“As migrant women and student creators, we spent a long time waiting to feel “ready,” “qualified,” or “legitimate enough” to speak.”

WHO: Lin Cao

WHAT: “BL web novelist Mae is about to publish her first print book, but censorship forces her to revise it – triggering backlash from her obsessive fan Lily. As Lily’s buried trauma surfaces, Mae’s fantasy world begins to unravel, growing increasingly surreal and absurd. Drawn into the same interrogation room by surveillance and fate, the two women slowly build a fragile trust. This is a story about internet fringe culture, gender identity and female desire. It’s a torrent of images including abandoned manuscripts, folded posters and paper-thin characters. They attempt to rewrite a creased cardstock between fiction and reality.”

WHERE: Clover Studio at Greenside @ Riddles Court (Venue 16) 

WHEN: 11:20 (60 min)

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Is this your first time to Edinburgh?

Yes — this is our first time bringing a show to the Edinburgh Fringe, and it feels both thrilling and terrifying in the best way.

As emerging migrant artists and students, we’ve long admired EdFringe from afar — not just for its scale, but for the values it claims to uphold: openness, experimentation, and decentralised creative voices. This is the kind of platform we dreamed of when we began working on Cardstock — a story that sits between categories, between cultures, and between fiction and reality.

We’ve attended other festivals as audiences, volunteers, and student artists — but producing for EdFringe is a completely different scale of responsibility. You’re not just sharing work; you’re negotiating space, attention, survival, and visibility in a system that’s exciting but also overwhelming.

What makes a great festival isn’t just the shows — it’s the chance to be in a space where you’re reminded that someone else, somewhere, might be folding a story too — and that your voices might crease, overlap, or echo. That possibility is worth everything.

What are the big things you’ve learned since 2024 and have you absorbed any of the lessons yet?

Since 2024, the biggest thing we’ve learned is that permission doesn’t come — you have to claim it.

As migrant women and student creators, we spent a long time waiting to feel “ready,” “qualified,” or “legitimate enough” to speak. But the world didn’t wait for us — and neither did the stories we needed to tell. Cardstock was born from the urgency of voices that don’t fit, that aren’t easily platformed, that carry contradiction and risk. In 2024, we started listening to those voices — including our own.

We’ve also learned that making work collectively doesn’t mean compromising vision — it means expanding it. We learned how to fold scarcity into innovation, and how to hold space for each other’s pain, humour, and creative edges. Producing this show taught us to stop asking for approval — and instead, to write our own structure, even if it’s made of paper.

Some lessons are still being absorbed. But we’re no longer waiting for the right time. This is the time.

Tell us about your show.

Cardstock is an original play written by Qianyue Ang and co-produced by Lin Cao, Dina Nan, and Yuqi Wen — all of us migrant women who met while studying in the UK. The show is presented by HERstage & Seagull Sisters Productions, both collectives formed by emerging Asian artists seeking to tell stories often excluded from mainstream stages.

The idea began in a university dorm room, sparked by a single line from a real news story: “I feel like a piece of paper. And paper can’t stand.” That sentence stayed with us. We started folding it into a play — literally. Everything in our show is made from paper: the set, the metaphors, the memory.

We premiered Cardstock at Brighton Fringe in May 2025 — no marketing budget, just a suitcase full of foldable props and a lot of hope. To our surprise, we received a four-star review and powerful audience responses. Edinburgh is our next leap. After that, we hope to tour in London and return to Asia, especially to spaces where censorship and silence still shape how women are allowed to speak.

This play isn’t perfect. But it’s standing — creased, but upright.

What should your audience see at the festivals after they’ve seen your show?

After Cardstock, we hope you go see Is This Normal? by Ansa Edim — a one-woman show that’s sharp, hilarious, and unexpectedly intimate.

It’s for anyone who’s ever rehearsed break-up speeches in the mirror (guilty). With wit and warmth, Ansa unpacks heartbreak, self-worth, and the delusions we wrap in bedsheets. It’s solo storytelling at its best — punchy, personal, and beautifully written.

We left the trailer smiling, and the title alone deserves a standing ovation.
Catch it at theSpace @ Surgeons Hall, Aug 13–15. You won’t regret it.

Fringe isn’t just about scale — it’s about truth. And Is This Normal? tells it with grace and laughter.

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