Over at Starburst Towers, we do our best to keep our fingers on the pulse of exciting genre-related talent, which is why you can see intrepid Starburst reporters at conventions, comedy shows and arts festivals during the year. (Including the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, of course.)
We’re also massive fans of the streaming service Dropout.TV, which is crammed full of genre-savvy content, from TTRPG-based fantasy and science fiction show Dimension20 to game shows like Uhm Actually. *
So, before we wave goodbye to 2025, here’s a list of talent we’ve seen out and about that we’d love to see on one of Dropout.TV’s many shows.
John Robertson For Crowd Control
Crowd Control is Drop Out’s stand-up comedy showcase that focuses on that most viral of comedy techniques, crowd-work. John Robertson is an Australian comedian who has built an entire career out of audience interaction. His show, The Dark Room, is pretty much the core template for making strangers laugh at themselves, and his current stand-up show Plays With The Audience is a master-class in crowd work.
Robertson is also a keen gamer and sci-fi fan, which would make him a decent fit for the shows Uhm Actually and Parlor Room, especially as John’s energy matches both Ify Nwadiwe and Becca Scott in many fun ways.
Jessica Durand for Smarty Pants
Smarty Pants is a show in which talented and witty types try to sell the most ridiculous or amusing ideas to their peers. Jessica’s 2025 show Over The Top blended audio-visual elements to bring to life absurd self-insert fan-fic in an extremely detailed and very funny way. A master of the witty list, we think Durand would be a perfect match for Smarty Pants.
Jon Gracey stretched out into stand-up comedy this year with his hit show, Big Willy Energy, but he’s best known for his ability to host the social deduction game Blood On The Clock Tower with a small band of comedians and keep it consistently funny and silly. We would love to see him work his magic with the Dropout cast.
Emily Carding for Game Changer
Emily is perhaps one of the busiest actors and theatre makers in the UK right now, with credits including the Lovecraftian The Key of Dreams and the sci-fi Bridge Command. This year, they brought the excellent Timonopoly to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This audience participation show combines Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens with a certain classic boardgame, and it’s the sort of shenanigans that would suit the vibe of Sam Reich’s constantly changing Game Changer game show. Carding could also be a great fit for character performance comedy Very Important People, thanks to their superlative acting chops and improv skills.
Marnina Schon and Micah O’Konis for Play It By Ear
The musical comedy duo known as Couplet came to Scotland this year with their geek-friendly, very queer, autobiographical musical show Honey Honey Moon Moon, which chronicled their harder-than-expected journey to getting married. The pair have exceptional musical talent and brilliant improv skills, which makes them perfect for Play It By Ear, an improv show dedicated to making spontaneous musicals. Both of them would also be excellent fits for Make Some Noise, a prompt-based impressions and acting show that also works well with musical silliness.
Lesbian Space Crime for Dropout Presents
Airlock Theatre are a team of theatre makers who are doing some pretty exciting shows at the moment. In addition to the amazingly funny (and very poignant) Lesbian Space Crime, they also produced a High School drama vs monsters parody called Count Dykula which was as awesome and as queer as the name suggests. The same crew produce a show called Hot Singles In Your Area Play D&D, which is incredibly silly and the sort of fun that would fit well in the legendary Dimension20 dome.
Frankly, we just want to see what happens when you put the hilariously funny Linus Karp, known for his ridiculous take on the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical Cats in the same room as the hilariously funny Grant O’Brien, known for his ridiculous take on the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical Cats.
Alex Walker for Game Changer
We really enjoyed Alex’s work at 2025’s fringe as the embodiment of chaos in the form of Billy The Doll from the Saw movies, and we’d loved to see them with the DropOut regulars in the ridiculous ever-changing game show, Game Changer.
One Man John Wick for Dropout Presents
Woody Fu wowed audiences this year with his incredibly charming homage to action movies, One Man John Wick. It’s an anarchic show that’s as much a love letter to Keanu Reeves as it is to the process of making action movies.
This chaotic, audience participation heavy show makes it perfect for Dropout Presents, a series that takes stage shows and brings them to streaming. Dropout Presents has done brilliant work with shows such as Demi Adejuyigbe Is Going To Do One (1) Backflip, Chris Grace As Scarlett Johansson, Courtney Pauroso: Vanessa 5000 and other shows we loved. We would also love to see Woody’s energy in a potential Dimension20 show, as he has wild improv energy.
We almost certainly missed something amazing list, so let us know the usual way how we did.
(We’ve updated this article to let you know that you can also join Dropout as Superfan, details are here.)
* yes, that’s the joke.
