Writer Evie Cowen brings her second play, Rat House, to the Edinburgh Fringe.
It’s “a brand-new, quick-witted comedy exploring cycle paths, libraries, chess, the PTA and lots of yoga!”
Evie tells us more!
Where: theSpace at Symposium Hall
When: 14-24 Aug
Ticket link: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/rat-house
What are you looking forward to the most at Fringe?
I’m really looking forward to being in such a collaborative space with so many wonderful, incredible, creative people.
It’s always such an inspiring place to be as someone trying to create and develop something new and I am just excited for the play to evolve as we spend more time in a place that pushes us creatively.
Last year was my first time bringing a play, Stuck In The Mud, and it was such a pivotal moment for me. I think that the experience of bringing a play to fringe is not like anything else.
The environment that you’re in makes you want to do better and also pushes you to have a show that is interesting and innovative in ways that you didn’t really think about before going to Fringe.
With the knowledge from last year, I’m really excited to push forward in a way that is new, creative, and refreshing for audiences to see and experience.
Tell me about Rat House. It’s described as “a brand-new, quick-witted comedy exploring cycle paths, libraries, chess, the PTA and lots of yoga”. All very current topics! So where did the idea come from, and what’s it all about?
The interesting thing is that this idea was actually born in lockdown because back in 2020 I was leaving secondary school and I didn’t have anything to do or aim for.
There was a lot of theatre that was trying to be put on over Zoom, and a weird medium ground emerged between what should be a stage play, but was being performed online.
I wanted to create something that was meant to be performed for Zoom and over Zoom.
So I decided to write a play called Unstable Connection, which we decided was going to be about councillors having to have their meetings over Zoom during lockdown.
It followed two departments of a local council, quite different from what the play looks like now, that had to fix a problem over Zoom during Covid.
Which in some ways foreshadowed the Handforth Parish Council meeting that came out about eight months after we premiered this play (“you have no authority Jackie Weaver!”).
It was very strange. It felt like I was experiencing art imitating life in real time.
In 2024, I proposed a newly written stage version of ‘Unstable Connection’ which I renamed ‘Rat House’.
I had to figure out how to bring it out of Covid times and Zoom and make it a reality on stage. It was a huge challenge but was very fun and incredibly fulfilling to be able to see my work evolve over four years.
The play is about the tensions between four councillors who have to work together to save the local library!
Your feuding communities in Rat House have their fate influenced by audience interaction. Was this a conscious decision from the start, and do you anticipate any strange surprises?
It was important to me to have a show that was influenced by the audience, because if you’re going to do a show that’s all about democracy and local politics, it’s only right that the audience should have a say in what ends up happening during the play.
I went into it with the knowledge that I wanted the audience to be involved in the outcome of the play.
I’m interested to see how they participate and to see how seriously they take their duty as a citizen of the made up town of Hackton.
The solutions range from quite silly to actually quite practical, so I’m interested to see how they interpret what they’re seeing in front of them and how they apply themselves to it.
Are you hoping to see any other shows in Edinburgh? What kind of shows interest you?
My background is in comedy. I started as a stand-up comedian before I started writing plays.
I’m very excited to see more clowning and I especially love burlesque clowning.
I really enjoy comedy that pushes the boundaries of performance art, all while allowing the audience to laugh with the performer.
A personal favourite of mine from fringe last year was ‘Trash Salad’. I love watching people who combine comedy with things that you don’t necessarily associate it with.
It makes you face the line between comedy and sexuality or comedy and drama or comedy and horror.
Comedy always feels like it’s one’s side of a coin, and when that coin is flipped it’s so exciting as an audience to see what will be revealed.
What’s next for you after this?
I would love to take Rat House somewhere else!
It’s a very portable play so I think it has all the means to be taken somewhere else. It would fit well in a range of performance spaces and it is adaptable for different types of staging.
I also want to continue pursuing comedy. I’m going into my final year of university, so next year I will be focussing on graduating.
Once I’ve graduated, I plan to start writing more and working with other comedians and other writers and seeing what can come of it. Hopefully I’ll be at Fringe next year!