We sat down with Rae to discuss her EdFringe show Midnight at the Palace a rebellious new musical that dismantles the lines between art and showbiz, politics and performance.
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?
Hi! Here’s a short bio on me:
Rae Binstock is a playwright and screenwriter whose ensemble dramas reflect the harsh climate, acid humor, and multicultural frictions of her Massachusetts upbringing. She earned her BA from Columbia University, and her plays include That Heaven’s Vault Should Crack (The New Group, Lark Development Center,), POSER (The New Group, Thom Thomas Award finalist), land of no mercy (Salt Lake Acting Company, Landing Theatre Company, Princess Grace finalist), and Blue Skies (Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival). A Dramatists Guild Fellow and alumna of Almanack Screenwriters, Rae wrote and produced a short film based on one of her pilots, DIVR (2021), which went on to screen at over 20 international film festivals. Her TV work includes serving as the writers’ assistant for FX Networks’ FOSSE/VERDON, Apple TV+’s SCHMIGADOON, and two mini-rooms, as well as co-authoring the Climate Storytelling Playbook for screenwriters. Rae is a current member of the Black List x WIF 2025 Episodic Lab, and her play RELENTLESS will debut at Syracuse Stage in 2026. Rae is represented by IAG and Greenlight Management.
As for what I’m doing at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, I’m premiering Midnight at the Palace, a new musical following the 1960s avant-garde performance troupe known as the Cockettes, that I co-created and for which I wrote the book.
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?
Midnight at the Palace is about a group of people whose world was crumbling around them, and what they did about it. Based on a true story from seventy years ago, it’s a wild explosion that blows a hole in the present moment and lets history pour in to answer today’s questions about how the hell to deal with the global bullshit that’s only getting worse. The past is talking to us, and they’re doing it through a haze of glitter, smoke, and showtunes.
The show follows the Cockettes, a group of 1960s hippies who created art that was wild and ridiculous and revolutionarily queer. They responded to a time of chaos and violence by creating the funniest, gayest, most joyful art they could imagine—their particular “fuck you” to the forces of oppression and hatred trying to swallow them up.
If their circumstances sound similar to ours today, it’s because they are. We’re going through the same cycle, and we need all the help we can get. The Cockettes threw the world’s bullshit back in its face with a flourish and a song, and even when they ended up falling flat on their own faces, they made failure look fucking fabulous. Midnight at the Palace is their love letter and kick in the ass to every modern person with something brave to say—an hour of music, madness, and making it work.
How does the story of ‘The Cockettes’ speak to the spirit of the Fringe, and how does that inform the performance throughout the run?
The Cockettes and the Fringe share a genetic code: both are performance events that grew organically out of a community and a shared creative spirit, that took root in unorthodox spaces and drew in unfamiliar audiences by stepping outside the box and boldly trying new things. Fringe is an amazing thing created by the city of Edinburgh and the artists who pour in to participate, much as the hippie movement and the Cockettes were spawned within San Francisco by a bunch of kids who had wandered in looking for a true home. They’re democratically mounted spectacles that bring people together through a shared love of art, and create something bigger than the sum of their parts. Midnight at the Palace will be continuing the Cockettes’ legacy of an intimate relationship with their audience, learning from them and responding to them as they teach us how to keep growing. This is not a show that stays exactly the same every night: it’s a living thing, much like the Fringe itself, and we’re beyond excited to see how the Fringe and our audiences challenge us to keep breaking our own rules.
How does it feel to perform the story of such unsung icons, is there a sense of pride in continuing their legacy?
We have immense pride in the work we’re doing to bring the Cockettes to modern audiences. In a lot of ways, the Cockettes were ahead of their time. They were breaking rules of both gay and straight society before many others were, including by having women and straight people don their own drag and join queer men onstage. Their ranks included Hibiscus, a performance artist who is best known for appearing in the famous Flower Power photograph where he stuck flowers into the guns of military police, and Sylvester, one of the first international disco stars and a trailblazer in the queer Black community. Breastfeeding onstage, styling Tina Turner, literally crucifying themselves on the beach—the Cockettes were constantly breaking rules and rewriting society. They refused to be beaten down by a world that, much like ours today, seemed about to break apart under the weight of bigotry and violence and greed. Many of the Cockettes have passed away over the years, but their love and spirit live on, both within the surviving members and within those of us who have been inspired by their message and their work. It’s so exciting to be a part of introducing them to a contemporary audience, many of whom will hopefully see themselves in these crazy kids—and feel their own courage answering their call from the past.
Who would your surprise dream audience member be?
That’s such a hard question! Honestly, Lady Gaga would probably be the Platonic Ideal of a Midnight at the Palace audience member. She’s got the soul of a Cockette from head to heels. We’d also love to see performers like Chappell Roan and Lil Nas X, who are breaking through so many cultural and artistic taboos and would definitely resonate with the Cockettes’ work. And, well…we’d really, REALLY love to have John Waters come. He worked with the Cockettes back in the day, and has spoken lovingly about their work. We’d be beyond thrilled to have him with us at the dawn of their new era.