The Show That Writes Itself (Literally): Meet the Cast of Smile, It Might Never Happen

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Edinburgh Fringe thrives on the unexpected, and few shows capture that spirit better than Smile, It Might Never Happen. This quick witted, improvised comedy musical takes audiences’ deepest anxieties about the future – whether it’s an awkward work party, a looming deadline for a visa application, or even the chaos of impending parenthood – and transforms them into an hour of laughter, music, and theatrical magic. With every performance created on the spot, no two shows are ever the same, meaning the joy is as much in the surprise as it is in the silliness.

I caught up with the Game Called Chat team after their preview run in the first week of the festival, where they shared how the project first came together, why they decided to bring it to Edinburgh, and how Smile, It Might Never Happen grew out of earlier productions while at university. What started as a shared love of storytelling and musical theatre has evolved into a tightly-knit ensemble that thrives on risk, playfulness and the unpredictable fun of making something new every show.

What struck me most in talking to them was the combination of camaraderie and courage it takes to step onto the stage with no script or safety net, just the confidence in the team that together they will build a full-scale musical in real time. They spoke with refreshing honesty about their nerves, the highs and lows of playing at the Fringe and the pure thrill of finding comedy gold in the strangest of audience suggestions. In a festival overflowing with originality, Smile, It Might Never Happen proves that sometimes the best way to face your fears is to sing, dance and laugh your way right through them.

TRANSCRIPT

(0:00 - 3:13)

Hello, I'm Ruth and I'm the Arts Business. I'm here with a fantastic cast of Smile, It Might Never Happen. Hello guys, let's quickfire your names first.

I'm Laura, I'm Oscar, Zoe, Izzy, I'm Will.

Amazing, and we're just going to ask you some questions about your show and how you got it here and what else you do. So first, as briefly as possible, tell me what your show is about.

Our show is called Smile, It Might Never Happen. It's an improvised musical based on an audience member's anxieties about something that's coming up for them. So it might be a moving house, it might be a new job, we've had a newborn baby, today we had a visa application, and then we basically chat to them, get a bit of information about what is going through and then we make a musical.

Awesome, and have you done it before? Yeah, so we've done a few shows. We've only like this show been doing it since our first like preview show. Yeah, but we've probably been rehearsing it since like December time.

Yeah, but before that we did a show at uni as well, so we've worked together in the past. What university did you go to? Birmingham. What a win, I'm from Birmingham too, it's like a little reunion.

Amazing, how's your response been for your first two shows here? Really good, yeah. I mean we had quite a good turnout actually for the first because I think we were nervous going in of like, you know, not many people know us. We've got a few friends up and they've come along which is really nice to see them, but then yeah actually it's been really really good and everyone we've had some nice reviews as well, so it's going well.

How long a run are you doing? Just five shows, yeah. I think because it's our first ever Fringe run, we really want to, you know, give it a go, see what needs tweaking, see what works well and then hopefully we'll be back next year for a longer run. Yeah, how exactly do you guys rehearse for something like this? Difficult, well yeah, very simple because we actually all live in different places, so Will and Laura live in Edinburgh, but Izzy lives in Newcastle and I live in Manchester and Oscar lives in Birmingham, so that's the main obstacle I'd say for rehearsals, like it's just we get together probably like for a weekend every, we try to do every like six weeks ish probably, and then we just do the show really I suppose is the main way.

We do sometimes try to call a friend and see if they've got anything coming up, but it's a lot harder to do when you know the person, especially if you might be involved in the story, because everyone really wants to play themselves, so it's much nicer having an audience. What did you decide to bring it here to the Edinburgh Fringe? Well I feel like it's the best place to come and bring something like this, because I think it's a place where you can experiment a lot with new things, try things out, and as you said there's like a lot of like work in progress happening, and generally people are really open-minded and lovely at the Fringe, and you get a really nice audience coming as well, and as well we've had experience coming and doing improv here before, so we kind of know what it's like to come up here, and I think it's the best place in the world for it. Yeah brilliant.

(3:13 - 4:00)

It's been nice this year having a show that's like pay what you feel as well, it's like in previous years we've always done shows where it's like ticket prices and stuff, but it's quite nice, like it doesn't, like it takes a bit of pressure because you're like oh no one's paid, like you're just there to impress, and then when you do get people giving money at the end you feel like oh I've actually like done a good job, so it's quite nice anyway, and like the Fringe is so expensive to go to, it's quite nice to be able to fly people and be like it's free. Has it made the venue cost cheaper for you as well by having pay what you feel? Not necessarily, but just the tonic itself is definitely cheaper than some of the venues where you can't do pay what you feel. I think the biggest thing for us is because me and Will live here, we have free accommodation, so it's kind of nice to then take that cost off the audience member and let them pay what they think the show is worth.

(4:00 - 4:18)

Nice, what do you all do for a living? I'm a PhD student, I'm a physicist. I kind of do freelance music stuff in my spare time, but I do have a normal office job in a music company granted. I'm an English teacher, I'm on a graduate scheme at the moment.

(4:20 - 4:35)

I'm an engineer. Oh you've got some real proper jobs. How did you fund bringing it up to the Fringe? Our own money.

