HELLO

and together we MAKE, write, PERFORM & podcasT.

Hotter Project are Mary Higgins (they/them) and Ell Potter (she/they): celebrated queer performance artists, podcasters, and theatre makers based in London. We are also best friends and ex-lovers. We make manic verbatim theatre, produce deep-dive historical podcasts, write audiobook adventure quests, and run devising workshops.  

All our work strives to be profoundly stupid and stupidly profound. We believe that radical honesty is an agitator for political change, and we don’t consider it a job well done unless our work makes you laugh-sob. As queers and feminists, we’re not interested in objectivity or looking clever - our work approaches Big Ideas through small subjectivities. 

HOTTER, the show that started it all, debuted at Edinburgh Fringe in 2017. Based on interviews with over fifty women and non-binary people, HOTTER was driven by the feminist mantra: the personal is political. In 2019, we were awarded Arts Council funding to develop the show with director Jess Edwards for a London transfer to Soho Theatre, and to deliver a workshop series for young people. The show went on to sell out for three years in a row at the Fringe and tour across the UK, attracting a cult following and rave reviews - Lyn Gardner called it ‘a fringe sensation’.

FITTER - billed as HOTTER’s greasy younger brother; a love letter to masculinity - debuted with a 4-week run at Soho Theatre in 2019 to 4 and 5 star reviews. With FITTER, Hotter Project learned to collaborate with a much larger creative team including renowned Berlin-based sound designer Tom Foskett-Barnes, and award-winning video designer Iain Syme. FITTER was nominated for an IDEA Offie in 2020, and then in 2021, Soho Theatre programmed a HOTTER/FITTER double bill in their 180-seater as part of their flagship post-Covid reopening season. 

During the first lockdown in 2020, we were commissioned by 45 North to create an escapist audio project as part of their Written on the Waves programme. We wrote a 4-part queer fairytale titled Lem N’ Ginge: the Princess of Kakos starring Sharon D. Clarke, which won a Bronze medal at the British Podcast Awards. Then in 2021, we were awarded a grant by Arts Council England to create an 8-part podcast series on the history of bisexuality. Life of Bi: a slippery history of bisexuality is now supported by the Patreon - and continues as a monthly podcast to a dedicated global audience. In 2022, the podcast was listed in the Guardian’s Top 20 podcasts of the year. 

After a 3 year hiatus from theatre-making, Hotter Project returned to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2023 with The Last Show Before We Die, a cabaret-clowning show about endings. Selling out Paines Plough’s Roundabout, The Last Show Before We Die was received to popular and critical acclaim (most notably a 5-star review from The Guardian), resurrecting the company post-pandemic. We then toured the show to The Yard Theatre, Bristol Old Vic, Manchester University, and headlined at S_P_I_T, a queer performance festival in Tanzquartier Wien, Vienna. We are in discussion with other European festivals for touring opportunities in 2025. 

In January 2024, we were selected by Emma Rice and Wise Children for their Company Mentoring Programme. We spent the year on organisational development and R&D for a new show. 

In between our jaunts on stage, Hotter Project is committed to providing affordable workshops for emerging theatremakers and young people. We’ve hosted workshops for National Youth Theatre, Brainchild Festival, LAMDA’s MishMash Festival, and The University of Manchester as part of their Sexuality Summer School. We are currently developing a short-term course for aspiring theatremakers.

We also perform short segments of our work as part of cabaret and queer performance nights, most recently Fool’s Moon Cabaret at Soho Theatre.