Over the river, through the woods

Claire Harvey met Ed Wren while he was playing her incestuous father in a student play at Winchester University in 2005. While performing a sex scene during their first rehearsal, Ed told Claire he had a script he wanted her to read. It was complex, and complemented her interests. Before long, River People was born.

Four years later River People took home the 2009 Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Prize, Time Out's Critic's Choice Prize, and Total Theatre Award for Best Emerging Company. Somehow, these two people seem to embody the entire ethos of the Fringe – with only a handful of experiences in producing their own performances, they have earned the kind of recognition that Fringe veterans strive for. With a penchant for whimsy and macabre puppetry, River People developed The Ordinaries, a "dark comedy about child abuse", which became their Fringe debut ("We had no money so we had to make our flyers by hand each night before flyering the next morning" explains Wren).

Most recently 2009's Lilly Through The Dark secured their place in the Festival spotlight. Lilly is a dark fairytale about a young girl scouring the underworld for her lost father. "Lilly started with the need for me to explore the feelings of loss I had after my Dad passed away in 2004," says Harvey. "He was a massive influence on my life, and it seemed like a fitting tribute. The Ordinaries was about Ed's family so it seemed natural to move on to my experiences."

Harvey and Wren, who have been dating for several years—“we spent that first year finding out how we should work. It does take a little practise”—are people who like to keep busy. This year they bring two new shows to the Fringe: The Terrible Tale of the Midnight Chorus combines story, live music, and their trademark Tim Burton-esque puppetry. It's a "best-of” production where the team's fantastical universe is fleshed out, and where characters introduced in Lilly return with their own interwoven stories.

Also being performed is Little Matter, which Wren describes as an evolving work in progress , its subject matter in keeping with Wren and Harvey's ever-present themes of pilgrimage and self-exploration. They explain how they took inspiration from such diverse sources as ancient mythology, quantum physics, and the poetry of William Blake. "The idea started as a desire to explore my own state of mind after having left university without having a clear path set out for myself, and that feeling of shock when you realise you have to grow up to be a 'proper person' and work for a living," Wren tells me. "The show is about a man coming to terms with his place in the universe.”

River People have already made a name for themselves with this kind of Philip Pullman-meets-post-uni-existentialism from River People, and if there was any doubt that the ripples they started would still be spreading this year the pair's seemingly endless reserves of energy quickly do away with them. While festival success isn't exactly a kiss of death, it's certainly not uncommon for young up-and-comers to lose steam. But for Harvey and Wren, no corners seem to be cut, even in the use of the group's staple stage-fellows. “We make all of our puppets ourselves," says Wren. "so everything has the trace of our hands on it and we're able to foster and develop our own aesthetic.”

Whether their newly acquired hype is a factor in drawing River People's crowds is neither here nor there. At their core Harvey and Wren strike chords with their audiences through an acute understanding of narration and the human experience: "We believe in telling stories that come from an honest place,” Wren explains. "It felt really good to have that assurance that we are doing good work and we should keep on going. The Fringe is like a booster injection we get each year where we're away from the toil of running our own company and we get down to the reason we make theatre: to perform it to people.