Category: Experimental

REVIEW: This Is Not About Me

Published on by Ke MengLeave a comment

Rating: 5 out of 5.

A strikingly inventive exploration of intimacy

What is intimacy? Is it awkward? Is it exhilarating? Is it something that will inevitably hurt? Is it negotiation over micro-powerdynamics, or a zero-sum game? Written and designed by Hannah Caplan, and directed and dramaturged by Douglas Clarke-Wood, This Is Not About Me acutely explores the shifting meanings of intimacy through Grace and Eli, a pair entangled in an intricate, long-standing relationship.

The design situates the show within multiple spider-like nets, with a trolley-bed at the central stage, and a projection screen behind. A pillow on the bed reads “Things we hate about each other”, followed by another declaring “Things we love about each other”. The pair meets after a long while to unwind their past. 

The first 20 minutes may feel a bit chopped up. There are witty exchanges and word-plays, but they are often lost amid overly frequent scene transitions, awkward puppetry, and indistinct video projections. Nonetheless, the play precisely captures and transfixes the awkward atmosphere of the pair whose history spans over intimacy, friendship and almost destruction. Interestingly, there is a kind of inverted parallel at work: while the narrative unfolds in reverse chronological order, its emotional intensity grows progressively deeper, barer, and much more unfiltered.

The use of subtitles is one of the best, if not the best, I have ever seen, perfectly reflecting what Grace indulges in as “contradiction and pretence as flirting”, while sitting in tension with the stark bareness of her “I love sex” speech. Their puppetry-based sex scene, in that sense, becomes a curious synthesis of both – something at once ultimately raw and predominantly pretentious. 

The show finds its strongest footing in the latter half, where it turns more metatheatrical, becoming a play about Grace writing a play about Grace and Eli, where their power-dynamic parallels the power-dynamic between those who have pen and those who have not, about the authenticity of self and how that self is (re)presented in other’s stories, as well as about physical theatrical presence and their visualised counterpart. 

One scene is particularly convincing. Eli (Francis Nunnery), in physical presence, interacts with a projected image of Grace (video designer Inigo Woodham-Smith), appearing almost like lying together. In the meantime, the physical presence of Amaia Naima Aguinaga, the actor of Grace, “puppeteering” Nunnery through those nets of ropes, thus embodying her fantasised imagery of Eli. Repulsed, Eli avenges by counter-writing a screenplay that polishes his own phallocentric fantasies.

The show ends up with the pair becoming absolutely bare about how they feel (including a fart joke), and the projection features their first meeting years ago. This dramaturgical and directorial decision somehow loses its momentum and feels a bit inadequate and undernourished. However, this does little to diminish its overall achievement, which offers probing perspectives, refreshing theatrical explorations and an exposed intimacy not just between Grace and Eli, but between the show and the audience.

This show runs from 25th March until 18th April. Tickets here.

REVIEW: Imitating the Dog: War of the Worlds

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Rating: 3 out of 5.

“An ambitious adaptation driven by technical brilliance”

Imitating the Dog is known for pushing multimedia boundaries and War of the Worlds takes this to new heights, using forced perspective, model worlds, camera tricks and projection with live and recorded content, blending the animate and the inanimate to create a modern take on the classic novel.

Four performers work together to deliver this technically brilliant production. Bonnie Baddoo, Morgan Bailey, Gareth Cassidy and Amy Dunn operate cameras live on stage while simultaneously performing, creating a constantly shifting theatrical language.. The sheer amount each cast member has to consider is almost unbelievable. Managing props and angles while sustaining character and narrative momentum requires extraordinary coordination and is a joy to witness. The level of detail and impact of each movement only emphasises the complexity of what is unfolding on stage. A particularly impressive sequence sees a miniature set transformed into a cinematic landscape in seconds, the performers’ movements perfectly timed to give the illusion of scale and devastation. The craftsmanship is undeniable.

Where the production falls slightly flat is the storyline. Inspired by the H.G. Wells novel and the 2005 film, the modern take follows Will Tavener navigating the UK while experiencing an apocalyptic disaster. Mechanical creatures reduce the living to ash, and after waking from a mysterious hospital incident, Will embarks on a journey of survival and self-discovery. The apocalyptic feeling that runs through rings true to the earlier material and attempts to bring modern-day issues to the surface. The message of destroyed homelands forcing people to the Channel feels like a symbolic comment on displacement and resilience, and is cleverly woven into the narrative.

