“A brilliant concept is worthless if the audience can’t actually receive and experience it.”
WHO: Olivia Zerphy
WHAT: “Fargo meets The Matrix meets The Office in this high-octane, darkly comic thriller. It’s 1973. Marnie Makowski arrives in New Mexico, searching for her missing sister. When a butcher, a pilot, and a priest each reveal fragments of a millennium-spanning conspiracy, Marnie faces a choice: walk away, or uncover the truth. What follows will change everything, for everyone, forever. An adrenaline-fuelled odyssey through America’s most absurd manhunt, with virtuoso physical theatre, acrobatics, and live music from multi award-winning Voloz Collective. Praise for previous work: ***** (BroadwayWorld.com, BroadwayBaby.co.uk). **** ‘Immaculate’ (Scotsman).”
WHERE: King Dome at Pleasance Dome (Venue 23)
WHEN: 13:55 (60 min)
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Is this your first time to Edinburgh?
This is our third Edinburgh Fringe as a company, and we keep coming back because we genuinely love it!
We’re incredibly grateful for what the Fringe has done for Voloz. It’s been a huge springboard for our work, leading to UK and international touring opportunities that simply wouldn’t have happened otherwise. There’s nowhere else where you can share your work with audiences from all over the world every single day for an entire month.
As theatre-makers, the repetition provided by the festival is invaluable. Performing the same show every day allows you to discover things you could never find in a rehearsal room. We find we really start to understand the pace of the show, where it can breathe, where we can push the joke, where we need to pick up the pace. The show becomes sharper, richer and more nuanced over the course of the festival. It’s exhausting, but it’s also one of the most exciting creative experiences we know.
What are the big things you’ve learned since 2025 and have you absorbed any of the lessons yet?
This is our third show as a company, and every project teaches us something new about how we work together.
The biggest practical lesson is probably to take breaks! Devising can become all-consuming, and it’s so hard to figure out how to step away. This year we’re all taking a full week off right before the Fringe.
Artistically, we’ve learned that audiences love the fragility of a work-in-progress. They laugh when something unexpected happens, and lean into the vulnerability, chaos, and messiness of it – there’s a wonderful sense that anything could happen. As a show becomes tighter and more polished, you inevitably lose a little of that. So once we’ve cleaned everything up, we’ve learned to then go back in and deliberately loosen parts of the show again, creating space for spontaneity so it still feels alive, risky, and funny.
We’re constantly learning and forgetting and relearning to move more and talk less.
Perhaps the biggest lesson is not to fall in love with ideas for their own sake. A brilliant concept is worthless if the audience can’t actually receive and experience it.
We’re also learning to accept that creating original devised theatre simply takes time. Always more time than we think. The work can’t be rushed, and sometimes it is necessary to let go of an idea you’ve spent months developing if it isn’t serving the show anymore.
Tell us about your show.
REDACTED is an original devised production by Voloz Collective. We are an internationally touring physical theatre company founded by alumni of École Jacques Lecoq. The company creates bold, cinematic theatre where movement, live music, comedy and inventive visual storytelling take centre stage.
Like all of our work, REDACTED has been created collaboratively. All four members of Voloz (Emily Wheatman, Sam Rayner, Paul Lofferon, and Olivia Zerphy) work non-hierarchically to write, direct, produce, and perform our shows.
REDACTED has already had a number of work-in-progress performances, London previews and a small UK tour ahead of its Edinburgh run. Those performances have been an essential part of the devising process, allowing us to test ideas in front of audiences and continue refining the work.
Following Edinburgh, we’re planning a wider UK tour in Spring 2027, and we’re excited to continue sharing the production internationally.
What should your audience see at the festivals after they’ve seen your show?
Spin Cycle by Berserk Theatre is high on our list. It’s a razor-sharp, absurd and heartfelt drama set in a launderette that balances humour with real emotional depth. It’s playing at Underbelly Bristo Square at 2:25pm throughout the Fringe.
We’re also really looking forward to Shantify. Sea shanties, theatre, comedy and live music? Honestly, what’s not to love? It’s at Palais du Variété at Assembly George Square Gardens at 15:05.
Another must-see is The Librarians: A Very Serious Comedy! We were lucky enough to catch a 15-minute excerpt when it was a Charlie Hartill Award finalist, and we were crying with laughter. There’s one gag involving a table that is genuinely worth the price of admission on its own. Its at 15:15 in Pleasance 2!
And finally, Bread and Circuses by Seamus Lavan. It’s a brilliantly silly and sharp collision of Julius Caesar, clowning and the manosphere- a hilarious, unsettling hour from a very talented performer. It’s on at 12:55pm during the Fringe.
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