INTERVIEW: A Digital Pint with… Red Kitchen Collective on Friendship, Fishnets, and Female Angst

Red Kitchen Collective’s EdFringe show Tall Tails dives fin-first into a glittering whirlpool of friendship, fishnets, and female angst. We caught up with the nautical gang for a pixelated pint to find out more about the show.

You can catch Tall Tails from August 1st – 9th at theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall – Theatre 2 from 19:45 (45mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.

Kat: Tell us about your show’s journey from creation to ending up at the EdFringe stage.

Alexa: The show was conceived one morning when Nikola and I were having a casual chat about making art for art’s sake. We mentioned the thought to our friends who continued to drop by our flat with a red kitchen (hence our collective title) and everyone was very quickly on board. When the idea of creating a show came to fruition, the only thing we knew was an absolute must was that we were all going to be mermaids. We originally started with the idea that we weren’t going to acknowledge the fact that we were mermaids… since then we obviously have dropped that thought but the randomness and nicheness of quirky humor as such remains! 

We have rehearsed in our living room (right next to the red kitchen) around plates of cookies, stuffed dates, etc. moving furniture to create a stage-like space. It has been so special to get to collaborate with close friends and learn from each other creatively through capacities we never knew our friendship would reach! It has been incredible to get to see everyone put on their many hats as we tackle all of the roles of producing, costume designing, directing, writing, so on and so forth. We have had a couple small preview showings here in London to get feedback from other close friends. Fringe will be the first time this show officially takes the stage and we cannot wait!

Kat: Tell us about the inspiration behind your show and why do you think its themes are relevant to an audience in 2025?

Emma: We’re inspired by girlhood, whimsy, the intricacies of female friendships… also ice cream. Childhood nostalgia is a major player in our friendship, and it’s been a great wellspring of creativity throughout the writing process. At the same time, we’re looking at the darker traits that rooted during our formative years. We’re exploring how insecurities, jealousy, and our people pleasing tendencies arise, even in our most trusted relationships. Girl, so confusing, you know??

Art that centers the feminine experience is dominating culture– look at Barbie, Wicked, the chart-topping main pop girlies. Despite this, the insidious patriarchal structures that built our insecurities still make us overcompensate and over apologize on a daily basis. Tall Tails is a display of our self-awareness, and a snapshot of the complex journey from girlhood to womanhood. We use a sparkly mermaid aesthetic to celebrate our femininity, while simultaneously tackling the real-world issues that permeate our actions, judgements, and interactions. The result is a playful and open-hearted story that we think our younger selves would be proud of. We hope it will help audiences feel seen and understood, and also make them laugh a whole lot. BYO Glitter.

Kat: Tell us about how the show has ended up being performed at theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall and about your relationships with the other creatives involved.

Nikola: The five of us formed a sisterhood while living in London, instantly bonded over our American expatism and shared attitude of being “Yes Men”. We like to think we are up for anything. Spontaneous nights staying up baking a twenty-layer cake  until dusk just for a picnic the next day eventually mutated into us collaborating to produce, write, design, direct, and act in a full production, none of us with any experience writing or producing a theatre piece…but we love to please. We are all really skilled at hyping each other up.

As we all know, the entertainment industry involves a lot of waiting, never knowing when the next opportunity will come. It can feel like agony! But unlike Elliott Yamin, we were done waiting. We had previously talked about putting on a Fringe show, out of our shared frustration of struggling to land the types of jobs we wanted, desperately craving a creative outlet, and yearning to finally take ownership of what we do. Our original thinking was that it would just be a couple casual performances of The Vagina Monologues at a pub. Cut to one morning about a month later, after an uncomfortable exchange with a barista I have a complicated relationship with (completely non-sexual, confrontational, and zero interaction outside the bakery yet takes up a lot mental and emotional real estate) tried finishing me off that day with his sassy attitude and heavy-handedness with matcha. After chewing my drink, never more caffeinated in my life, I emailed a dozen venues with no actual concept in place except that it had to be based on the special friendship we all shared and mermaids. Brianna had already known about theSpace, having friends who performed there before, so when I contacted theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall, we booked it the very same day. We had a two-hour phone call weighing the pros and cons but it was clear our “Yes Men” virus was growing stronger when we called the rest of the girls that night proposing nine performances and a lot of money for us all to invest and we all said “YES!”

Kat: Now that we’re amid Fringe season, what are you most excited for?

Briann: The sheer intensity of experiencing our first time at Fringe, and the wild, transformative emotions it continues to bring. 

In frigid December, we were totally unaware of the speed of this. “Fringe” was the big word we used that carried no preconceived notions or emotions. Time felt still, stretched and this “thing” we were spending our sunless evenings on was only just beginning to create meaning. Then, like a vacuum, we entered the wet heat of London. The stakes and temperatures had suddenly risen. It became this escalating concoction of anxiety and excitement, dropping from the sky and into the pit of our stomachs. 

Now, in the present, we’re finding our footing and thriving off the speed of what’s happening and what’s still to come. It’s the late nights, early mornings, the deep relationships we’ll create, the raw beginnings and endings on stage. Jumping into the audience of other shows, oohing and aahing at the magic around us, and absorbing everything we have to learn from our very first experience at this “thing”! We know when this is all over (whatever “over” really means in the sense of time) we’ll be so incredibly grateful for the opportunities, experiences and feelings this past near-year has given us.

Kat: Given the themes of Binge Fringe, if your show was a beverage of any kind what would it be and why?

Holly: Tall Tails would be a good ole’ Shirley Temple; a mocktail consisting of ginger ale, grenadine, and a single maraschino cherry (maybe multiple if you tap dance for the bartender.) The drink might be more popular in the states, which we can relate to, and has a nostalgic fondness. Like us, on the surface its pink, fruity exterior seems childlike and playful, typically ordered by kids. But it can also be ordered by really cool adults who write Fringe shows about mermaids so they have an excuse to drench themselves in glitter while talking business. Our references through fashion and writing to the 90s and early 2000s helps us channel our nostalgia and cling to our youth how one might cling to their Shirley Temple in the corner of an all-too-grown-up bar. 

Our show is a balanced mocktail of its own, hitting with the zing and spice of ginger-ale through unexpected humour, witty social commentary, and some punchy social truths. This is perked back up with the sweetness of grenadine through touching anecdotes of friendship, womanhood, and growth, and is finished off with the classic cherry on top of playfulness and sentimentality that bring us back to that inner child your therapist is always talking about. We hope to leave you surprised, refreshed, and comforted. Insert “But don’t call me Shirley” joke here that leaves the reader charmed instead of rolling-eyes.

A reminder, you can catch Tall Tails from August 1st – 9th at theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall – Theatre 2 from 19:45 (45mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.