Edinburgh Fringe Chats (#109): Antonia Christophers, 1984

As anticipation builds for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025, we’re catching up with a range of exciting creatives preparing to bring their work to the world’s largest arts festival this August. In this series, we delve into the stories behind the shows, the inspiration driving the artists, and what audiences can expect.  Today, we’re joined by Antonia Christophers to find out more about 1984.

1. Can you begin by telling us about your show and what inspired it?

This year we're bringing a brand new show to the Fringe, our take on George Orwell’s ‘1984’, an incredible story, and perhaps more relevant than ever. This is our own adaptation, of course, and as always, we bring our own twist to things. There's a lot of puppetry in the show, which I think is a perfect fit for ‘1984’, some fantastic new music and a unique design that I'm very excited about. We also have some famous voices in the show, with performances from Sophie Aldred, Joanna Lumley and Simon Russell Beale as Big Brother!

2. What made you want to bring this work to the Fringe this year?

As I mentioned above, the story feels so pertinent at the moment and often scarily relevant. People frequently suggest texts for us to adapt and ‘1984’ had been mentioned a lot - I expect this was why we decided to re-read it a year or so ago. While reading we all started to have staging ideas immediately, which is always a great sign. Our main consideration for a new adaptation is: will our style of theatre serve the story well, and what can we bring to this incredible classic that hasn’t been done before? We felt our use of puppetry in particular would lend something new to a stage production and we can’t wait to bring it to the Fringe audience.

3. How would you describe your show in three words?

Inventive puppet dystopia!

4. What do you hope audiences take away from watching your performance?

We hope they feel galvanised in some way. ‘1984’ could be considered a pretty bleak story, but we’ve tried to allow some hopefulness to remain. If we can send them away having sparked their revolutionary spirits a little, we’ll be very pleased.

5. What's your top tip for surviving the Fringe?

If you’re there for the whole month, pace yourself! Allow yourself time to get settled with the show and the daily routine. But most importantly remember to enjoy it! The Fringe can feel relentless and overwhelming, but there are a lot of friendly artists out there who know how that feels. So, don't spend ALL your time worrying about ticket sales and flyering - get out and see shows, chat to people, make connections, and enjoy all the amazing things the Festival has to offer.

6. Where and when can people see your show?

Pleasance Courtyard, Above, 11.25am every day (not 13th).

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