What is challenging is the lack of emotional depth around certain characters and topical issues. Certain relationships, particularly that of the protagonist’s wife, feel underexplored, making it harder to invest in the human stakes of the story. It is possible that this emotional distance is intentional – a reflection of trauma and disorientation – but it leaves gaps that the visual spectacle cannot entirely fill. In contrast to the meticulous detail of the staging, the character development feels sparse.

That said, the ambition of this production is difficult to ignore. Even when the storytelling lacks depth, the theatrical innovation remains compelling. Those interested in seeing the backstage effort that goes into productions and who enjoy dystopian set worlds will certainly enjoy and ponder on this version of War of the Worlds. After a run at The Lowry, the production continues its tour across the UK until May 2026. Tickets are available here.

Sam Butler (R)

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Sam Butler

Published on by Ke MengLeave a comment

Experimental cross-arts company Fevered Sleep will make its Barbican debut with public art intervention This Grief Thing. Entering a uniquely themed pop-up shop, visitors in the foyers will discover a space to connect, share loss and find hope while normalising conversations around grief. This event is part of Scene Change, a series of transformative performances and gatherings in unexpected places programmed by the Barbican. Runs Sun 15—Sat 21 Feb 2026 – for more info, please visit here.

How has the project evolved since 2018 in response to hundreds of meaningful encounters in different cities, and what can visitors in London expect from their experience?

Even before the project officially opened, its shape was formed by the many conversations we had with hundreds of participants who either gathered with us to talk about their experiences of grief and grieving, or encountered us in everyday spaces – market stalls, buses, the underground – and responded to the simple invitation to talk about grief. I’d say the project hasn’t changed as such, it retains its original form. We as the artist/shop keepers, however, can’t fail to evolve through the very personal interactions we have with each person who steps over the threshold.

This Grief Thing replaces performance with presence and conversation through gatherings and a pop-up shop. What did stepping into the role of shopkeepers reveal about how people want to encounter art around grief?

We started this project with the question, how can we encourage people to talk about, and normalise conversations around grief? Creating a dance piece or an installation, of course makes grief more visible to those happy or used to more formal spaces dedicated to art. A shop, on the other hand, is a space most people are comfortable to enter; a shopkeeper, and a ‘transaction’ in a shared public space is an everyday occurrence. We’re intentionally demystifying the notion of the artist, who is very often invisible or at a distance to audiences or spectators and placing ourselves right in the midst of it. Most visitors don’t know that we’re the artists, and we’re pretty certain that a visitor in a shopping centre in Middlesbrough for instance, really doesn’t care!

Grief can often be private or even stigmatsied in Western culture. What responsibility do artists and institutions have in creating shared rituals and spaces for something so universal?

 Western culture has done a pretty poor job at helping people to process and understand death and grief. Churches and other religious spaces are the main gatekeepers of grief, and for those who don’t relate to those kinds of practices, once a funeral is over, they are often cast adrift. As a company making lots of work with and for children, we feel strongly that including death and grief in educational settings would go a long way to tackling this stigma.  Artists will of course always make work around such a significant subject, but if we as a society can’t even talk to our children about it, how can we expect artists to even scratch the surface?

How do you hold ethical boundaries when working with such intimate and often raw experiences, while still keeping the space open and porous to the public?

This question comes up often, and I think it partly relates to the previous question. The stigma around grief, talking about death, revealing deep personal emotions holds lots of fear for us as a society. There’s a concern that giving permission for open conversation might lead to participants experiencing feelings that are somehow unmanageable, that harm may be caused to them or us or others. So, whilst pushing back at the question, we of course acknowledge our duty of care; we have distress protocols in place, and we have at hand organisations we can signpost people to if we feel they need further support. We’re also clear that in conversations, we can choose to talk from our very personal experiences of grief, or more in the abstract.

This year marks Fevered Sleep’s 30th anniversary. Looking back, what feels most essential about the way your broader practice has evolved, and how does This Grief Thing sit within that journey? Has listening to strangers talk about loss reshaped your understanding of care as an artist?

