Shay Mace
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or perhaps you simply have a healthy relationship with your screen time), you’ve likely heard the word ‘tradwife’ while doom-scrolling through your preferred hell-scape application. All-female team RnL Productions are arriving at EdFringe from the United States this coming August with their razor sharp satire about alt-right grifters, isolation, and internalized misogyny atticwife, which explores this trend in the broader context of women’s rights and autonomy in 2026.
We caught up with Playwright-Producer-Performer Laura Clare Browne, Director-Producer Rebecca Wilson, Performer Jen Clark, and Fundraising & Special Events Producer Crystal-Marie Alberson about bringing this prescient story to the Fringe.
You can catch atticwife at Studio at theSpace @ Niddry St on August 7th – 25th (not the 16th) from 16:05 (50mins). Tickets are available through theSpaceUK’s Online Box Office.
Shay: Hi team! Your upcoming piece looks to satirise the recent ‘tradwife’ epidemic – for the blissfully uninitiated, tell us what a ‘tradwife’ is, and why you’ve decided to bring this story to the stage.
Laura: If you don’t know what a tradwife is… god, I wish I was you! “Tradwife” is shorthand for “traditional wife.” Tradwives are women who follow rigid gender roles and seek to completely embody the “traditional” ideal of a wife and mother.
Now, throughout history, there have always been women who have lived this way. But over the past few years, there’s been a sudden and worrying influx of tradwife influencers popping up online. These influencers are women who promote the tradwife lifestyle to their followers, presenting a hyper-idealized depiction of what it’s like. If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it probably is! Any stay-at-home mom will tell you how difficult it can be—but tradwife influencers will convince you it’s the most glamorous life a woman could have.
As much as I’d love for the tradwife trend to die down, it only seems to be picking up steam. So I figured, why not write a play about it?
Shay: How has the creative process been of putting the show together? Give us an idea of the journey you’ve been on with it so far.
Laura: I was inspired to write atticwife after going on a grim Wikipedia deep-dive about women in captivity. I was particularly troubled by the story of Blanche Monnier, a French woman from the 1800s who was kept locked in an attic for 25 years. What happened to her was horrific, one of the worst things I can imagine happening to a human being. But then I started to wonder… what if a woman chose that? What kind of woman would she have to be?
I immediately thought of all the tradwives I’d seen popping up on my social media feeds—and thus, atticwife was born! As soon as I had the idea, I sent a frantic voice message about it to my director Rebecca Wilson. She was super excited about it, and she’s been with me every step of the way since. It’s been so fantastic to build this play with a team made entirely of women, most of whom are queer.
Shay: What will be the first thing the audience sees, feels, and hears as they enter the space?
Laura: atticwife centers on a tradwife influencer named Astrid, who has been “willingly” locked in her attic by her husband. As the entire play takes place in this space, we’ve dedicated a lot of time into developing what this environment would be like. As the writer and actor playing Astrid, I’ve been thinking about her as akin to a zoo animal. This attic is a space that is theoretically private, but she’s constantly on display and performing. She performs for her followers, she performs for her husband when he deigns to visit her–and in a more meta sense, she is performing for the audience of the play.
Rebecca: In the development process, Laura and I also discussed the parallels to The Yellow Wallpaper, where a woman’s husband forces her to stay in a room that was formally a nursery. That theme of infantilization comes up a lot in atticwife. I knew this set had to feel like you were attending the weirdest sleepover ever! Lots of pink, and cutesy girlie stuff that was thrown together in a space that people aren’t really meant to sleep in. The show begins with Astrid going live to her followers, so we created a preshow soundscape that brings you into that world.
Shay: What are you hoping the audience might take away from the experience, if anything?
Laura: I want the audience to walk away from this play thinking about what it means to be a woman in 2026. In a time when women’s rights are still under siege both in the United States and around the world, many women are aligning themselves with patriarchy to achieve some sense of safety or power. What they don’t realize is that this isn’t making them any safer. Internalized misogyny is a problem for so many women–and contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t actually get better when we yell at them about it.
I also want it to make you laugh! In spite of a slew of serious subject matter, this play is very funny. In many ways, atticwife is kind of a bizarre buddy comedy. The two women that this show follows are both loveable and insufferable in turns, and I hope the audience has fun playing with them for an hour.
Shay: What journey has the show been on to find itself at EdFringe 2026?
Laura: I started writing the play back in the Fall of 2024. Rebecca would set deadlines for me, and I’d bring her pages for us to read together. Once the play was completed, we started bringing other artists in for private development readings.
Crystal-Marie: I work closely with Laura, teaching and performing improv, so I am always bugging her to send me writing/ideas! She invited me to a little reading of atticwife (like 5 total people in the room-I was reading stage directions). And oh boy! We were laughing! I just thought it was such a brilliant, sketch vibe, two-hander comedy, and I was surprised to find myself getting weepy in this little room. Laura asked, “Does the relationship between the women make sense?” I began, “Well, Leah must be gay-“. Laura cut me off with something like, “Leah is gay? Oh… Leah IS GAY!!!!” and the rewrites began! Now I’m helping the team with the fundraising campaign and a little marketing here and there!
Jen: Laura and I do improv on house teams in Brooklyn and one night she approached me about being this character LEAH in a reading for atticwife. I loved it because I thought this is so funny, giving queer vibes and is so niche. Less than a year later, not so niche and not so much a joke. LEAH, the character I play is visibly queer and I think that serves as a stark contrast to the trad-wife archetype, ASTRID. “But can you ever save a straight girl?” atticwife meets at the intersection of choice, and explores what traditional even means in 2026.
Rebecca: After all the developmental work with Crystal-Marie and Jen, we did a staged reading in August of 2025. Shortly after, Laura and I decided that we should go for Fringe in 2026. We would meet weekly and just look stuff up, like, “can we pull this off?” We had never produced anything this big, but atticwife felt like the right project to take the leap. Once we locked down our venue for Fringe, we were lucky enough to be accepted for New York preview shows at EdFest produced by Duces Wild, and with 59E59 Theaters for East to Edinburgh. It’s a busy time!
Shay: With EdFringe now just around the corner, what are you most excited for?
Laura: I’m so excited to connect with other artists from around the world! Being in a space where you’re surrounded by other performers and theatermakers, while shows are happening essentially 24/7… there’s nothing else like it.
Rebecca: I am excited about the chilly August weather. I am not joking! And to see other shows of course.
Crystal-Marie: Flyering! And staying papercut free!
Jen: The queers, freaks & weirdos!
Shay: Given the themes of Binge Fringe, if your show was a beverage of any kind (alcoholic, non-alcoholic – be as creative as you like!), what would it be and why?
Laura: Five shots of Pink Whitney. Cute, feels nice going down, but packs a punch!
Rebecca: Arnold Palmer. Astrid is the pink lemonade, Leah is the unsweetened iced tea, and you wouldn’t expect them to work so well together.
A reminder, you can catch atticwife at Studio at theSpace @ Niddry St on August 7th – 25th (not the 16th) from 16:05 (50mins). Tickets are available through theSpaceUK’s Online Box Office.
