Stop Playing Jacob's Ladder With My Spine @ FRINGE

Aim

Help HotCat Collective bring their NEW DANCE THEATRE SHOW ‘Stop Playing Jacob’s Ladder With My Spine’ to the Edinburgh Fringe 2026!

HULLO THERE! 

We’re HotCat Collective - a young, queer, dance-theatre company made up of artists who love all things surreal and absurd! We’ve been collaborating together for the last three years, developing work that explores themes of observation and surveillance, often through a queer lens. We are so excited to be bringing our brand new show ‘Stop Playing Jacob’s Ladder With My Spine’ to the Edinburgh Fringe this August, playing at ZOO Southside 7th-30th August @ 21:35!

“Stop playing Jacob’s Ladder with my spine, God’s already burst my sinuses and now everything smells like rancid chicken.”

Four dancers and a microwave invite you to embrace chaos despite the prying eyes. Don’t hide. Come and see the beautiful colours on your mouldy fork. 

Blending surreal theatre, contemporary dance, and creative captioning, HotCat Collective present their new show about loss of control, expectations within domestic settings, and what it means to rot in the face of sterilisation. We follow four individuals as they struggle to hide their messy lives from an order-obsessed society that judges and shames them. But when they’re thrust into the open, things start to disintegrate… melt… drip into pools of blood…

... and where there are pools of blood, sticky ants come to drink...

About us:

In 2024, HotCat adapted Tom Stoppard’s radio drama ‘Darkside’ into a fully staged play with contemporary dance interludes to the music of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Dark Side of The Moon’. With the support of the Keep It Fringe Fund we took this show to theSpace @Niddry street for the first two weeks of Fringe where we were praised by A Young(ish) Perspective for our ‘intricate, haunting dance sequences’ and ‘Incredibly stylish surreal theatre’. Those two weeks flew by, despite our incredibly late slot (it was very, very late). We’re pleased to say that this year we’re performing at the much more sociable hour of 21:35 (yay!!!)

WHY ARE WE CROWDFUNDING?

Venue:

• It’s more expensive than ever to take new work to the Fringe, with extremely costly accommodation, transport, and venue hire.
• This year, we’re stoked to be taking ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ to ZOO Venues, which are champions of all things dance, physical, and wacky. The opportunity to present our work to a wider audience demographic within the experimental theatre scene that has inspired us for so long is incredible, and we’re so grateful!
• However, a full run at this venue is significantly more financially demanding than any show we’ve worked on before. 

Creative captioning:

• We’re also really excited to be integrating creative captioning into ‘Jacob’s Ladder’, making the entire show accessible for audience members who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing. 
• Your help will enable us to work with a specialist d/Deaf or hard of hearing captioning consultant.
• And make sure our technical equipment (projectors, screens, etc.)  can support our goals in making dance-theatre that builds accessibility into the whole process.

Thank you so much for reading this far, and any support - financial or otherwise - is so greatly appreciated by us all <33 Lots of HotCat love from the whole team!!

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 8th August 2026 at 12:49pm