30 years of running a company has given us the confidence to say we feel happiest sitting in uncertainty! Some time ago we began to invite participants and collaborators in at the very inception of an idea, at that moment we’re stumbling around without an endpoint, at our most vulnerable. Our work is heavily reliant on the generosity of strangers willing to talk and think with us. This Grief Thing is a product of all the people who came to tell us how grief revealed itself to them, of their vulnerability over cups of tea, sat on chairs in circles, not asking our endpoint. Years back we placed care at the forefront of our practice, and we continue to be guided by the people who we encounter across our work. 

REVIEW: Prayers For A Hungry Ghost at the Pit at Barbican

Published on by Ke MengLeave a comment

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

“Lavishing on desire”

Do we desire food out of hungry?

Do we desire out of lack?

If I crave something, or someone, does it mean something missing in me?

E gui (饿鬼 hungry ghost), a term used in pan-Chinese Buddhist culture, refers to a spirit trapped in endless crave, being condemned to insatiable hunger and thirst. However, they are forbidden to eat or drink because of excessive greed, selfishness or unfulfilled desire when they were alive.

Elizabeth Gunawan’s (writer, devisor and director) Prayers for A Hungry Ghost lingers on this image through an immigrant family from Hong Kong to the U.S. In this family without a matriarch, everyone is a hungry ghost. The father (Daniel York Loh) is a first-generation immigrant for whom food means freedom. He has a small body but eats a lot – a primordial image of the hungry ghost who has an enormous stomach with a tiny throat. He also wants a son, of course, a desire deeply ingrained in Confucian patriarchy.

Always “the inferior” among the sisters, the big sister (performed by Gunawan) craves love and attention, projecting it onto her date, later husband Eugene (puppetry: Aya Nakamura). But Eugene is drawn to her younger sister (Jasmine Chiu) even when his wife is pregnant.  After she repeatedly asks “do you love me”, such never-reassured desire eventually incorporates into an ultimate presence of hungry ghost: after (or more precisely, during) a desperate orgy, she kills him. In one moment, she starts to eat glass. While such image reinforces her bottomless, unfulfilled desire, it also showcases how the female body consumes what exactly wounds it.

For the younger sister, being an artist per se means living through perpetual craving. Furthermore, being Asian renders that desire even harder to fulfil in a white-dominant world (although the image of classical pianist may slightly fall out of context). When she’s playing Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turca, Erin Guan’s projection displays a tiny figure wandering along an endless pathway. Gradually, as the music grows more intense and uncontrollable, the path becomes a tangle of chaotic graffiti, and the little figure disappears. It almost feels like this family of three, each lost within their own desire while at the same time inseparable from each other. This mode of entangled desires circles back to the not-so-unfamiliar narrative of how the patriarchy of pan-Chinese Confucianism suppresses (female) desire. 

While such narrative is valid, it feels too Lacanian. Even the haunting figure of the mother (Matej Matejka, also movement director) traversing the stage seems like the forever-lost objet petit a. Under such a narrative paradigm, what is really oppressed is not desire, but the imagination to it. Once again, this Chinese version of the repression hypothesis perfectly fits into a narrative about how Chinese (women) are oppressed by their own culture, identical to that one told by Western missionaries 200 years ago.

While the first twenty minutes can feel too chopped up, the story unfolds more coherent once the big sister takes central stage. There is also a subplot highlighting the sisterhood, which strives to circle itself back to the show’s central theme of desire, as well as to be emotionally resonant. As an interdisciplinary R&D performance piece merging dance, puppetry, film, and storytelling, Prayers for a Hungry Ghost demonstrates great potential if it dares to imagine beyond repression with more profound emotional soundness. 

BY HEART Texte, mise en scene et interpretation Tiago Rodrigues, Texte avec extraits et citations de William Shakespeare, Ray Bradbury, George Steiner et Joseph Brodsky, Traduction Thomas Resendes, Traduction du sonnet de William Shakespeare Francoise Morvan, Scenographie, costumes et accessoires Magda Bizarro.

REVIEW: By Heart

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Rating: 3 out of 5.

a passionate reminder of the artistic and spiritual value of memorisation 

‘By Heart’, devised and delivered by Tiago Rodrigues, is a piece of experimental theatre that invites 10 audience members to partake in a group challenge: to memorise Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30 (the one which begins ‘when to the sessions of sweet, silent thought/I summon up remembrance of things pas’t (I did that from memory 🙂 ).

It’s a cool premise: in a world where memorisation is haemorrhaging value, Rodrigues creates a space in which learning a Shakespearean Sonnet ‘by heart’ is the only requirement…if you want to leave, that is (the piece does become increasingly more hostage-like in its vibe).

Line by line, Rodrigues ushers his victims through Sonnet 30. But diversions are rife, often accompanied with things he has memorised, from George Steiner to Ray Bradbury. Of course, memorised lines is kind of what you’d expect when watching theatre. Not like this though, and when Rodrigus veers off course, the tangent aren’t narratively compelling enough to be justified. 

If this were a workshop, and we were all participants, this would be an engaging exercise. Indeed, I followed along with the memorisation exercise. But once you do lock into the task, the slowness and dawdling energy becomes frustrating. As the piece develops, Rodigues – confusingly – becomes less bothered about the imperative to memorise all fourteen lines. Instead, his subjects have to learn the first four lines, then one line each. Given the whole show rides on the value of memorisation, it’s a bit of a let down not to actually prioritise this. Especially when the show ran over an extra fifteen minutes. To be honest, it doesn’t matter the quality of a show if you are not specific about its duration. I think you owe audience members a reliable time frame for your show, because threatening that ‘this will take as long as it takes’ contravenes the theatrical codes of politeness. And that not knowing can overshadow a show entirely. 

Experimental theatre deserves respect and attention, and the ethos here is highly laudable. Memorisation is a skill and an artefact that ought to be celebrated. We’re drowning in our own brainrot, and memory games are helpful in resisting this. But ‘By Heart’ doesn’t know what to do with its audience, and that was jarring. Because, fundamentally, watching other people memorise things is not very entertaining. I appreciate the endeavour, but it needs some structural reconsiderations for it to be a workable premise. As a final comment, I want to stress that Rodrigues is characterful and charming; the current piece just isn’t sustainable in a theatrical environment. I genuinely applaud his passion and ambition, and I do hope he finds a way for this kind of work could flourish dramatically.

Credit: Christophe Raynaud de Lage

REVIEW: The Bride and The Goodnight Cinderella at Southbank Centre

Published on by Ke MengLeave a comment

Rating: 5 out of 5.

to (un)mark

Botticelli’s four-panel cycle of Nastagio degli Onesti, a tale lifted from Boccaccio’s Decameron, depicts a brutal and chilling parable of male violence and coercion against women. Nastagio traps a woman to marry him by staging an eternal punishment of another woman, forever chased, slain, and gutted by a knight.

This almost reads as a meta-narrative of patriarchy: women can only keep “safe” from “bad men” by seeking the protection of a “good man.” Between Scylla and Charybdis, women are forever objectified as men’s personal belongings.

Carolina Bianchi begins her performance, CADELA FORÇA TRILOGY – Chapter I: The Bride and The Goodnight Cinderella, with Botticelli’s four-panel paining. This live performance constitutes part of her Dantean journey through the history of rape and femicide, as well as a restless inquiry into the nature of performance art itself. A decade after being drugged and assaulted, Bianchi now took a dose of “Goodnight Cinderella”, a Brazilian date-rape drug, onstage.

When Bianchi was still sombre, she gave us a lecture revisiting the femicide happened in history, especially those involving female artists. The central figure is Italian artist Pippa Bacca. Bacca, together with her collaborator Silvia Moro, took a live performance in 2008. They dressed as brides and tried to make a trip from Milan to Jerusalem by crossing the Balkans all the way through hitchhike. However, when they were near the skirt of Istanbul, Moro refused to hop on a car because she didn’t feel safe. Bacca insisted so the pair parted. In a forest, Bacca was raped, strangled, and later found slaughtered. Other female artists are woven into Bianchi’s query, including Abramović and her Rhythm 0, Tania Bruguer and her Self-Sabotage, and Ana Mendieta’s She Got Love and her fatal fall from the 34th floor – anecdotally at the hands of her husband. 

Why femicide? Why rape? Why female performance artists? To seek answers, Bianchi crawled onto her desk, falling asleep, leaving us to witness what would happen to her, live.  In Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, Philip Auslander has defined that the nature of performance art relies on its physical and temporal, unmediated co-presence of the performers and the audience. Erika Fischer-Lichte later emphasised in her The Transformative Power of Performance that immateriality, disappearance and impermanence became key ideas around performance art.

That is to say, what they describe as unmarked, unarchivable liveness that constitutes the nature of performance art, stands in starkest contrast to the very nature of rape and femicide, which is deeply marked, viscerally embodied, and ultimately ontological. In the second half, one of performers used a real penis-shaped camera to penetrate Bianchi’s vagina. We, the audience, witnessed how that penis was moved inside. We witnessed that raw, cruel ontology. In this world, there is perhaps no gap more immense, more irreconcilable, between the ontological, embodied experiences of living through rape, than all its epistemological recounting.

Auslander proposes to study the relationship between unmarked liveness and recount-able archives as knowledge as historical and contingent, not as something of ontologically differentiated. But when it comes to rape and femicide, such a discussion feels unbearably weightless. Other performances, for instance, those documented through NT Live, might indeed be theorised this way, but is it the same thing to witness Bianchi got raped onstage, and to watch its archive? The most irreconcilable and controversial fact about live performance that stages rape is that, on one hand, compared to fiction or spoken drama, which frames rape into social justice, legal improvement, and other discursive narratives, live performance art confronts the act’s ontological markedness where socio-cultural discourses cannot operate upon. On the other hand, performance art’s very ephemerality, its non-ontological existence, is thrown into the most violent contrast with rape’s irreducible embodiment.

Furthermore, this is also inseparable from women’s sense of self, their crushed subjectivity. For Lacan, the subject is always a traumatised subject: for the default male subject, trauma is the forever-lost objet petit a in the Oedipal triangle of daddy–mommy–me. But what of the female subject? Is women’s collective originary trauma the fate narrated in Nastagio degli Onesti, either to be hunted, raped, and slaughtered, or else to become an object easily yielded to another man in order to avoid such a fate? Is it the marked trauma of womanhood itself? Is it why Bianchi yelled, “Fuck Catharsis”? Because just like the forever lost objet petit a, there is simply just no way to, ontologically, unmark that trauma.

In What The Body Cost, Jane Blocker argues that it is the desire for presence that constitutes part of the written history. Thus she views documentation in a position of absolute desire. Perhaps that could also be Bianchi’s positionality. It would be deeply unsettling and troubling to say that her performance is to “cure and purify” like a therapy session. But maybe, just maybe, her performance is about being absolutely ephemeral in performance, and absolutely marked in the history and documentation of rape and femicide. 

REVIEW: A Journey to the West

Published on by Jimena BatresLeave a comment

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

“Myth meets migration in this playful, poetic portrait of growing up and letting go.“

We all know what it feels like to step away from the safety of the familiar and into the unknown. Maybe it was moving into university halls just two streets from our childhood home, or watching our family relocate and leave behind the bedroom we swore we’d never part with. Or perhaps, like young Xiao Hua (Yitong Fu) in A Journey to the West, it meant crossing continents to begin again– leaving home to study in London, in a brave new world full of possibility. 

A Journey to the West is an honest, bold exploration of the immigrant experience, particularly through a Gen Z lens. Written by Ziqi Ling and Yi Tang and directed by Yi Tang and Haonan Wang, the show reimagines the 16th-century Chinese epic Journey to the West with striking originality. It weaves the classical and the contemporary– blending Sichuan opera face-changing, electronic soundscapes, traditional music including nature sounds and throat singing, and even moments of audience interaction– letting the ancient text pulse through a modern and relevant story. 

The show begins by grounding us in the legend through the introduction of a simple yet cleverly crafted puppet representing the Monkey King. Once this mythical context is set, we meet our protagonist: Xiao Hua (Yitong Fu), a young student preparing to begin university in London, and his overbearing parents (Yi Qu and Qi Chen). Raised in a strict household where everything was solved and planned for him and in spite of him, Xiao Hua finds that even an ocean away, he’s still tied to his parents’ relentless expectations. He’s overwhelmed– not just by the cultural shock of a new country, but by a language barrier, unwelcoming faces, unfamiliar food, a lost phone, and the ever-present voices of parents who refuse to let go. But one fateful night, a surreal encounter with the Monkey King shifts everything– offering Xiao Hua a new way of seeing the world, and perhaps, himself. 

