Our trip to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival was both a bonding experience and a crucial stage of research for PLEASE. Living together in a tent, with all the challenges of shared space, toilets, and a makeshift kitchen pushed us into intimacy as a group, while seeing theatre together gave us shared reference points. We set out with the specific goal of finding work that resonated with club-inspired theatre, performance, and audience participation. Some shows inspired us deeply, while others taught us just as much by showing what didn’t work. Four performances in particular shaped the final form of PLEASE.

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The first was Little Bulb’s interactive dance-along party. Billed as a theatrical “party,” it was essentially an invitation for the audience to dance through decades and genres: from cheesy pop, mosh pits to funk classics. What struck us most was how effective clear, direct invitations were. Rather than building anxiety through ambiguity, the performers simply asked us to join in, and that clarity freed us to abandon self-consciousness and participate fully. For PLEASE, this confirmed that not every invitation needed to be clever or subtle, sometimes the most radical act is just to ask directly, with warmth and confidence.

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Another transformative piece was The Butterfly Who Flew Into a Rave, an hour-long dance performance with rave-inspired aesthetics. The dancers created visual illusions, pushed their physical limits, and generated an intense club-like atmosphere. What stayed with us was the reminder that spectatorship itself can be enough. Watching their endurance, even without direct participation, was absorbing. This helped us let go of our anxiety that if audiences stood at the back of the room, t

hey must not be enjoying themselves. As Butterfly proved, simply observing can be as satisfying as joining in. A standout moment occurred when one dancer messed up the choreography. Instead of covering it, they acknowledged the mistake, sharing a moment of humour and humanity with the audience and their fellow dancers. It was a powerful reminder that realness, vulnerability, and failure can connect more than polished virtuosity, something we carried with us into PLEASE.

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We also learned by contrast. One show promised “interactive club theatre” but offered almost no interaction at all. The audience was invited to dance briefly at the start, but the performer then ignored us, creating a sense of rejection. Poor-quality sound and technical set-up further undercut the intended club atmosphere; instead of feeling invited into a party, we felt awkward and alienated. This underscored for us the importance of making sure our own sound system, lighting, and haze were robust enough to transform the theatre studio into a convincing clubland environment.

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Another dance solo we saw leaned heavily into spectacle, drag, and cabaret references, but stopped short of fully committing. Instead of embracing excess, it felt self-indulgent, as if the performance existed only to display the performer’s skill rather than connect with the audience. This experience reinforced a core principle for us: the need to place the audience at the centre of the work. Whether through participation or through the empathy of watching, the audience must feel invited into the event rather than shut out by the performer’s self-display.

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Here, Claire Bishop’s warning in Artificial Hells is illuminating: participation alone does not guarantee connection. Without care, participation can create anxiety, exclusion, or even coercion. What matters is not simply that audiences are invited, but how they are invited, whether through clarity, care, or genuine reciprocity. This was the crucial difference between the work that moved us at the Fringe and the work that left us alienated.

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Taken together, these shows gave us a spectrum of models, what to emulate, what to avoid, and what to transform. The Fringe showed us that successful club-inspired theatre requires not only aesthetics but also clarity, care, and genuine connection. These lessons followed us back into the rehearsal room and ultimately into the performances of PLEASE, shaping how we approached invitation, failure, and authenticity.