Australian comedian Frankie McNair has won the 2026 Mental Health Foundation Fringe Award at the Edinburgh Fringe, for Huge Ass Mindset, a stand-up comedy show about her experiences of complex PTSD resulting from childhood sexual abuse.
Huge Ass Mindset is the first comedy show to win the Mental Health Foundation’s annual Edinburgh award, which has been running since 2017. It is one of six shows to be shortlisted for this year’s award.
The Mental Health Foundation Fringe Award was established in order to highlight and support the most compelling new work about mental health at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The award is currently sponsored by the Cornwell Charitable Trust and offers a cash prize of £3000 plus additional support tailored to each winning artist.
Andrew Eaton-Lewis, arts programme officer at the Mental Health Foundation, said: “Over the past decade the Fringe has increasingly become a place where solo performers draw on extremely personal, sometimes traumatic real life experiences when creating their shows.
“It is a very difficult thing to do well, and safely, and is certainly not for everyone. But Frankie is a performer who has brought an exceptional level of skill and care to the task, having spent many years in therapy preparing herself to tell this story.
“The result is a show that dares to challenge the shame around childhood sexual abuse in a way that is brave, powerful and also funny in a way that few people would imagine is possible when talking about this subject.”
During her show, Frankie McNair takes care to reassure the audience that she has processed her traumatic childhood experiences through years of therapy, encourages them to leave the room if they need to, and provides resources after the show in case anyone is triggered by the material.
Huge Ass Mindset was one of six shows that were shortlisted for this year’s award. The others are:
Bog Witch (Traverse Theatre):
In a fraught summer of heatwaves and flash floods, climate anxiety is everywhere, but remarkably few shows are directly confronting the question of how it’s possible to stay happy and sane when the world seems to be falling apart around you.
One notable exception is Bryony Kimmings’ spectacular and very funny new show, which tells the story of a lonely first year living in a tumbledown cottage in the English countryside, as Bryony attempts to “plug back into nature” while feeling like she’s failing at every turn.
Parasocial Activity (Pleasance):
This new show from Gallus and Silly Mission Productions begins as an extended comic skit about writer-performer Briony Martha’s character, Jenny, meeting her idol, Hollywood actor James McAvoy, in a Glasgow coffee shop, before evolving into something much darker.
It’s an exploration of the recent phenomenon of ‘AI psychosis’, in which people struggling with isolation develop strong emotional attachments to AI chatbots which can become harmful, and, in this case, dangerous.
Giraffe (Pleasance): Abigail Weinstock’s semi-autobiographical show tells the story of Eliana, who grows up believing she is a sociopath, only to discover – with help from a therapist, a court order and an unexpected relationship with a child who seems to be going through something similar – that she should have been diagnosed with something quite different.
Giraffe compellingly illustrates the long-term mental health impact of growing up believing there is something “wrong” with you.
The End Of The World (Gilded Balloon): In Destiny Faith Nelson’s solo show, she plays Desiree, a young, lonely wannabe writer who decides to livestream her own suicide after becoming overwhelmed by the world and her own perceived failures, before realising, too late, that the man she shares a home with but barely knows has been invisibly going through his own mental health crisis.
The End of The World is a deeply affecting story of how social media can isolate vulnerable people from the world around them.
Water Colour (Traverse Theatre): Milly Sweeney’s debut play is the story of two lost souls in Glasgow, a kitchen porter and an art student, who both end up on the brink of suicide for different reasons but ultimately find solace in each other’s survival.
It’s a moving exploration of the complex factors that can push young people to the brink.
The shortlist for the Mental Health Foundation Fringe Award is selected in consultation with The Scotsman newspaper’s team of experienced critics as well as arts and mental health professionals.
Each year’s winner is announced at the Scotsman Fringe First Awards, the biggest theatre awards ceremony at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Since 2023 the award has been sponsored by the Cornwell Charitable Trust and dedicated to the memory of arts journalist Tim Cornwell, who died in 2022.
Tim worked for many years as the Scotsman’s arts correspondent and was part of the judging panel for the Mental Health Foundation Fringe Award, a subject close to his heart as someone living with Bipolar disorder. Tim died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism in June 2022.
Thanks to the Cornwell Charitable Trust, our winner will again be offered a £3000 prize plus a flexible package of support tailored to the needs of the show and its future development, which may include mentoring support and mental health training, support with funding applications and/or a contribution to production costs.
The Mental Health Foundation Fringe Award is part of the Foundation’s year-round arts programme, which also includes the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, one of the world’s biggest mental health themed arts festivals, which celebrates its 20th year in 2026.
The Mental Health Foundation also recently launched Performing Anxiety, a resource for people who want to make audience-facing creative work about mental health. The resource includes interviews with numerous artists who have made Edinburgh Fringe shows about mental health, including Bryony Kimmings, Caroline Horton, Selina Thompson and Amy Conway.
It can be found at www.mhfestival.com/performinganxiety.
