Mackie Reyes & Megan Brewer on Grave Matters
After the success of our 2025 Camden Fringe Interviews, 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.
What do you get when you mix a warm cup of tea and a biscuit inside a haunted house? You get Grave Matters, a wonderfully bittersweet, spooky, and tender play heading to the Lion and Unicorn Theatre for Camden Fringe 2026. Produced by Coatlicue Theatre, written by Mackie Reyes, and directed by Megan Brewer, the production uses supernatural genre storytelling to explore urgent, real-world issues: the migrant experience, grief, and the cultural misunderstandings that crop up when we try to connect across divides.
We sat down with Mackie and Megan to talk about why the stage needs more ghosts, how physical theatre solves the classic fringe budget constraint, and why the ultimate secret to ensemble chemistry is a mix of mutual trust and excellent snacks.
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?
Both: Grave Matters is like having a warm cup of tea and a biscuit in a haunted house: funny, tender, and just a little bit spooky.
It is perfectly bittersweet, walking the line between grief and comedy, the supernatural and the mundane. The production embraces that same balance, blending heightened movement and striking visual storytelling with deeply human characters to uncover the emotional truth at the heart of the story.
Why is 2026 the perfect time for this show to be seen?
Both: Given the increasingly hostile environment, it feels more important now than ever before to tell migrant stories and investigate where cultural clashes create misunderstanding. It’s critical we approach it with empathy and a desire to understand where those ‘pinch points’ are, and Grave Matters does this through a very human and relatable lens; despite the horror/supernatural element!
At the same time, it feels like audiences in 2026 are more open than ever to genre storytelling on stage. Shows like 2:22 A Ghost Story, Paranormal Activity, and The Woman in Black have proven that there is a real appetite for horror, supernatural, fantasy, and speculative fiction in theatre. As lifelong speculative fiction fans, we’re thrilled to be part of that conversation. The stage can do things no other medium can, and we’d love to see even more ghosts, monsters, and strange worlds finding a home there.
What was the initial spark that made you realise this story had to be told right now?
MACKIE: I don’t think there was one single lightning-bolt moment so much as a growing realisation that the questions at the heart of the play kept following me around. I first wrote Grave Matters three years ago, but as time has passed I’ve found myself returning to the same ideas again and again: how we live alongside grief, how we make sense of death, what it means to belong somewhere, what it’s like to be a cultural outsider, and how we connect with people whose experiences are different from our own.
In a world that feels increasingly divided, I wanted to tell a story that approaches difficult subjects with empathy, humour, and humanity. If a story is still asking questions that feel urgent years after you first wrote it, then perhaps those questions still need to be asked.
Is this version how you originally envisioned it or has it changed drastically since you first put pen to paper?
MACKIE: Honestly, a bit of both. Grave Matters is a revival of the first play I ever wrote, and it has definitely changed a great deal since its original incarnation. I’ve added, removed, and reshaped characters, expanded the story, and even changed the title! The version audiences will see at Camden Fringe is far richer and more ambitious than the one that first came to the stage three years ago.
Megan has also had a huge impact on this production. Her vision is surprising, unique, and exciting, and working with her has revitalised my own love for the piece. At the same time, the heart of the play remains exactly the same. It was always intended to be joyful, weird, spooky, moving, and a bit of a cultural smoothie, and that’s exactly what it continues to be today.
What is the “secret sauce” that makes your ensemble group dynamic work?
MEGAN: Honestly, a lot of it comes down to trust and a sense of play. An ensemble works best when everyone is treated as a person first. We start rehearsals by checking in with one another and creating an environment where people feel supported enough to show up authentically. Rather than trying to make everyone work in the same way, we lean into our differences; some people are brilliant with movement, others have a fantastic instinct for text, and others can improvise their way out of anything!
Above all else, we’ve tried to remember that it’s called a play for a reason! We look for the games within each scene, ways to surprise one another, stay present, and keep the work alive.
MACKIE: And snacks.
Being a fringe festival, how have you bypassed budget constraints to realise the set and world of the play?
MEGAN: Fringe theatre forces you to be inventive, and we’ve embraced that completely. Instead of relying on a large set or a long list of props, we’ve focused on lighting, sound, and movement to build the world of the play. Because Grave Matters sits between the supernatural and the everyday, it naturally lends itself to a more theatrical, non-naturalistic approach. Physical theatre allows us to create locations, atmospheres, and even supernatural events with very little on stage, while lighting and sound do a huge amount of work in shaping the mood and feel of each scene.
Many thanks to Mackie and Megan for their time. Grave Matters plays at Lion and Unicorn Theatre from Monday 3 to Thursday 6 August as part of Camden Fringe.
