The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the biggest arts festival in the world, with over 3,700 shows. This year, Playbill is in town for the festival and we’re taking you with us. Follow along as we cover every single aspect of the Fringe, aka our real-life Brigadoon!

A married woman struggling with loneliness. A female reporter balancing her allegiance to her above-the-fold dreams and her friends. A widow navigating self-acceptance while trying to set an example for her daughters as they grow into women. These are some of the nine characters in the new musical The Gardening Club, the first act of which is in bloom at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Bella Wright and Carleigh McRitchie brought their work to the Fringe following a Liverpool premiere in March. The charming musical follows a group of six women who begin to illegally distribute the birth control pill “over the counter and under the radar” under the guise of gardening seed-swapping.

Wright and McRitchie spoke to Playbill via e-mail about how they fundraised their one-week Fringe run, the disparaging law that inspired their story, and why they think their musical is timeless.

How long have you been working on The Gardening Club?
Bella Wright and Carleigh McRitchie: We started writing the story in June 2022, a year after we met. Whilst studying in university and being involved with our own bands as musicians, we’ve managed to dedicate every single day of the past two years writing the music, plot, script, and characters of The Gardening Club. Where there is a burning passion for storytelling and women’s rights, there’s now a comedic and heartfelt story — not only written for women, but also highlighting struggles within everyone who may or may not experience sexual attraction.

What inspired you to musicalize this particular story?
Actually, we created the story around the music! We’re songwriters, so it was easier for us to write the songs first, and the book second. We knew we wanted a historical narrative with powerful characters to portray modern issues, so we chose the year 1960—the year the birth control pill was made available for married women. We wanted six women to represent different perspectives on womanhood and sexuality, creating this neighborhood of strong personalities. The girls, who vary in ages, represent stages of life such as adolescence and puberty, first kisses and first love, heathy intimacy, hook-up culture, and self-pleasure. Drawing from our personal struggles, we were inspired to speak, or rather, sing out about life, sexuality and identity seen through different perspectives.

How has your relationship with the work changed as you’ve developed this piece? 
When we started writing the show, the idea surrounding a birth-control-drug-ring didn’t come until later. Our first drafts were sparked from the question of what women did when men were away in the war. Still set in the '60s, during the Vietnam War, we started to describe a story about the same six women who would discover more about themselves and their bodies now that they had a freedom to. However, the idea never sat right with us, hence a more creative angle with female drug dealers!

During our research about the year 1960 and the history of the birth control pill, we then discovered that only married women could get their hands on the pill. We also found that the history of the pill has tragically misogynistic roots with doctors trialing women without their consent and using pills of a lethal dosage. The unfair restrictions on which women had these resources, and when they could receive them, seemed to echo the politics of women’s reproductive rights we see today. This story was relevant in the 1960s, is relevant now, and may unfortunately be relevant for a long time. This encourages us to speak out the best way we know how—which for artists like us means creating art and writing The Gardening Club.

What was your road to Fringe, and why was it important to you to share this work at the Fringe this year?
The road to Fringe was turbulent, but rewarding! We didn’t know we were going to take the show to Edinburgh until February as we were preparing to premiere the show in Liverpool for a run that was already selling out. The endless support from our friends, family, and our incredible producer, Belinda Matthews, encouraged us to start fundraising our path to Scotland, one bake sale at a time. Because of our passion for healthy intimacy and women’s rights, we knew we needed more people from all over the world to see it!

This story has a realistic and emotionally complex character for everyone to relate to. With that, our greatest hope for Fringe is offering a hand out to whoever sees our musical to show that our experiences are often shared, making them very powerful.

What is the most difficult part of performing at Fringe? What is the most rewarding?
Fringe brings as many challenges as opportunities. We think the hardest challenge to sit with is knowing that we only have six days to make the most of this experience. With a 9-person cast, which is large for Fringe, and being a brand new company, we lack the financial support to be able to fund a longer residency at the Festival. The whole team is brimming with passion and eager to stay longer to meet people, and explore this story with new audiences. We wish we could do it all season, but wow, we are still in awe that we have a week here and have definitely been making the most of it.

However, the most rewarding feeling from Fringe has been selling out every show and continuing to fill every seat in our theatre. Our team and cast’s hard work flyering all hours of the day and late into the evening is paying off wonderfully. We couldn’t be more proud of everyone involved!

Do you have plans for the continued life of the piece post-Fringe?
In this next chapter, we want to focus on developing the story further, elevating the music and adapting the script. We’d love for The Gardening Club to see new stages and audiences throughout this development process! The dream, of course, is for The Gardening Club to shine on the West End or Broadway one day— any opportunity for the story to connect to as many people as possible.

What do you hope audiences will take away from your performance?
The Gardening Club was something we used to navigate our own ups and downs into adulthood, but now it belongs to our audiences. We hope that each audience member walks away feeling seen, heard, and represented, as we know this life, no matter what stage you’re at, comes with its unique challenges. Our musical is sparkly, upbeat, crude, naughty, reflective and emotional. We hope everyone who joins The Gardening Club feels more confidence in being their authentically unique, strange, or weird selves.

The Gardening Club completed its run at theSpace @ Venue 45 August 17.