NONSTOP’s Lou Doyle brings the Untapped Award-winning show Pigs Fly Easy Ryan to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer. Known for their boundary-pushing, high-energy performances, NONSTOP promises a wild ride through fantasy, freedom, and flight.
The show is a chaotic, comedic, and heartfelt exploration of connection and escapism in a world on the brink. With a mix of physical theatre, direct audience engagement, and a dash of absurdity, it’s a must-see for Fringe-goers seeking something bold and unforgettable.
Catch Pigs Fly Easy Ryan at Underbelly Cowgate, Iron Belly from 31st July to 24th August (excluding 11th and 18th). Tickets are available now
You’re bringing Pigs Fly Easy Ryan to Underbelly Cowgate – what can you tell us about the show?
Pigs Fly Easy Ryan is a show about two pigs striving to reach celestial heights by sneaking aboard a budget airline flight. To do that, they disguise themselves as air hostesses, which leads to an onslaught of spectacular, debaucherous encounters between the pigs (and the plane), forcing them to question what freedom means to them, and what price they are willing to pay for that freedom.
The show has been described as “hilarious, chaotic, and strangely tender.” How do you balance those tones on stage?
Our pigs perceive themselves and their mission with the same kind of reverence and lyricism as Shakespearean protagonists. We wanted them to have these vast expanses of selfhood and existential dread – which is fun for an audience because they maybe don’t expect that when coming to see a show about pigs.
At the same time, the pigs also have voracious, demonic sex drives, which lead them down a (mostly non-verbal) path of exhibitionist hedonism, approaching the world of aviation like one big shiny orgy.
It’s been a lot of fun to code-switch between these ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture registers, because I guess both feel like they apply to anyone living in the 21st-century terminally online world.
NONSTOP is known for its bold, genre-defying work. What inspired this particular story and its wild, high-flying concept?
Honestly at this point, it’s really hard to tell. Our reference list is a giant backlog of airline safety videos, bimbofication memes, Kim Petras songs, German experimental dance choreographers, Star Trek lore…
The key fact driving how we make this show and what story it follows is that we’re all watching a genocide through our phones and watching an American President dismantle a different pillar of democracy every day online.
Aviation has a very strong symbolism inside of fascist ideology, and that has been inescapable making the work. It’s crazy to think that this is where the show has gotten to, given that it started off as a 10-minute cabaret set about two air hostesses getting horny going through airport security!!!
Pigs Fly Easy Ryan touches on themes like freedom, consumption, and survival. What do you hope audiences take away from it?
We want our audiences to leave feeling as if they have just been shot ass-first out of a cannon, squealing with glee having shaken off the shackles of their earthly forms and all a-priori principles.
The show is, ambitiously, a celebration of being alive and the enormous peaks and troughs that come with being a feral piggie person trying to make sense of a world on fire.
We also, ideally, want people to leave feeling less isolated by how insane the world feels right now. Freedom is such a slippery, seductive thing; we all pine after it in some way or another, dreaming of having more choice in our lives, finances, travel, identities – but freedom can also be extremely frightening if you think about it falling into the wrong hands, when checks and balances are dismantled.
Winning the Untapped Award is a huge achievement. How has that support shaped your journey to the Fringe this year?
Untapped has been A DREAM COME TRUE! The guys at New Diorama and Underbelly have been so incredible at giving us the resources and the belief that we need to keep trucking on this show which at times has felt borderline delusional to make.
They really get the kinds of pressures and obstacles artists working in our circumstance are experiencing, and do everything in their control to alleviate those things so we can just get on and make the work. It’s such a gift.
What would you say to anyone thinking of booking to see Pigs Fly Easy Ryan?
We discourage any form of thinking or thought which may re-wrinkle a smooth bimbo pig brain, so please think no further and buy a ticket because it is what you were always destined to do.
