Who are we?
We are a group of students from Royal Holloway University of London taking up our production of Beowulf the Musical - which is a brand new musical being performed by us for the first time - to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival!
We are raising funds to cover the cost of our trip and accomodation for cast, crew, and orchestra involved in this production as well as to cover the costs of our props and costumes. We have been able to raise some funds over the year through bake sales, showcases, and craft sales but there is still more we need to raise to get us to the Fringe!
What is Beowulf the Musical all about?
In an ancient land full of legendary heroes and the monsters they fight, how do regular folk live? Beowulf the Musical is a musical retelling of two medieval myths intertwined: on one side the famous hero as strong as 30 men, and on the other a princess who must live her life in service to her kingdom against her own heart. All presented by the wise fourth-wall breaking narrator simply known as ‘Scribe’ who has the ultimate authority over the story being told, or so she thinks. The musical draws upon the eponymous poem Beowulf as well as Old English literary corpus as a whole and is full of references to be solved, as well as connections to legends from the medieval Danish text Gesta Danorum. As inexorable fate ebbs and flows, nothing – and no one – is what it seems. The musical seeks to explore and tell the stories of those who are often silent in history through a classical tale of good versus evil. In the end, the true monsters are among us.
As a female-lead production team we bring a feminist spin to this often misunderstood time period and the women who lived through it.