Like all great ideas, Wish Experience’s A Brief History Of Beer began in a pub. “We were having a production meeting of sorts with a couple of pints,” remembers Californian writer and performer Trish Parry, who created the show with Florida native Will Glenn.

“One of us said something like, ‘Why don’t we do a show about beer’, as a bit of a joke.

“When we went to the British Library and did some real research, we realised that it was a very viable option.”

The two-hander A Brief History Of Beer has turned into Wish Experience’s most popular show, having moved from the Edinburgh Free Fringe to paying dates in London and Berlin. After Brighton, the production moves to the Adelaide Fringe in Australia as well as appearances in New Zealand, and a run at the Orlando Fringe in May.

“Beer has been with humanity from the beginning,” says Parry. “We travel through time with the audience and end up in the present.”

It has been described as a “drink-along show”, with the time machine being powered by beer. “Someone said it was like a surreal drinking game,” says Parry.

“There are bits of comic lectures and sketches where we play out parts of history, such as the industrial revolution in London.”

It means the normal experience of taking drinks into the theatre makes it integral to the story – as opposed to audience members taking surreptitious sips at quiet moments away from the eyes of the performers.

“There’s a British writer called Pete Brown who was an important touchstone for us in our research,” says Glenn. “He talks a lot about the experience of making beer as being a community experience. We really latched on to that.

“We thought specifically about us and the audience being together in a pub, as a community of people sharing each other’s company.”

Beer isn’t essential to the experience – Parry says many previous audiences have chosen water or wine as their tipple.

“It was a bit rough doing a show every day at 6pm in Edinburgh,” she admits, adding the show changed when director Jeffrey Mayhew came on board.

“The first edition of the show had a great energy and people really loved it,” adds Glenn. “But there were a number of things we felt we had to change, and one of them was the amount we were drinking.

“We drink less in the show now and I think that has helped the performance!”

Connection with the audience is at the heart of what Wish Experience does. Previous shows have seen them recreate a childhood sick day in the touring show Mend, while The Awesome Show investigated the eternal question ‘What is awesomeness?’ with the help of the audience.

“We don’t ask anyone to get up and run around the room, or do things that might make them uncomfortable,” says Glenn. “It’s about bringing something to the audience and inviting them in.

“The expectation is becoming more that people can have a role in the entertainment they interact with. Theatre is all about the moments in which we are together and the live aspect of the experience.”

The show has been changing and developing during its run, as brewers from as far afield as the US, Canada and Australia add their input.

“We only have an hour and there is so much history to get around,” says Parry.

“In one of our first sessions we had people from the Czech Republic in the audience who demanded we do more about their country!”

“The response from the audience feeds into our research,” adds Glenn. “We have taken trips to Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria. We went to Oktoberfest which is like a Mecca for many beer-lovers. Those experiences have fed back into the work.”