Underbelly, New Diorama Theatre, and Concord Theatricals announce this year’s winners of the hit-making Edinburgh Untapped Award – designed to support and discover theatre makers at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The three winning companies who will receive a £10,000 cash grant to support their show in Edinburgh are Alpaqa, who present JEEZUS!, Nonstop with their show Pigs Fly Easy Ryan, and Emergency Chorus’ Ways of Knowing. Tickets for all shows are on sale now and available from Underbelly Edinburgh.
The partnership with Underbelly, New Diorama, and Concord Theatricals aims to discover and support early and mid-career theatre makers at the Edinburgh Fringe. This year proves no different as the companies prepare to present game-changing work this August. Over the years, the Untapped Award has become a major launchpad, nationally recognised for its success in identifying and platforming brilliant new talent, with winners going on to embark on successful tours, show transfers, securing international opportunities, and winning awards.
Alpaqa, a theatre collective led by creatives Sergio Antonio Maggiolo, Guido Garcia Lueches, and Laura Killeen, will present JEEZUS!, a bold, irreverent, and euphoric musical comedy that celebrates self-discovery, faith, and queerness through the power of anthemic pop Latin bangers. Set against the backdrop of a South American Catholic upbringing, it follows an altar boy on the path to his first communion – only to experience a queer awakening as he falls head over heels (and balls deep) for Jesus Christ himself. Blending clowning, musical theatre, and magical realism, the show unpacks the suffocating grip of authoritarianism in faith, family, and fatherland while celebrating the absurdity and beauty of belief. Audiences can expect to laugh until their faces hurt, reflect on their own upbringing, and perhaps even find healing in the recognition of their own divinity. Amidst dark times, JEEZUS! dares to imagine a hopeful future – one where queer liberation shines bright.
Creative team Nonstop, made up of multidisciplinary artists Lou Doyle, Trevor White, and Kendra A. Miller, presents Pigs Fly Easy Ryan, a wild, high-flying spectacle for audiences 18 and over. Two plane crash fetishists illegally pose as flight attendants to sneak aboard a plane and live out their ultimate fantasy – total destruction. Hilarious, chaotic, and strangely tender, the show playfully eroticises freedom in a world teetering on the edge of climate collapse and rising fascism. With a mix of physical comedy, visceral intensity, and direct-to-audience sincerity, Pigs Fly Easy Ryan captures the thrill of a spontaneous getaway on a maxed-out credit card with the guilt, escapism, and fleeting euphoria. At its core, it’s an exploration of connection, consumption, safety, sex, and survival, all wrapped in a slightly sticky, heart-filled embrace. Buckle up, it’s going to be a turbulent ride.
Award-winning performance duo Emergency Chorus, consisting of Clara Potter-Sweet and Ben Kulvichit, presents Ways of Knowing, a mysterious and slippery dance-theatre work that explores the impossibility of predicting the future. Through detailed choreography, live sound design, and found text, Ben and Clara investigate the strange tools humans have relied on to foresee what’s to come – storm-predicting leeches, Victorian inventors, mystical tarot figures, hermits in caves, and corporate trend forecasters. The show unfolds in two distinct halves, moving from deadpan humour and synchronized dance to an apocalyptic soundscape and a chilling descent into uncertainty. As we navigate a world shaped by accelerating technology, corporate power, and the climate crisis, Ways of Knowing challenges our desperation to control the unknown. Instead, it invites us to embrace uncertainty and carve out space for imagining radically better futures – together.
Untapped has a remarkable record of identifying stand-out companies presenting exceptional shows. Previous successes include the critically acclaimed Ugly Sisters in 2024, which went on to transfer to London with a 3-week run at New Diorama Theatre, the Fringe First-winner It’s True, It’s True, It’s True by Breach, which has since been adapted for BBC television; and Nouveau Riche’s Stage Award-winning Queens of Sheba, recently performed at New York’s Public Theatre as part of the prestigious Under the Radar Festival.
Alpaqa said today: “We’re extremely excited to have our silly & sexy take on ultimate daddy’s boy JEEZUS! come to the Fringe under the Untapped umbrella. Can’t wait for Cowgate audiences to experience this holy queer, anti-colonialist fantasia.”
Nonstop also commented: “Winning the Untapped Award has filled us with hope that we can keep doing what we love, in a way that really feeds us emotionally and artistically. We started making this show because we wanted to make something cathartic, ritualistic, totally ridiculous, and hyper sensorial. We wanted to work without the pressure to consciously know what we were making before we made it. Untapped giving us the green light to work that way has felt like the most unbelievable gift. We’re beyond excited to bring our feral show to Underbelly audiences.”
Emergency Chorus added: “We’re absolutely over the moon to receive the Untapped Award. It’s so wonderful to have meaningful support to share our show with people this summer, and a rare opportunity for small-scale fringe makers like us to really get to know the intricacies of a show over a luxurious month’s run. Our hope is that the award will help us introduce new audiences to our work, open up new professional opportunities for us, and help make a case for the appeal of boldly experimental work in an increasingly risk-averse theatre landscape.”
Along with the £10,000 cash grant, JEEZUS!, Pigs Fly Easy Ryan, and Ways of Knowing will also receive a package of paid-for PR and marketing support, an enhanced venue programming deal from Underbelly at the Edinburgh Fringe, and publication by Concord Theatricals under their UK imprint Samuel French Ltd. The expanded package directly responds to the challenges experienced across the festival by marginalised and under-represented artists attending the festival.
