This is Ross Allen’s first play, and his first time performing at the Edinburgh Fringe.
He has been to the Fringe as an audience member a couple of times, so he had an inkling of what lay ahead of him, but he also had a story to tell gathered over several years.
He realises that the show – Parkies- is almost undoubtedly going to be a financial loss (he is a retired tax accountant after all), but the story is an important and personal one to him. So he has invested heavily in bringing the show to Edinburgh.
Ross is a retiree who lives on a National Park in Utah. For nine months of the year he shares a dorm with eight other people who also work there, and the rest of the time – when the park is shut because of snow and winter weather – he travels.
His story is based on real lives, real people (and he uses their real names).
As I meet him, the young cast from the show Knight’s Dream – also at TheSpace (last show on Saturday at 8.50pm) come up to tell him they have been to see his show twice – and how much they just love it.
Ross is absolutely delighted at the reception he has had in Edinburgh – and Parkies has just had a four star review.
National Park
He explained that the term “parkie” is not exactly the same as it is in Scotland where it would mean someone looking after a public garden. He works as a parkie in a National Park in Utah, which he does not name, but it is one of those that President Trump regards as real estate to be sold off. Ross said most of them are “thousands and thousands of acres” of mainly undeveloped land.
Although Ross is not an actor by profession he has worked at the National Park since 2018, and he found there an interesting mix of people who choose to live in a very remote area. He said: “They all come with different backgrounds and different life plans, or actually lack of life life plans, but they’re all thrown together for a common purpose. And as I got to meet my colleagues, they all have very interesting stories and very interesting backgrounds. And sort of from 2018 to 2024, I started collecting those stories in my mind. I said, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with these stories, but they’re funny stories and sort of heartwarming stories, and they have drama to them.”
He visited the Fringe in 2024 and 2025, when he saw around two dozen shows each time, before getting his script on paper at the end of last year and then self-funding the production costs to bring it to Edinburgh.
He was well warned – someone told him to take the show first to the Salt Lake City Fringe, but his heart was set on Edinburgh. He had decided to “aim high”.
He hooked up with TheSpace and giggled as he said: “They were willing to take a chance on me! I was told “You got the bones of a good story here”. It’s all true to life. So writing and acting and what you know is very helpful, but you need help. You need a PR firm, and you need a director. They listed all these things I needed.”
Ross is not someone who lets obstacles get in his way and he engaged with “some incredibly talented people” who helped him make the show happen. He said they have been working on it since November and when they had Draft 29 of the script it was ready for an audience.
He is keen to emphasise that the people who work in the park are all from “very diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Every single one of them. But outside of working in a national park, it would be very rare for any of these people to know each other, or even work together.”
He has had an episode of the Fringe show filmed to take back to Utah and show to the real people working in the park – who all got a T-shirt to say they are portrayed in Parkies.
Ross said this is a show which “definitely has a character arc, and there there really two of them. It all starts out with the funny people that work in the national park system, and then they discover bad things that corporate America is doing in the national park system to make a buck. And are you going to just ignore it, or are you going to try to make a change?
“And there’s the central character who decides he’s going to try to make a change.”
One of the many things according to Ross that the National Parks do which will be a surprise to visitors involves “the garbage”. The Park service have stickers all over the bins in the park claiming (falsely) that they recycle all the rubbish collected there. Ross says they transport it 20 miles down the road to a landfill site.
His hopes and aspirations for the show are quite straightforward and simple. He said: “What I hope is, you’ll if you see this show and you’ll never visit a national park the same way again, you’ll be aware of all the people that work behind the scenes to make your experience in the park memorable in a positive way. That’s really it.
“And then I guess the second thing is, back in the 1950s, the National Park Service made a strategic decision to outsource the care of the park to corporate America, and so the National Park Service, the federal government, takes care of everything that’s dead inside the park-the rocks.
“Corporate America takes care of all the amenities inside the park, and the issue is, you now have a giant collision between a not-for-profit and greedy corporate America, as we say a lot of times in the play. And is is that really the best strategy in 2026?”
The other hope Ross has is that more retirees will consider working in a National Park after leaving a career and work behind them. He said that he finds it very rewarding (although not financially!). So he is also a one man recruiter.
Can the colourful crew of Park workers survive their collision course with the authorities? Can they follow the trail and unmask the beasts or will politics get in the way? Who will survive?
Cast members Michael McClory and Jude Claybourne found the beautiful Chris Rutterford mural based on the legend on Slater’s Steps just off Holyrood Road – and not far from their Edinburgh venue for a photo call.
Parkies is at TheSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall at 11:45 from 7 to 29 August (except 16 and 23 Aug). https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/parkies
A deer changes the life of the Parkies in a new play at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. When the cast of “Parkies” heard about a stag’s legendary role in the foundation of one of Edinburgh’s iconic landmarks, they wanted to find out more.
Cast members Jude Claybourne, Ross Allen (centre) and Michael McClory, beside a mural on Slaters Steps featuring David I and the stag – off Holyrood Road and by artist Chris Rutterford.
PHOTO Colin Hattersley Photography
