Returning for its eighth edition this year at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, The Comedians’ Choice Awards 2023 – run by the British Comedy Guide, announce this year’s winners. Renowned for nominations being made solely by performers taking part in the festival, the awards are the only ones to do so – making the process that much more special and revered amongst comedy peers. The awards are broken down into three main categories – Best Show/Best Performer/ Best Best Person, with nominations whittled down to an eventual winner. Congratulations to all nominees and winners, continue reading to find out this year’s results.

Best Show

Julia Masli: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Performing at Monkey Barrel 4.

After being surprised on stage with the award, Masli said: “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha”.

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The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, the charity that supports the world’s largest performing arts festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the biggest arts festival in the Southern Hemisphere, Adelaide Fringe are coming together to form an arrangement that will see both organisations amplify one another’s efforts for the benefit of artists and the international arts community.

Each organisation’s respective CEO will sign a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) that outlines the details of the arrangement on August 11 during this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  The MOU came to fruition from a collective belief between the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society and Adelaide Fringe that organisations who share common objectives have the potential to positively influence the personal development of the Fringe festival artists and workers and thereby increase outcomes for each organisation.  The MOU will be signed by the South Australian Minister for Arts, Andrea Micheals MP and Scotland’s Culture Secretary Angus Robertson.

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Supporting an extraordinary six shows with £50,000 direct investment at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the 2023 Charlie Hartill winners have been announced by the Pleasance Theatre Trust. As Pleasance’s flagship fund offering unique and unparalleled support to theatre makers and comedians across the UK, these long-standing accolades provide a unique package of direct investment and mentoring support available across the Fringe. The fund seeks to remove financial risk for companies and allow creativity to take centre stage. Usually offering four opportunities for artists, one for emerging comedians, one for emerging theatre companies and two for UK-based Black, Asian and Global Majority-led theatre shows, this year the fund is supporting an unprecedented six shows due to the overwhelming quality of talent presented.

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The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society is delighted to launch the ‘Keep it Fringe’ fund, a new initiative to support Fringe artists, which is being led by Fringe Society President Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

This fund, supported by the Fleabag for Charity campaign, and funds donated to the Fringe Society through individual donors and our partnership with Edinburgh Gin, will distribute fifty bursaries of £2,000 which will be awarded to individual artists or companies bringing work to the Fringe in 2023.

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A former Fringe participant and experienced arts manager, has today been announced as the new Head of Artist Services at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society.  Chris Snow took up post at the start of September 2022, having most recently held the role of Head of Support Services at the National Theatre in London.

With extensive experience in supporting and leading cultural teams, Chris brings a wealth of knowledge to the senior post.  In his early twenties Chris brought several small-scale shows to Edinburgh under his own theatre company, and understands the challenges and opportunities facing artists as they perform at the festival for the first time.  Having worked for several years managing large buildings for major global businesses, he then led National Theatre’s operational teams through the pandemic; and as such also has a strong grounding on how to support more established performers and venues.

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We’re at a time where the construct of gender has become a major focal point, an aspect societally quietly entrenched with in everything that we do, these fixed ideas and expectations defining who we are, or at least, attempt to. Exploring gender stereotypes and the feeling of not fitting in with these fixed descriptors, Scantily Glad Theatre present Something in the Water, a satirical, risqué, fun yet thought provoking look at ‘gender norms’.

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With the cost of living crisis a reality dominating the headlines and that many are confronted with, we’re in a time, post pandemic, where we’re examining societal structures and how communities have been impacted – previous conditions only exaggerated and brought to the fore within the past 2 years. Inspired by real life stories and very rightly highlighting working class voices of London in his work Block’dOff, Kieton Saunders-Browne presents a timely portrait of survival in increasingly tough times.

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Societally, it hasn’t been the norm for mothers to speak up about their experiences of motherhood, as if this life changing experience were not allowed to be discussed openly and challenge idealised visions as to what the perfect mother should look like. This incredibly unhelpful, and with it creating anxieties when experiences do not match up to these so called norms. Drawing for her own personal experience of motherhood, Hanna Vahtikari alongside her husband Marzi Nyman present Raging Mother, an authentic account of what bringing up children has looked like to them.

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Previously inhabited by the Taino and Arawak people before its colonisation by the Spanish in the late 15th to early 17th century and then by the French from the early 17th century to the late 18th century, the nation of Haiti would officially receive its independence in 1804 – the nation part of the Transatlantic Slave Trade which witnessed many from West African countries shipped away from their native lands and endure generations of pain and torture. Exploring the little known historical figures that have shaped the Caribbean island’s revolutionary history, writer Emily Aboud and Lagahoo Productions present Bogeyman.

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“A painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour” sums up the feeling of ‘shame’, something we don’t openly discuss, but an emotion that is deeply felt. Three years in the making, Swiss/Russian duo Trixa Arnold and Ilja Komarov present the results of a series of interviews conducted in Switzerland, Russia and Pakistan in response to a time whereby interviewees felt shame. A powerful premise for a show and one that connects us all, Shame on You! allows this emotion to come out from the shadows and in doing so, is examined further.

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