Bringing the Fringe to Edinburgh's Children’s Hospital

We have some news that we’re genuinely thrilled to share.

Apropos Theatre has been selected for a brand new artist residency at the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People (RHCYP), delivered in partnership with Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity (ECHC). This summer, we’ll be bringing The Truth About Trees — and a bit of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe — to the children, young people and families at the hospital.

It’s one of the opportunities we’re most excited about this year. Here’s what we’re going to do.

The Residency

The RHCYP residency is a pilot programme pairing a Fringe artist with the hospital ahead of and during the festival. The aim is straightforward, and it matters enormously: to bring a real Fringe experience to children and young people who would otherwise miss out on the festival.

Before the festival begins, we’ll deliver workshop sessions at the ECHC Wellbeing Hub — working directly with children, young people and families, getting to know the space and the people in it, and developing the work with them. A hospital environment is so different to a Fringe venue, and the children and families there have different needs to a standard festival audience. Throughout the residency, ECHC staff will be supporting and advising us, helping us to shape what we make into something that truly works in this context.

Then, during the festival itself, we’ll tour the wards — taking the show out of the hub and into the hospital, bringing the Fringe directly to children who can’t come to it themselves.

How We’re Sharing The Truth About Trees

We’re adapting The Truth About Trees for this audience, and the process starts with an idea we love: paper is made from trees, and if we pay close enough attention, we can discover a tree’s story. That story might span centuries; the animals that made the tree their home, the historical changes it witnessed, the quieter human moments like a child playing with a fallen stick, or a rope swing tied to a branch.

Across the sessions, we’ll work together to explore what these stories might be. We’ll invite the children to imagine what a tree might have seen across its lifetime. Hundreds of years of change: Vikings, the first aeroplane overhead, a badger settling in among the roots. We’ll explore these ideas through conversation, drawing and writing. The stories that emerge in this session will become the foundation for everything that follows.

We’ll also explore shadow storytelling. Using handheld torches and cutout shapes, we’ll explore how shadows can carry a narrative — and how adding a coloured filter can shift the mood of a whole scene in an instant. There’ll be a chance for children to cut and make their own shadow puppets, and to use them to tell their own stories.

The final performance brings it all together. Drawing on the tree stories from the first session, we’ll share a selection of tales in a walkabout performance — with the children playing an active part, using torches and shadow puppets to help tell the story alongside us.

Why This Means So Much

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe fills this city every August with some of the most exciting live performance anywhere in the world. For many families at the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People, engaging with the Fringe can be a real challenge. And that means we need to work hard to ensure that all children have the opportunity to access high quality arts.

This residency is a chance to do just that. To bring the work to the children, and make them key creative collaborators in thinking up the stories and using shadows to animate the performance.

We’ll be sharing more about the sessions as the residency develops. We can’t wait to get started.

Apropos Theatre’s residency at RHCYP is delivered in partnership with Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity and The Fringe Society. The Truth About Trees performs at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer.