities, it’s something a lot of us understand very deeply. If you’re angry you’re a problem, and while advocating for yourself is essential, doing it to the Universal Credit people can have unintended consequences. In the end the play only started flowing when I faced that head on, when the journey became directly intertwined with the fact that this whole thing is a fucking performance. It’s literally a play. So let’s name that, let’s interact with that, and see how far we can push the absurdity of all this burden of performance until all the wheels come off. Learning that made the play what it is, I just wish I’d learned it sooner.
Tell us about your show.
‘Toast’ is a darkly absurd comedy about what it means to starve for your art in the UK. It gets into the grubby parts we all know exist but rarely, if ever, talk about openly: Unpaid ‘opportunities’, the pay-to-play nature of a lot of theatre work (including the Fringe), Universal Credit, and past a certain point the food poverty that you can’t afford to hide anymore. Closed mouths don’t get fed after all. It takes the form of phone calls with agents, would-be employers, and Universal Credit, and gradually breaks down until the dole is the only voice you hear. Because it does feel all-consuming when that’s your life. It’s based on real calls I’ve had with UC over the past nine odd years of trying to balance freelance theatre work and failing, real systems and policies that impact many of us throughout our day-to-day life, and the real impacts – like the times where there’s nothing left to eat but toast. Eventually the play starts biting back. I get to start taking the piss, and that’s when the wheels really come off.
I wrote it myself, and initially it was this huge collection of sketches really. There’s over a hundred – obviously they didn’t all make it into the play! It was a process of curating a flow of scenes that felt like a narrative, that felt like a story and like a person really going through it, while still leaving space for this slightly feral comedy as everything breaks down and it stops being a play anymore. I had the wonderful help of my fellow performer (and tech operator, and babysitter, and and and…) Jack Wakely, and our Outside Eye, Debbie Hannan, who helped me refine the script. I’d met them through the phenomenal CRIPtic Arts, hands down the best company I’ve ever worked with in nine years of professional theatre. ‘Toast’ got accepted onto their Reach programme in 2025 and I got the support, space, and wage to finally give the concept a real go. Jack is their Development Producer and was running the programme and its residentials, and I asked him to just read in for the part of the off-stage voice at the sharing.
He was just so hilarious, he’s a really gifted and crafted clown on top of being a producer, and he was getting way bigger laughs than I was, so there was never any question of anyone else doing the part from then on. Debbie’s partner was performing in one of the other pieces and bless him literally ran up to me after the dress rehearsal and said he wanted to put me in touch with them (cheers, Vinnie, love you.) So yeah, it was a really organic thing and I’m so glad of that. I can’t imagine doing it with anyone else. Everyone is working-class and been on and off the bennys, so we all intimately understand what ‘Toast’ is about. Everyone is disabled, everyone is neurodivergent, and everyone is queer too. I’ve never felt so held. I’ve been self-producing this and it’s been bonkers, and not having to justify yourself or your experiences is hugely important on a project. They are a joy. Hire them for all your things.
What should your audience see at the festivals after they’ve seen your show?
Oh, man. Too many to mention. We have to big up the working-class artists up here showing how it should be done: I think our biggest mad cap comedy, laugh-out-loud stand-outs have been ‘Slugs’ by Creepy Boys, ‘Horrible Things’ by Frankie Thompson, ‘I Am Jonny’ by Tessa Parr, ‘Landlords Wet Dream’ by Verity Sharpe, and ‘Very Hot Very Messy’ by Georgia Polly Taylor. If you’re after some similarly cutting drama that holds its comedy moments incredibly well, I beg of you check out ‘You, Me, And Whoever Comes Next’ by Keron Day and ‘Man Or Bear’ by Katie Hurley & Sarah Hehir, both are a grateful punch in the chest.
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