Louise Marwood is life coach Rita Lynn

Louise Marwood played Chrissie White in Emmerdale for a number of years, but now she's at the Edinburgh Festival playing a life coach called Rita Lynn. Let's find out how Louise's festival is going.

Hi Louise. How are you finding this Fringe?

I love the Fringe. I was just thinking this week how magical it is, actually, because I had two friends coming up who are both doing shows, and it's the only place I know where you have this creative community, which is how I believe that everyone should live, in amongst their peers, where they can go and see as much stand-up, as much theatre, as much anything as they want, until they're saturated with it and they can't bear it anymore, and they're begging for it to stop, and then they need to do it all over again the next day. That's my experience of the Fringe, and I love it.

Tell us more about your show - what inspired it, and what are the life experiences you brought to it?

My show. My show is inspired by my actual addiction. It took me about four years to recover, and during that time I really wrestled with my addict brain, and it's all about having an alter ego, and she represents my addict brain, and that was basically the fight that I had, and I believe that most addicts have, and it's a fight to the death, it really is.

What do you hope audiences most take away from the show?

That's not particularly funny, but it's a dark comedy, and I love the idea of someone who is basically dying, deciding that they can then tell people how to live. I think there's a lot of comedy to found in that concept, and that's why I wanted to bring it to life and explore it. I hope audiences will take away hope, actually, that you can recover, and that addiction isn't the end of the story, that recovery can be beautiful, and then you can come to the end of the Fringe, and put a show on about it, and tell the world about it, and wear it like a badge of honour, and that's what I'm doing.

What are your plans for next in your creative life?

Ask me at the end of the festival. I don't know. I've still got a lot of industry that haven't been seen yet that are coming next week, so who knows what it looks like. I don't know whether Rita Lynn has life after.

Who are some of your inspirations - creatively or otherwise?

I feel like I've told my story and exercised those demons, but I can continue doing it, and will continue doing it if someone pays me to do it, so that's that one. And my inspirations are basically anybody who has the balls to come up to this festival, put on a show with 3,000 other shows, and try and find their way through, and navigate their way through all of that, and try and get people in to see it. It's a real schlep, and a real slog, and everyone's doing it, and I have nothing but the utmost respect to anyone, and I think there's so many wins to be found in it, whether you're conventionally successful at the end of it or not, just in the fact that you have the ability and the strength to do it in the first place.