We sat down with Ryan Stewart to chat about their new show KINDER, coming to Edinburgh Fringe 2025. A drag artist, a library and a catastrophic misunderstanding of a ‘reading hour’. Fresh from its award-winning, critically acclaimed run at Adelaide Fringe, KINDER comes to the Edinburgh Fringe. Finding poetry in panic and comedy in chaos, the show blends drag, theatre and storytelling to examine censorship and queer joy.
See the show at Underbelly Cowgate (Big Belly) from 31st July – 24th August at 18:40, get your tickets here.
Thank you for chatting with A Young(ish) Perspective! Introduce us to who you are and what your doing at the Edinburgh Fringe this year?
And thank you for having a chat with me! My name’s Ryan, and I’m a theatre maker and producer living and working in Melbourne, Australia.
I’m one of the forces behind KINDER, the first theatre piece I’ve ever created, performed, and produced all at once. The show is also the debut of my wholly intolerable drag-clown character, Goody Prostate, and we’ll all be making our international debut at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, as part of the incredibly exciting lineup of shows at Underbelly’s Cowgate program!
A Youngish Perspective platforms accessible arts and champions the huge scope of different perspectives – can you tell us about the show you’re taking to Edinburgh Festival Fringe as if you’re flyering to both a young first-time-Fringe goer and a festival veteran returning every year?
KINDER follows the antics of the aforementioned drag-clown Goody Prostate who, freshly arrived in a new city (Edinburgh perhaps?), realises they have grossly misinterpreted the nature of the debut gig they’re schedule to headline that evening. From there, we follow them as they race to scramble together a new act in real time, with less than an hour to pivot their evening and get everything (and themselves) ready. What begins as a minor inconvenience ends up spiralling Goody into a much-needed interrogation of childhood, parenting, and queerness, and what happens when we forget about where the stories that make us who we are came from.
And just exactly who is Goody Prostate you may ask? Well. Imagine if you can what the bastard child of Reuben Kaye and Taylor Mac might look like. And then make them German. And maybe minus the incredible singing prowess of Kaye and Mac, and sprinkle in some of the audacity of Alan Cummings’ interpretation of Cabaret’s Emcee. That’s Goody.
KINDER involves drag as not only a plot point but also a means of expression, what was the process for creating the looks we see on stage?
I think the first idea that kickstarted the whole whirlwind that has been creating this show was the simple premise of what happened if a drag performer misinterpreted what a ‘reading hour’ was? I thought that was hilarious; a drag queen rocks up to a venue thinking they’re about to roast/read the house down boots, and instead there’s a crowd of children and their parents waiting.
Wordplay aside though, drag really interested me as a form to experiment creating a show around because it’s so rich with history and meaning. We’re all performing different versions of ourselves every day to some extent, so drag artists have this duality of performance they’re partaking in every time they engage with this alternative persona; what freedom comes from the mask of makeup? Or, alternatively, what captivity?
From there I was like ok, so if I’m going to create this drag persona, and write a whole show about it, they have to do some form of a lipsync, right? And so 3 lip-sync performances were born to 3 songs I felt thematically summarised the (anti-)hero’s journey Goody undertakes over the course of the show, neatly demarcating it into a beginning, middle, and end.
Costuming each of these numbers then became my next big hurdle, because if each song was intended to be a thematic summary of where we were at in Goody’s journey, then I knew I definitely needed 3 distinct looks (I’m not some outfit repeater after all). Luckily for me, each of the themes I was drawing on had strong aesthetic histories, so I was able to start conceiving looks that reflected the historicity from the times and places I’m drawing upon, as well as my own childhood and upbringing.
I’m being intentionally vague here because hey, nothing wrong with a little intrigue (and I think perhaps you should definitely grab yourself a ticket to see the costumes for yourself in person). But I promise you there’ll be 3 very different, distinct (and dare I say very highly reviewed) looks that you get to see Goody move through, including a couple of minor interstitial outfits that I promise still serve something.
KINDER begs the question “what happens if we forget where our stories come from”, how does the story aim to pay tribute and to give credit to its predecessors?
Ooh that’s a very good question – thank you so much for asking.
KINDER really focuses in on being a story about stories, and so creating the work with that in mind lead us on a project of reverse engineering how we’ve ended up with the sort of world we’re living in today.
Though it may not feel like it (and I certainly don’t want to discount the devastation we’re being shown every day from the numerous large-scale conflicts that are being waged in certain pockets of the world), humanity is experiencing one of the more peaceful epochs our history has known. Yet in spite of this, the world feels like an increasingly difficult place to live in right now. You’d be hard-strung to find anyone not currently struggling under the pressures caused by the cost of living, and yet instead of addressing these systemic issues, a small contingent of incredibly wealthy and influential lawmakers and lobbyists have begun using stories to offset blame onto
scapegoats. And who is so often the target of this scapegoating? Quite frequently it has been the powerless; immigrants, refugees, people of the global majority, and, now with increasing severity, queer folks.
Don’t get me wrong; stories have always been used to control narratives and populations (stories controlling stories? It’s more likely than you think!). But with a digital landscape that dominates how we relate to one another interpersonally, and the rise of new, unregulated technologies such as AI, misinformation and the fear it generates is being disseminated at a rapid pace; faster than ever before. That’s a perfect lil storm that’s been created, and so living within that, and passively consuming these manufactured stories that have been spun to specifically stoke fear and unrest, makes recognising their artifice even harder. But when you’re a scapegoat, and your very existence goes against the grain of the story being told; then you’re in a much better position to recognise when falsehoods are being propagated to distract from the actual issues we’re all experiencing.
As veteran scapegoats, queer people understand this strongly. They see the futility and claustrophobia of the way through which the hegemonic, heteronormative construction of ‘adulthood’ has been engineered; a closing off from community into individualised, private residences with two parents, 2.6 kids, a white picket fence, and not a worry in the world. Except there is a lot of worry. And both parents are working fulltime. And the kids aren’t being given the care they need from their proverbial village, and the white picket fence is in disrepair because no one has any leisure time that isn’t dedicated towards some form of money-making scheme because we can’t afford anything at the moment.
And so that’s how KINDER is uncovering, and how it’s paying tribute to our queer forebears – by recognising what they have known all along; that there are different futures, and different ways of living and arranging ourselves that we should hope for and imagine for ourselves and our children. And that there is incredible power in our words, and how they’re used to create stories.
Who would your surprise dream audience member be?
Look – I’m an Edinburgh Fringe newcomer, with a brand-new work, in a brand-new country, on a brand-new continent, on the other side of the world from all my friends, family, and colleagues. Literally any audience member who decides to come and chill with me for an hour of their day at Fringe will be a surprise to me to be honest.
That said though, I’ve heard the rumours of surprise audience members who are often found frequenting some of Edinburgh’s finest establishments during Fringe, taking a chance on what could be the next best up and coming act or show; so if I’m being really ambitious, I would have to say Tilda Swinton. Will she be in Edinburgh during the Fringe? Probably not. Would she come and see a silly little drag jester bouncing around a stage for an hour ranting about childhood, queerness and stories? Maybe! I don’t know, I’m not her. I just think it would be cool to look out into the audience and go ‘huh! That’s Tilda Swinton’. Oh and look, because I mentioned him already above, and because he may have a bit more of a chance of actually being in Scotland; Alan Cumming.
So Tilda, Alan – if you’re out there reading this – guten tag! Come say hey x