We sat down for a quick chat with Daisy Day and Peggy Pollard about ‘Gannet’, a new black comedy returning to Playhouse East Theatre as part of Feb Fringe from 24–25 February.
Why did a bird feel like the right lens for exploring isolation and belonging today?
The choice to use a bird emerged organically from the earliest drafts of ‘Gannet’. The first version of the show, written by Daisy, was a one woman show which used the colloquial meaning of “Gannet” as a synonym for greed to examine her OCD and disordered eating which intensified during the isolation of lockdown. While this version proved too heavy on its feet, we felt the image of the Gannet still gave us a lot to work with when thinking about isolation in modern society on a larger scale.
As the show evolved, the Gannet became an increasingly clear embodiment of the outsider experience. Especially when we placed this wild seabird, in the setting of a capital city. Visually, gannets are rather striking, their bright white body, long beak, and vast wingspan make them stand out against the grey urban landscape, a contrast reflected in the costume design. Furthermore, whilst in flight, Gannet can take quite literally a bird’s-eye view of the human world. Gannets are also migratory birds, existing in a state of movement and impermanence. This liminal, fragile existence mirrors the themes at the heart of the show: displacement, isolation, and the uncertainty of belonging. For these reasons, the choice of a bird, and more specifically the Gannet bird- is not incidental.
How did you balance the show’s absurd comedy with its darker emotional edge while writing together?
We found the balance between absurd comedy and darker emotional material through constant workshopping. Our writing process has been cyclical: writing, testing material in the room, rewriting, and repeating that process. Because ‘Gannet’ is still very much a work in progress, that balance isn’t something we feel we’ve “solved,” but something we’re continually discovering and refining together.
Crucially, we are always reminding ourselves that ‘Gannet’ is not a pure comedy. While it uses humour, clowning, and absurdity, it is ultimately a piece of theatre with a clear narrative, and that narrative is a dark one. Much of the material is generated through improvisation in rehearsal, but we constantly ask how each character, gag, or moment serves the wider story. If something is funny but doesn’t connect to Gannet’s journey, it doesn’t stay.
The characters we gravitate towards are often silly, exaggerated, and ridiculous, but they almost always carry a darker edge. Many of the characters in ‘Gannet’ are satirical: their humour comes from exaggerating recognisable behaviours and social roles, often rooted in the harsher or more uncomfortable aspects of the human condition.
In this way, the absurd comedy and darker emotional edge of ‘Gannet’ are inherently intertwined. Like much satire, ‘Gannet’ uses silliness and exaggeration on the surface to carry something more unsettling underneath, allowing humour to coexist with, and even sharpen, the show’s darker emotional themes.
With so many characters in a solo show, how did you choose which versions of the city Gannet encounters?
With so many characters in a solo show, the aim was not to represent the whole city, but to distil it into recognisable versions of urban life. We wanted the people Gannet meets to feel familiar, close enough that audiences might recognise them, or even themselves.
Although the city is vast and colourful, we focused on characters that feel specific to big-city life, which is why the world of the play is centred around a skyscraper. These buildings sit at the heart of capital cities, both physically and symbolically, and felt like the right place to explore ideas of success, isolation, and survival.
The characters Gannet encounters are largely focused on their own welfare- hustling, chasing money, and navigating competitive, transactional jobs. While heightened and theatrical, they are recognisable figures in an inner-city setting, making Gannet’s exclusion feel even more real.
How does audience participation reinforce Gannet’s outsider status rather than just driving laughs?
Within the world of the show, the audience are only ever invited to interact with the human characters Daisy adopts, never with Gannet himself. This directorial choice deliberately isolates Gannet, positioning him alone in a world that is familiar to the audience but deeply unfamiliar to him. Although the audience are present and active, they are unable to help or connect with Gannet, reinforcing his vulnerability and exclusion.
As a result, audience participation becomes a mechanism for showing what happens when individuals who are already vulnerable are ignored or pushed to the margins. Gannet’s increasing frustration and eventual revenge emerges not from inherent villainy, but from sustained isolation and disregard.
How do clowning, drag and classical theatre collide to shape the world and rhythm of Gannet?
Daisy’s background in clowning and drag informs the show’s exaggerated physicality, rapid character shifts, and satirical edge. The dynamics of clowning play an important part when approaching the performance, given the show contains many different characters with one performer, there are moments in the show where we acknowledge the absurdity of the situation. Between character shifts, and in particular moments, Daisy as the performer, acknowledges her status as a clown in a ridiculous situation. The human characters in Gannet’s world are also very clownlike. They banter with and respond to the audience’s energy; in a way which Gannet does not.
Drag, as an exaggerated performance of gender, strongly influences the world of ‘Gannet’: many of the characters Gannet encounters are male, reflecting Daisy’s interest in caricaturing men and exploring the humour and critique that comes with adopting male personas. Gannet himself is a male bird, a choice that emerged through rehearsal as his physicality became increasingly slouchy, boyish, and awkward, almost like a lost teenage boy, reflecting his naivety and unfamiliarity with the human world. Because the performance involves significant gender bending, Gannet’s costume was designed to be deliberately androgynous while remaining recognisably a bird. This allows Daisy to move fluidly between characters and genders without costume changes, with shifts communicated through physicality and facial expression.
In this context, classical theatre refers specifically to the narrative arc of the odyssey: a lone protagonist on a long, eventful journey, encountering a series of strange and transformative figures. This structure provides cohesion and momentum, holding together the multiple characters, voices, and performance styles. The collision of this classical narrative form with drag and clowning techniques shapes the distinctive world, humour, and rhythm of ‘Gannet’.
What do you hope lingers with audiences after they leave Gannet’s uncaring city?
At its core, ‘Gannet’ explores what happens when individuals are repeatedly ignored and pushed to the edge, and how small, everyday acts of disregard can accumulate, deepening isolation. While the show centres on an outsider, a bird entirely new to the human world, it also speaks to the wider loneliness of contemporary society. As young people ourselves, ‘Gannet’ reflects our experience of growing up in a highly individualistic culture, where young people are increasingly more anxious, disconnected, and lonely than previous generations. Our protagonist Gannet becomes a lens through which to explore how newcomers and young people become isolated.
Ultimately, we hope what lingers is an awareness that individual choices matter. Not as grand gestures, but as small, human decisions: whether to acknowledge someone, to listen, or to offer care. ‘Gannet’ suggests that when we repeatedly fail to make these choices, things begin to unravel.