(4:38 - 5:08)

We're lucky because there's all of us. I think for solo shows, I don't know how you do it, but for us at least it's like we can split four ways and because we get free accommodation from Will and Laura, it's kind of like well you pay like 200 quid for a holiday so I guess it's a holiday when you're worth the whole time. And what was the rough budget that you guys had for this, for your five-day run? So I think it was about, should we break it down? I think all in it's about 1400.

(5:10 - 5:29)

Venue cost plus registration I think is like 1200. Yeah, you do a five-day show, it's a cheaper registration so we did that and yeah the venue was like 800 I think plus like venue cost about another 200. Plus like another 60-70 for flyers.

(5:33 - 8:31)

Good time to plug as well, one of our costs obviously is like paying a designer for the poster but luckily Izzy's sister is a very, very talented designer so we probably did get a bit of mates rates on that. Amazing. Yeah, she's incredible.

Nice, what's been the hardest part of preparing? I guess that you're all all over the place. Yeah, it was really tricky with the travel, like we kind of we had some really bad luck on like both times we've been trying to get to Edinburgh in like the last half year was when the storms were on so especially like me and Zoe travelling. We were stuck in the storms as well.

Yeah, it was unfortunate timing. See I think it's just the sporadic nature of rehearsals has made it tricky but it does make it quite a nice reunion because we get to see each other and have a little weekend of it. And while you're at the Fringe, what's your daily schedule look like? It's, I think because we're in the middle of the afternoon it's a bit more chill than other shows that we've been involved in before but we try to fly like an hour before the show so that we're getting interest like immediately beforehand and try and get people in that don't know what they're doing maybe after lunch and then pass rehearsals in the morning.

We rehearse for about 15 minutes, warm up, have a little warm-up time and then yeah we try and just get to the venue a few minutes early. I need to get the keyboard set up and stuff and then just doing sound checks and things ready. And then Will does another show in the evening.

You got a flyer for that Will? It's sold out so... I'm in a musical so I've got that as well in the evening which is quite tiring but it's good, it's really good. Great. How do you handle your marketing, PR, press, all of that jazz? Quite last minute I think.

So like obviously the flyers Izzy assisted which we're so grateful for and they look really good. We made our social media account like in like March or something for when we had our first sort of preview show and then we emailed people with press releases like two weeks ago so a little bit late but that's been good. I think we've got a couple of reviews coming in.

We've been quite low on marketing I think just we want to keep the costs down and like flyering really gets people in. Yeah, yeah. That can be really good.

Do you have any tips while you're here for managing burnout, exhaustion? I mean you've got two shows on and I guess the issue with meeting up as uni is that you immediately then feel like you're back at uni and are you burning the candle at both ends? I think it really you have to schedule your day around your show. I think you have to be very careful especially if you've got evening shows like Will. I mean if you're doing something that lasts until when you're getting home at like midnight or one you just have to be so careful that you're not then forcing yourself to get up really early because I think there's a pressure with Fringe to think oh well I'm here I need to see like five shows a day and just and then do everything in one go and I think it's managing your expectations of like if you're doing even just one show in a day you've just got to keep that space blocked to make sure you've got time to rest.

(8:31 - 11:04)

What you've got to do is you've got to have one day at least a week where you don't see any shows and you just go to Portobello Beach and get in the sea. Great advice. What do you wish you'd before doing the Edinburgh Fringe? It's a good few years for all of it because we so we haven't done it as this company game called Chat before but we've done it we were all in the same other company.

So it's a long time since our first Fringe. Go on. From that first Fringe don't drink every night.

It absolutely ruins you. We can say with the experience behind us don't drink every night. We were quite lucky in our first Fringe that it was like the Covid Fringe so we got we sold tickets quite well and we we partied every night just in our flat and by the end of the Fringe like everybody was destroyed.

So looking after yourself is like I think it's a really key thing. Nice. What advice would you give to first-timers thinking of coming up next year? Plan ahead.

Do your press release nice and early. I think trying to get lots of jobs out of the way as soon as possible because we we kind of had those last sort of two weeks where we were sorting out like our finances, making a company on like public house and stuff which can be a lot. There's like as well like the Fringe has changed so much that things are so much more professionally expensive now.

As a newcomer I think it's hard but also there's like a new opportunity to kind of undercut some of that and like we were saying about our show if you can make a show that's affordable people it sells like just from flyering on the mile it sells so much better than like and there's maybe something in that I guess. Sort out how you're going to feed yourselves because I think a lot of people come to Fringe and just spend their entire budget on food. I'm guilty of that many times and try and if you're going by train or flight or whatever book it as far in advance as you can the more months the better.

I got caught this year with bad train prices you've got to be very careful with those. And try and get free accommodation. And let's go from left to right on this one.

Sum up your Fringe experience in one sentence. It's really tiring but in a good way. Nice.

It is pure chaos and you'll meet a lot of new people very quickly but it is the best month every single year. Long sentence. Fun with friends.

(11:07 - 11:45)

I think it's inspiring exhausting yet one of the best places on the planet at this time of year. It's beautiful I love it it's a great place to try out new theatre and shows that you wouldn't usually see. And finally where can we find you all of your social medias etc? We are at Game Cold Chat on Instagram and on Twitter and yeah we're here every day at the Match House.

(11:46 - 11:49)

At 10 past 2 p.m. Perfect.