Fran Ayala-Rock on Bitches in Stitches
After the success of our 2025 Camden Fringe Interview series, we thought it only right to attempt a repeat for 2026. So throughout July we’ll be publishing new interviews each day to give a taste of what to expect from London’s best fringe theatre festival. The festival starts Monday 3 August this year, so we may give ourselves a couple of days off inbetween the end of the interviews and the first shows… then again, we might not.
You can find out more about Camden Fringe, along with details of every show playing this August here. You can also find all of this year’s interviews as they are published here.
If you are still asking whether women, queer, and non-binary comics are “funny enough” to headline major comedy spaces, the team behind Bitches in Stitches: The New Grrrl Order has some news for you: you’re looking very last season. What started in 2021 as a tight-knit WhatsApp group of five exhausted femme comedians in Hong Kong has exploded into a powerful global network of over 90 performers across multiple continents.
Bringing their joyful, subversive riot grrrl energy to the Camden Comedy Club for Camden Fringe 2026, collective founder Fran Ayala-Rock sits down with us to talk about dismantling the “token female” slot, why comedy acts as a mirror to our cultural gatekeeping, and how they turned a digital group chat spiral into a massive, live-action celebration of inclusive comedy.
If you had to describe the vibe of your show in just one sentence, what would it be and how does it manifest on stage? Bitches in Stitches: The New Grrrl Order is chaotic group chat energy IRL giving riot grrrl attitude, slumber party bonding and bottomless brunch shenanigans.
On stage, that means a lineup of wildly different comedic voices held together by the same spirit: joyful rebellion, big community energy and absolutely no patience for boring stereotypes about who gets to be funny.
Why is 2026 the perfect time for this show to be seen?
Because we’re somehow still having the conversation about whether women, queer people and marginalised comics are “funny enough” to headline comedy spaces – and honestly, babes, we’re tired.
Comedy has evolved and with such a diverse range of talent out there, the old gatekeepers who say “it’s so hard” to find women, non-binary and queer comics are starting to look very last season. The New Grrrl Order feels right for 2026 because it shows what happens when “token” performers stop competing for scraps of stage time and come together to build better rooms.
What was the ‘eureka moment’ that made you realise this story had to be told right now?
The eureka moment was probably somewhere between yet another “women aren’t funny” platitude and a 24-hour comedy group chat spiral that permanently changed the vibes.
I’ve been part of scenes where femme comics were often treated like the token “female comedian” on a lineup – if we were booked at all. I realised that begging for a seat at the table was pointless. So I decided to build a bigger one.
In 2021, I started a smaller WhatsApp group with five femme comedians in Hong Kong who, like me, were over being treated as the exception in the room. The plan was to put on one all-female comedy night. It sold out six hours after the posters went up, the venue asked us back the next month, then again the month after that, and suddenly “could be a regular thing” became a massive understatement.
Is this version how you originally envisioned it or has it changed drastically since you first put pen to paper?
This is the first version of the show where most of our chapters around the world are represented on stage. Bitches in Stitches started as a one-off, six-woman show in Hong Kong; now it’s a global network of over 90 comics with group chats, writing workshops and sold-out rooms. So while the show still has the same chaotic, loving, subversive DNA we started with, this version feels bigger and more rooted – it’s proof that the community we’ve built exists across cities, scenes and accents.
What is the “secret sauce” that makes your group dynamic work?
The secret sauce is that we genuinely believe community and quality are not opposites. We want the room to feel warm, but the jokes have to kill.
We share stages, notes, opportunities and emotional support, which is so important in an industry that puts so much pressure on non-male performers to be excellent, without giving us the grace to fail and grow from those experiences. That trust lets our performers take bigger risks, and audiences can feel it.
What does “success” look like for you this August, beyond just selling tickets?
Of course, we want full rooms. It’s not just about commercial success, but what it signals. Numbers are the same no matter what your gender politics are, and ours prove that the world wants more inclusive comedy.
But beyond ticket sales, my greatest ambition will be to change the way most people think about stand-up comedy. I want more audiences, journalists and industry people to see that femme-led comedy isn’t a novelty. It’s commercially viable, culturally urgent and really, really fucking fun.
If you had to describe your show as a colour what would it be, and why?
Clearly, I can’t pick just the one, so I’m going to go with rainbow because, diversity. Maybe throw a shitload of glitter on it too.
Is there a question missing that you feel we should be asking you?
Yes! Why does it matter who gets to be funny?
Because comedy’s indicative of culture, and spreads ideas. It tells us who gets to be clever, who gets to be messy, who gets to be desirable, who gets to be angry, and who gets to take up space without apologising. Bitches in Stitches exists to help people see that there’s no one way to embody those ideas. We celebrate people in all their shapes and forms.
Many thanks to Fran for her time to chat to us. Bitches in Stitches plays at Camden Comedy Club on Thursday 6 August.
