CELEBRITY obsession and how far people will go to get noticed is at the heart of two new productions making their debut at the Brighton Fringe.

Madman Marathon Man is all about sporting fame – and sees Matt Squance attempt to get his best friend Sam Tomlinson away from the Sky box and its sports package.

“Watching sport takes up a good proportion of Sam’s daily life,” says Squance, who is currently on the Soho Theatre’s Young Writers scheme. “The best way to win him back was to become what he was interested in – a sports star.”

The somewhat unlikely route Squance took was to become a marathon runner.

“It’s the most innocent sporting event that exists,” says Squance. “You get thousands of people running usually for one common aim – to raise money for charity.

“No one in marathon running does anything that causes infamy, or a sense of shock and horror. The most bizarre behaviour we could think of was Paula Radcliffe having a pee in the middle of a race.”

Squance transplants the behaviour of some of sport’s baddest boys into the world of marathon running to see if he can achieve fame.

“We are asking how the behaviour of Luis Suarez or Ched Evans is affecting young people,” says Squance. “Without a doubt their behaviour leads to everything that goes on in the playground. The show blows up, and what we do on stage gets more out of hand in order to achieve this fame and success.”

The show is being complemented by a series of videos, which follows Squance’s attempts to get marathon fit, as well as capturing his interactions with Tomlinson, who will be making his professional stage debut at Brighton Fringe.

“Everything that happens is because of our friendship,” he says. “There’s an element of live art to it – we have lived and breathed this. In the first YouTube video I take my top off and pinch my belly – I couldn’t do that now.”

Meanwhile The Bridge Theatre Company, are looking at the negative effects of reality television on the most vulnerable in our society.

Graduates from The Brit School devised the initial idea in a series of workshops alongside professional writer Georgia Fitch and director Sarah Bedi.

“We were looking at people who didn’t quite fit in,” says Amaya Rowlands, who plays an assistant producer auditioning volunteers for new reality show The Hostage.

“Georgia set up an improvisation where she was running an audition room for a reality television show and it came from there.”

The play, which is running in rep with new original musical The Circle Game, examines the desire by young people to be famous for fame’s sake.

“There seemed to be something so simple with The Hostage and reality television,” says Rowlands. “There was a humiliation side and an aspect of how far someone would go to survive and be put on television.

“Creating the show it’s amazing how quickly you become desensitised. If it was 1999 and people saw what was happening on reality television today there would be an outrage.”

As well as looking at the lengths television producers will push the more vulnerable in society to create “great television” the company has examined what was being offered to young people today by the Government, and explored the world of New York reality television pioneer Josh Harris.

“He did a documentary called We Live In Public, where he put a load of people in a bunker in New York covered by cameras,” says Rowlands. “It ended when it was raided by police. He also put cameras in his own home to film the breakdown of his own relationship. People watching online became complicit in the horrible things they were watching. For Oscar [the producer at the centre of Reality] he’s an inspiration.”

Brighton Fringe: Madman Marathon Man Dukebox, Waterloo Street, Hove, Friday, May 15, to Monday, May 18 Brighton Fringe: Reality Wagner Hall, Russell Place, Brighton, Wednesday, May 20, Friday, May 22, and Saturday, May 23