Overall, the show is a successful, often funny and moving portrayal of what it means to spread your wings– especially as an immigrant. The performances are strong across the board: through clever physicality and effective multi-rolling, the cast guide us confidently through the story, even for those unfamiliar with the Mandarin language or the legend of the Monkey King. It’s easy to empathise with Xiao Hua’s plight, and Yitong Fu delivers a nuanced performance, shifting deftly between distinct roles. Yi Qu and Qi Chen are both hilarious and oddly menacing as the parents, with lovely, distinctive physicality. In fact, physicality deserves special mention here: not only is it precise and aesthetically pleasing, but it serves as an alternative form of ‘subtitling’ for non-Mandarin speakers. Choreography is full of gesture and symbolism, allowing the audience to occasionally look away from the subtitles and still follow the emotional and narrative threads unfolding onstage. 

The symbols, props, costumes and concept are all very clever. The sound and music, designed by Hao Liu, are triumphant and interesting, and the lighting by Sheron Luo felt almost like a character itself– minimal, often just a single moving spotlight, but active and responsive to the action. A standout element is the Monkey King puppet: a simple floating

head draped in red with an ornate headdress, it charms with its magical ability to change faces in a blink. Each performer manipulates it at some point, making it a shared and ever-shifting presence. 

If there is one drawback, it’s that the narrative and physical motifs begin to feel a little repetitive. The show could benefit from a deeper exploration of Xiao Hua’s life before meeting the Monkey King, to develop more layers around the ideas of freedom and control. At just 45 minutes, there is room for growth– more narrative nuance, more insight into the inner life of this young person navigating impossible pressures. Still, this is a memorable and exciting production. The Rosemary Branch Theatre is a fitting host for such an epic story in miniature, and A Journey to the West is a valuable addition to this year’s Camden Fringe. Audiences will be entertained, moved– and, most importantly, reminded of what it takes to begin again.

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Piotr Mirowski

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We caught up with director Piotr Mirowski to hear all about Improbiotics’ RoboTales at Gilded Balloon Patter House, an improvised tech theatre show fusing human creativity and artificial intelligence. For tickets go to https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/improbotics-presents-robotales


Where did the idea for mixing improv theatre with AI come from?

We create shows that connect audiences with experimental technology, engage audiences about AI ethics, perform grounded theatrical improvisation and entertain festival punters looking for comedy!

I have two passions: theatre and robots! The idea of mixing these two fields came to me about 10 years ago, when I was researching and building AI models, while also performing on stage as an actor and improviser. I noticed a strange analogy between the large language models I was coding up (which, as we know, keep making stuff up and generate the most likely answer given their training data and context) and improvisers (who strive at being spontaneous, and at always saying “the most obvious” thing, while also carefully listening to their stage partners). Spontaneity is surprisingly hard for adult humans, because we’ve been socialised to think twice before we speak, and it was interesting to me that a mindless AI did not have that problem as it would always give an answer – no matter how wrong. So I decided I had to try to improvise on stage with a robot, powered by a language model that I designed from scratch. Obviously, the analogy between machines and improvisers ends there, and the idea turned out to be quite a challenge.

In 2016, I met Kory Mathewson, another researcher in robotics and an improv comedian at the Rapid Fire Theatre in Edmonton, Canada, who had the same idea. Kory and I became friends and set up to create a theatre company, called Improbotics, where human actors raise up to the challenge to improvise alongside machines. Our ethos is to make your stage partner look good, even when it is a robot! Over the years, the Improbotics shows evolved, thanks to the many new friends we made and to the large international cast of humans who came to shape the company. Boyd Branch designed augmented reality shows that kept us connected and provided emotional support during Covid lockdowns. We improvised multilingual shows with live AI translation with the Swedish cast of Improbotics. We explored AI as a tool for grounded, emotional improv with Sarah Davies.

What’s it like working with A.L.Ex on stage? Does the robot ever surprise you?

It does, although not always for the right reasons! At the beginning, in 2016, when AI was not as advanced as today, our robot A.L.Ex would simply generate non-sequitur responses that were sometimes hard to work with. I integrated more powerful AI models inside A.L.Ex’s code, that could better remember the context of a scene. Nevertheless, with other Improbotics cast members, we found it was like improvising “with an X factor”, or “with a very novice / nervous improviser who would shout random suggestions”, and the hard work was on the human side, trying to justify those offers.

