Shay Mace
Put together from over 40 interviews gathered via a social-media callout, and in tandem inspired by a break-up Gabi Flares and Andrea Maciel’s Deluge arrives at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe after a critically acclaimed, rave run at Prague Fringe last month. A comic, form-breaking physical theatre piece that explores the holes left in our lives by those who leave, it received a 5* review from Binge Fringe contributor Raynar Rogers when it dazzled Prague audiences. We caught up with Gabi for a pixelated pint to find out more about the show’s origins, and the journey it’s heading on.
You can catch Deluge at Big Belly, Underbelly Cowgate on August 5th – 30th at 15:30 (60 min). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.
Shay: Hi Gabi! Our team caught your show (and loved it!) at Prague Fringe – tell us a bit about your creative partnership, and how this show has ended up touring Fringe Festivals in Prague and Edinburgh.
Gabi: Hey Shay! Thank you so much for coming, really happy your team enjoyed the show.
This is our third collaboration, and my second one-woman show collaborating with Andrea. We have found something really nice in how our metaphorical worlds speak to each other: we just go as far as we can by having fun with ideas, stretching concepts, and playing.
For both solo shows, I came to Andrea Maciel with ideas, concepts, some writing I’d done for stories and plots, and interviews I conducted with people. From there, we improvise around that material in the studio, and new ideas emerge: metaphors, images, texts. I go home, write more drafts, and we come back to the studio to rewrite and shape structure through further improvisation.
It’s a co-creation: the show grows through playfulness with the material – audios, testimonies, fiction writing, movement sequences for text – rather than forcing a shape too early. It keeps changing, and now we have a version of a show that comes together after living with it for a while. I also bring in other great artists as outside eyes, including Maddie Maycock, who’s worked with us as associate director, co-creating little bits too.
Touring feels like a nice extension of this process: the show stays alive, and it means a lot to keep finding new audiences for it. We have more dates around Europe booked for this year, which we’re really excited about.
Shay: Deluge is inspired from over 40 interviews exploring mourning and grief – what made you decide to put this piece together, and can you tell us a bit about your creative process in bringing those stories to the stage?
Gabi: The idea itself came from something I said to a friend after a break-up: “if I could count all my thoughts in litres and add everything I’ve cried, I could flood a house.” Immediately after saying it, I thought: ah, that’s my next show.
I was trying to explain what I was feeling, trying to give it a shape. And that’s the main metaphor of the show – a woman in a house that’s about to flood. It’s a magical realist piece. And that’s what magical realism does, it takes what is felt but unseen and makes it physical, present, impossible to ignore. It doesn’t abandon reality, it stretches it. One foot in the real, one foot in the surreal. That push and pull is what makes it relatable; it creates a world that feels close but somehow far, absurd but almost believable.
Grief is largely invisible. But what if you could see it? What if it filled a room, spilled over, took the shape of water, jam, ladders, Komodo dragons?
I became absorbed in a question – what are people actually grieving for? Not the obvious losses, but the quieter ones; projects that never happened, friendships that slowly disappeared, versions of yourself you never became. And also things without clear endings. So I put out a callout and asked strangers to share their stories. Over 40 people responded. These stories, together with mine, became the heart of it, and the fiction grew around them.
This is the second solo show I have made this way and my third will be too. I keep coming back to interviewing people – I suspect my mum being a psychoanalyst has something to do with it. It also feels significant to me, the possibility that the things we think are most private aren’t only ours. That’s the recognition those voices brought to the show.
Shay: What will be the first thing the audience sees, feels, and hears as they enter the space?
Gabi: There is the sound of water dripping. But who knows what they’ll actually hear… a clock? A bomb ticking down? Someone’s stomach rumbling? I accept it all. All I know is that I walk onstage with a piano on my shoulder and a ladder on my back. Whether they see a dinosaur with a backpack or a homeless turtle, I have no idea. And what do they feel? People surprise me. I just hope they stay with me the whole way.
Shay: What are you hoping the audience might take away from the experience, if anything?
Gabi: If anything, maybe the fact that grief holds contradictions. One moment you’re laughing, the next you’re on the floor, the next you’re laughing at yourself for being there. I’d just like people to leave with that mix intact, without it resolving into one feeling.
The show moves like a tennis match for me: a rhythm, a back and forth, until something cuts it… a joke, or something quieter, maybe poetic, dreamy. I love living in that in-between, that suspension before you know where it’s going to land. You laugh, and then catch yourself: wait, could I laugh at this? Why not? Not taking yourself too seriously is part of letting things go.
Shay: What journey has the show been on to find itself at EdFringe 2026?
Gabi: It started as a work-in-progress at Jacksons Lane in London, and it’s changed a lot since then. Arts Council England funded an R&D phase, which let me put a team together, including, to name a few, Lily Rare on original music and Anouk Van Der on costume design.
From there, it travelled to Summerhall at Edinburgh Fringe (2024), Old Fire Station in Oxford, Manchester, Norwich, and Soho Theatre in London (2025). The show has never stopped evolving. Looking at it now versus 2024, it feels like a different work.
This year we have a nice European tour: it began in Brighton in May, then Prague, with Isle of Wight (Ventnor Fringe) and Durham Fringe still to come before Edinburgh. After that, it heads to Gothenburg Fringe (Sweden), Oslo Fringe (Norway), and then Istanbul (Turkey). And who knows what’s next after that – we’re excited to keep finding out.
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?
Gabi: It could be an espresso martini, keeps you awake, a little chaotic, but with a clear shape, choreographed and precise. But not quite. Or maybe a matcha. There’s caffeine to keep you alert, but you also get to flow, drifting toward clarity. But that’s not quite it either.
I think it’s actually a matcha martini – poetic yet chaotic, energising yet grounding, focused yet dreamy, precise yet unpredictable. Does a matcha martini even exist? My friends always say I make weird combinations of food and drinks, so maybe a matcha martini is exactly the right one to describe my show.
A reminder, you can catch Deluge at Big Belly, Underbelly Cowgate on August 5th – 30th at 15:30 (60 min). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.
Image Credit: Bennie Curnow
