City Lit are delighted to host five theatre productions as part of the Camden Fringe Festival this August in our John Lyon’s Theatre. We are especially proud to note that several of these productions have either been written by students from City Lit or feature actors who have studied drama at City Lit.
Tickets
Tickets are only available via the Camden fringe website. Please note there is no facility to buy tickets at the City Lit. Links and details for each production are below. We hope you can join us for some of these fantastic theatrical experiences this summer… and please be reassured that our John Lyons theatre has air conditioning!
Camden Fringe events at City Lit
The following productions will be hosted in the John Lyon’s Theatre at City Lit.
Find City Lit
The John Lyon's Theatre is located at City Lit, Keeley Street, Covent Garden, London WC2B 4BA. Access infomation can be found here: Our Locations – City Lit
What happens when staying safe means hiding who you are?
Dennis Marshall is stuck in a life that is quiet, orderly and safe. But when he's assigned outspoken carer Jay J Samuels, Dennis's carefully protected world begins to unravel. An ongoing campaign of anonymous hate targets him within his retirement community, leaving him unsure who he can trust.
As these two very different men discover unexpected friendship, humour and courage in the face of adversity, Dennis is forced to confront the cost of hiding who he is.
Funny, moving and sharply observed, Who Cares! is an intergenerational, cross-cultural story of friendship and found family — and a sharp look at what it costs to hide who you are, at any age. The play is presented as part of the 2026 Camden Fringe, marking the festival's 20th anniversary year.
The production also marks City Lit's first year taking part in the Camden Fringe, bringing the college's performing arts community onto the festival stage for the first time in this landmark anniversary year.
We Love and Then We Drown
7 August 2026 - 9 August 2026
We Love and Then We Drown alternates between three key moments in the life of climate scientist Catherine Hardy to ask urgent questions about how we continue to live – and love – in a time of crisis. We follow Catherine as a child, supporting her mother through her cancer diagnosis; as a young professor, torn between budding romance and impending disaster; and as an elderly woman now living in post-collapse UK, taking part in a psychological experiment. Through intertwined vignettes, the play explores themes of motherhood, empirical fact versus innate love, the fundamental resilience of memory – and, ultimately, hope.
At its heart, it is a play about connection—between mothers and daughters, between lovers and between people trying to live meaningful lives in an uncertain world. Ruth says she hopes audiences connect with the characters and come away feeling moved rather than purely thinking this is just another didactic climate play. She says the key line belongs to Greg, who argues: “Just for the record Cath, I think love is the whole f*cking reason we do this. The reason we do anything. Otherwise why bother?” which captures the play's central message about love, human connection and hope.
Utterly haunting, 'Pilgrims'is a lyrical yet taut three-hander, by award-winning playwright Elinor Cook, about gender, storytelling, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world.
Dramatising the conflicting attractions of freedom and belonging, compromise and self-assertion, the play tells the tale of a very modern love-triangle: one played out between mountaineering prodigies, Dan and Will, and aspiring academic, Rachel.
Will initially overwhelms Rachel with his forceful charisma. However, she soon finds herself falling for Dan, who – unlike Will – seems keen to appreciate her on her own terms. Dan and Rachel both sacrifice their professional aspirations in the hope of forging a romantic future together; but, in the long-term, such self-denial proves tenable for neither.
To bolster Dan’s dwindling mental health, Rachel reaches out to Will, who – albeit still smarting from her and Dan’s betrayal of him – agrees to embark on another major mountaineering exploit with Dan. Yet, no longer fuelled by their former idealism, and with their friendship under severe strain, both men find the expedition far more gruelling than they had anticipated.
As the play reaches its climax, it remains unclear: whether Will and Dan will make it down safely from the mountain; whether either will "get the girl"; or whether Rachel, ultimately, will have the last laugh at both men’s expense.
Unfurling non-linearly, Pilgrims questions how far, even today, we all remain trapped in - and complicit with - narratives beyond our own making: what might it take, and what might it cost us, to escape these? And what better stories do we have to put in their place?
When the play was first performed ten years ago, its writing was widely praised as "poetic", "provocative" and as "playwrighting at its peak" (The Standard, TheArtsDesk, WhatsOnStage); but there was some criticism of its "silly" and "stuffy" staging (Exeunt). This production - the play's Fringe première - will, instead, prioritise simplicity and clarity, to unleash the full potency of this little-known dramatic gem.
Punch Me Then
14 August 2026 - 16 August 2026
Tickets & Schedule: Punch Me Then – Camden Fringe
A new one-woman play by writer and performer Nicole Abraham.
'Punch Me Then' explores the journey of a young English teacher attempting to confront rising misogyny in her classroom. As her students voice harmful attitudes, their words begin to echo her own past trauma, pushing her to the edge of what she can hold together in the classroom. The play asks: can education really stop misogyny in teenagers, or is it already too late?
Doing Time and Other Pleasures
16 August 2026
Tickets & Schedule: Doing Time and Other Pleasures – Camden Fringe
This double bill of monologues explores what it means to feel confined, by circumstance, by routine and by the choices we make in life.
Two women. One crime. One awakening. One woman pushed to the edge; another, who thought her life was over when it wasn't. Two very different lives, each bound by routine, rules and expectations. But when memory, temptation and desire creep in, the lines between confinement and freedom become blurred.
In Victoria Mews, by Will Howells, Jan, a former primary school teacher, reflects on her life, her career and her retirement. But as her story unfolds and a shocking event disrupts her mundane life, questions of guilt, responsibility and memory come sharply into focus.
Winsome Webster, who appears in one of six monologues in Bombshells by Joanna Murray-Smith, is a widow who has settled into a predictable, somewhat monotonous existence, shaped by habit and the company of other widows. She is also a reader for the blind and during her visits to read to Patrick, a much younger man, something in her stirs. What begins as a simple act of kindness leads to unexpected joy and a renewed sense of possibility.
These two pieces are performed by Heather Page and directed by Alex Pearson, and offer a thoughtful, performed side by side, offer a thoughtful and often surprising insight into how lives are lived within boundaries, through choice, necessity or fear and how making a different choice can alter the course of a life, for better or worse.
Get your tickets on the Camden Fringe Festival
Tickets are only available via the Camden Fringe website. Please note there is no facility to buy tickets at the college. Links and details for each production are below. We hope you can join us for some of these fantastic theatrical experiences this summer.