We replaced the robot with a human “Cyborg” – an actor who takes their lines from AI via an earpiece or via augmented reality glasses displaying AI-generated lines. That added physicality, emotional expression, interpretation and subtext. Our system could be seen as an actor training technique of sorts, with actors cold reading seemingly absurdist text. When we were using earpieces, it was delightful for the actors to start speaking a sentence without knowing how it would end!

In 2023, when we started using one of those publicly available chatbots under the hood of A.L.Ex, the AI suggestions became more bland. It was a negative consequence of tech companies trying to make these chatbots “safe” by making them “honest, helpful and harmless” – but not necessarily useful in a creative context. So once again, it fell upon the human actors to do the leg work, and to provide A.L.Ex with interesting and very specific context. We are sometimes surprised when A.L.Ex says something spicy that was not in our dialogue.

This year, we are bringing a new show to Edinburgh: RoboTales. It is an improvised choose-your-own adventure game, with audience participation. The bot uses speech recognition and a piece of software I spent months developing, to analyse the improv scenes and generate new choices and scene transitions. The audiences control the story by voting on their phones for their preferred choice (like a modern take on the choose-your-own adventure books), and then the actors take the story forward. It is like “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch”, brought to life by AI and the actors’ imagination and improv talent.

How much of each show is planned—and how much is pure chaos?

We are telling a story about our relationship to technology and of the place we are giving it, and at the same time the show progressively builds up the tech. We start with direct interactions with the robot, then with Cyborg actors, then deep fakes and made-up science presentation, until we finish with the long-form choose-your-own adventure. As the show progresses, the technology retreats and we focus more on the actors’ performance. So we have a narrative structure, and the chaos comes from the collision of human and AI suggestions.

What’s been the funniest or strangest moment the AI has created so far?

All the instances where AI created something strange and interesting, happened because someone from the human cast picked it up and noticed it could be funny. Eight years ago, and because of a bug on my side, A.L.Ex would sometimes generate computer code. So we all adopted the word BR to punctuate our sentences, like “See you tomorrow! BR.”. Last year in Edinburgh, we had an improv scene where Holly Mallett (who sings and composes musicals herself) was the Cyborg. When A.L.Ex started sending her lines that looked like a song, Holly picked up on the rhymes and rhythmic structure and burst into a song, interactively written in real time.

You’ve worked in both cutting-edge science and live theatre. What connects those two worlds for you?

Failure—and a “maker” mindset—are what is common to both improvisation and to the scientific method, and I see so many parallels between the two. Improv is all about making offers to your stage partner, knowing that only some of them will work and be funny, and about taking and accepting that risk. Science is all about collaborating, trying new ideas, knowing that most experiments will fail. Like good scientists, improvisers learn from their mistakes over their training, and they also make hypotheses at the start of each scene (Who? What? Where? What is the game of the scene?). Like good theatre people, scientists often improvise scrappy new technical solutions with limited budgets and time.

What’s the biggest misconception people have about AI in creative work?

I would love to quote poet and software engineer Allison Parrish (www.decontextualize.com) who presented and disputed two fallacies about AI in artistic work.

The first fallacy is that “creative labour can be automated” and that AI can in any way replace artists. Like every Edinburgh punter knows, we are here to experience the art made by vulnerable human beings, and to connect to their lived human experience, which simply cannot be automated, no matter how advanced AI technology will become.

The second fallacy is that “writing a computer program to generate aesthetic artifacts is not in itself a creative process” (assuming, of course, that one does more than just type a prompt into a generative AI system). I love creative coding and building robots for performance, because these are strange tools whose default behaviour is to disobey your instructions—until you realise you made a bug in your code that you need to fix. Theatre can be a great playground for pioneering technologies: lights, projections, immersive installations, and now robots. It is even more appropriate that the word “robot” was actually first coined on the theatre stage in the theatre play “R.U.R. – Rossum’s Universal Robots”, which was written over 100 years ago by Czech playwright Karel Čapek.

REVIEW: Pascol

Published on by georgiamcknightLeave a comment

Rating: 4 out of 5.

“I left feeling lighter, wondering how many stories were in the heads of the people around me and how many different ways there are to communicate.”

As a buzzing and excitable audience took their seats, the lights went down and the performers entered. One by one each performer began calling to each other in an individual tone which felt personal to them. Was is an instrument, a language, at times a whale like sound or tribal chant? A new voice arouse from ever corner of the room and I felt myself thinking is that coming from own mind? But no it was a beautiful melody crested by talented vocalist purely to lure us into the space for the next hour and a half… we had arrived into Pascol.

The room was dark, ominous, mystical in some ways but the lighting followed the story exactly how we wanted it to, flashing and spotlighting were it needed it. The company wore neutrals, wonderfully allowing them to incorporate their own character for each story without an ounce of pre-thought; I saw writers, ghosts, 18th century nurses but that was simply my mind playing tricks on me because that dramatically changed as the show progressed.

The performance revolves around the braveness of audience members and pure raw talent of the company. Individuals volunteer to take the microphone during a gap in the show and share a memory with the room. On Sunday night we heard a collection of stories; how a best friend passed due to Cancer, how a woman’s ancestors battled a journey to England, love stories, history, observations, etc. The plethora of tales was endless and had me thinking how many different lives were in the room. 

The Sasha Gefen leads a company that uses a collection of tricks and calls to improvise a vocal story. It truly is one the of most fabulous examples of communication and the importance of listening. I felt part of a welcoming and peaceful cult that celebrated that individual in the room, as if we were all supporting together, a personalised therapy session witnessed by a surrounding crowd. The companies vocals and words bounced off the wall echoing each other. At times they crescendoed in unison and at others interrupting as if disagreeing on the chosen path of one performer. There was instinctive movement on stage, a slightly weaker moment that could potentially be cleaned but it did not ever take me fully out of it therefore I see it as a win.

There were a few moments  of repetition but truly these were scarce and mostly this was done purposely to reflect a moment in the story. I felt in one particular story referring a woman cycling through London in the middle of the night that Bon Ivor had entered the room – that’s how convincing the voices had become as instruments. 

Overall I left feeling lighter, wondering how many stories were in the heads of the people around me and how many different ways there are to communicate. I also came out thinking that these five company members were truly wonderful performers with a gift for singing.

More Information: https://pascolproject.com/ 

REVIEW: 4.48 Psychosis

Published on by Lucy HolzLeave a comment

Rating: 4 out of 5.

25 years later, Sarah Kane’s seminal work still rings true

A pioneer of ‘in-yer-face theatre’, Sarah Kane was known for awaking at 4.48am in a depressed state to write her plays, typically exploring themes of pain and torture, love and desire. Her final play, 4.48 Psychosis has been described as ‘a 75-minute suicide note’, as it debuted at Royal Court Theatre over a year after she hung herself. 

Seeing this play almost exactly 25 years after it’s world premiere in June 2000 in the very same intimate theatre with the very same cast and director, is a surreal experience. We are thrust into the mind of a suicidal woman moving in and out of psychiatric care, this play given extra poignancy due to its autobiographical nature. 

Although mental health is much more part of the conversation today than it was 25 years ago, services are in decline, with a troubled healthcare system struggling to keep up with the needs of society. At a post-show Q and A, audience members speak about the difference between seeing it 25 years ago and now, notably that lots of the psychiatric drugs spoken about used to be just words, but now are familiar supplements they rely on themselves. 

A tight, flawless ensemble, typically 4.48 Psychosis is performed by 3 nameless actors, all portraying the same tormented woman. Daniel Evans, Jo McInnes and Madeleine Potter are a stunning cast, with deeply resonant vocals reverberating around the 80-seat theatre.

Jeremy Herbert’s set consists of a blank white floor, with an angled mirrored ceiling allowing the audience to see themselves and the actors, who make use of the device to frequently lie on the ground and look at us through the mirror. Lighting by Nigel Edwards is abrupt, often jarring, taking us from a cold examination room, to a fuzzy TV set, to a serene psychiatrists office and back again.

Director James Macdonald reflects on when he first staged the work, feeling the need to create some order in the famously ‘kaleidoscopic play’ and demarcate clear scenes and changes in pace to make it seem less like ‘one long howl of pain’. As the play has gained notoriety over the years, this time Macdonald didn’t feel this pressure, letting the work run its course along a central through-line. This production does suffer from this choice, with a lack of pace slowing momentum and leaving the play to drag in some moments. 

A faithful interpretation of the iconic work, Kane’s words still resonate, despite their shocking nature. How relevant they are in the next 25 years will remain to be seen.