Flash Quotes

  Sure, another reason I haven't blogged so much might simply be procrastination. I didn't write much about Edinburgh, but as this year began with me wondering whether to take a show there, let's finish 2025 by sweeping up the spoils. I got a trailer out it for a start...

 

 

 

 Pow. Huge thanks to DMLK for making it look like there were more than eight people in. Audiences averaged around ten in the end (for a room that sat around eighty) and one of the many lessons I learnt from taking JONAH NON GRATA to the Assembly Rooms was stars on posters don't necessarily mean bums on seats, so bums on posters next time? Maybe stars on bums? I'll stick links to the reviews that the trailer quotes from at the end of this post, but purely in tribute to the unimpeachable work done by this show's hype machine – ie Madelaine at Gingerbread – not for my sake. This isn't about me.

  But I mean, look at that. It's not easy to PR a twenty-year-old show either. You're not up for any awards. Still, Madelaine worked actually literally round the clock to get me press even if I had to write it myself. I shared some of those think pieces back in July, but not the lot, so let me slip into italics now, as I present an article I wrote for Gareth Vile's Analogue magazine about why JONAH NON GRATA's a clown show...

I remember an old interview with Dylan Moran where he stated an ambition to do absolutely nothing on stage, and have the audience get it.

In a time of such social upheaval no-one even noticed it, Woody Allen made three comedies – in a row – about the assassination of a political leader: “Bananas, “Sleeper”, and “Love and Death”. In each, the ethical and religious arguments against taking human life were inextricably tangled with the protagonist’s solipsistic, Bob-Hope-inspired cowardice and laziness.

It’s a cliché that every comedian wants to play Hamlet. The assumption, I think, is they hope to be taken more seriously. But Hamlet’s one of them already: more existentially comfortable splitting hairs and taking the piss than defeating Evil. The prophet Jonah also – at least in the most famous incident from the short book of the Bible bearing his name – is an inaction hero, comically human-sized. Initially, he refuses outright to call down the Wrath of God upon Nineveh, escaping on a boat. But then a storm comes, and there’s not much to do once you’re inside a whale.

When people ask me what “Jonah Non Grata” is about, I say it’s about that story – “sort of” – but it doesn’t matter if the audience don’t know it. When I’m asked what it is, I say it’s “a clown show”, because that’s what all my friends were making when I first devised it in my bedroom back in 2005. And if they ask me what a clown is, I‘m stuck.

The word means something. It has to. But read any casting breakdown of an advert calling for a “funny bones” or a “Zach Galifianakis/Martin Freeman/Jack Black type” (I only get the male ones, sorry) and you’ll see it’s hard to put into words. “Yes!” is one I remember from a clowning weekend sometime last century given by the great Angela De Castro – head of the “Why Not Institute” – and if you only have one word with which to teach someone how to be a clown, “Yes” might be the best. But doesn’t that then run entirely counter to my opening? Yes. And Why Not? Harpo and Chico try to steal a painting. Chico hears someone coming and hisses at Harpo to hide. Harpo stands on his head in the middle of the room. He’s still saying yes, just to something else. “If thy mind dislike anything,” Horatio tells Hamlet, “obey it.” Yes. Exactly. No.

I had a good pandemic. I hadn’t performed Shakespeare in a while, but with all the theatres shut, I decided to try performing the Complete Works on YouTube in my pyjamas, using a range of radio sketch show voices to differentiate characters, and some home-recorded foley, because why not? I hope the tone didn’t read as taking the piss. Or at least, no more than Rylance at the Globe – who never winked at the audience, but always let them in fully onto how weird everything going was. I like it when actors pretend to be the audience’s friend.

Weirdly though, I don’t like it when stand-ups do it. Maybe because stand-ups are pretending to be themselves. Every solo performer – or at least every solo performer with decent enough PR – is wildly outnumbered by their audience, which I find inherently, situationally funny. But stand-ups can’t acknowledge this power imbalance, because they’re not playing a character, so it’s just awkward. But Jonah is a character. And the audience’s friend, because – although he never uses the word “God” (or indeed “Jonah”) – they are clearly his congregation. The audience however, playing themselves, are under no obligation to be on Jonah’s side in return. That’s the motor of not just this show, but a lot of the work I was lucky enough to make with Shunt that inspired it: “Dance Bear Dance”… “Money”… The audience outnumbers the performer, but the performer knows the territory. I’ve made it sound like we’re at war. We’re not. But it’s nice if we’re strangers.

I assume most people know the story of Jonah, even if they’re not, like me, culturally Christian – or Jewish – and even if they don’t know that’s the story I’m telling. Old stories are good, because you don’t have to worry about making anything up, you can just get on with depicting people, and you can’t be blamed for the horrible things they want to do. And I’ve always thought Theatre was a good place to stage demons. But those attending have to feel it’s their own demons they’re watching, not those other fuckers’. They didn’t seem nearly so prevalent, even back during “The War on Terror”. So, I’ve added one line since which I hope will help keep us safe: “Waiting is also way of joining in."

 

Production shot taken during the technical rehearsal by John Scott. 

(I think I was thinner by the time we shot the trailer.)

 

 Back to the italics, as I present next an interview (by which I mean they emailed me questions and I emailed them answers) with the British Comedy Guide from the 10th of August, illustrated with more of John's production shots, which is why it's important to get production shots (and of course a press release, otherwise what are they going to ask me about, which is another thing I learnt)...

You describe Jonah Non Grata as "Hamlet, only sillier - or Tommy Cooper, only slower." What's the most ridiculous thing that happens onstage?

I don't want to give too much away, but possibly my entrance. And I'm not saying it's all downhill from there - my final exit's pretty ridiculous as well - but when you're presenting a solo immersive piece without any scenery, inspired by a three-thousand-year-old story about a prophet who lives in a fish, with self-penned soft techno songs (one of which is purely a three-verse summary of the Scrap Brain Zone of Sonic the Hedgehog) it's... Do you know, I think it's when I try to mime getting the air nozzle working on a plane. It's not good.

Is it true you've performed the complete works of Shakespeare on YouTube in your pyjamas?

No. But it is five thirty-eighths true. I performed - forgive the abbreviations, but they're long titles and I'm a massive wanker - Two Gents, Shrew, Titus, Julius Caesar, and Richard the Second, that last one twice because I didn't like the first version. I absolutely nailed the others though.

It was lockdown. Everyone was making stuff online, and I'd always been YouTube-curious, so I started reading aloud Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year. When I finished that, I looked around for something else to read, and realised if I did a Shakespeare a week, I'd be done by Christmas - performing one act a day, with summaries and regular content warnings - but that didn't happen in the end, because it turned out to be a lot harder than just reading a book, and things were beginning to open up, and Black Lives Mattered so distractions became less useful. But I'm incredibly proud of both the quality and quantity of that work. I remember everyone making so much during lockdown. We thought it was the internet keeping us from having hobbies. Turns out it was pubs. Oh, and they weren't my pyjamas.

What's harder - writing an existential clown show or delivering legal advice in EastEnders?

Both are phenomenally easy, it turns out. In the first case, you just take a really old story everyone knows, make a mix tape to accompany it, listen to it while pissing around in your bedroom, and write down anything you might want to do again in front of an audience. Then you wait twenty years until you land a nice advert and can take it to Edinburgh.

In the second case, you send in a self-tape playing one of a million faceless interfaces with authority soap characters have to face daily, then get a phone-call saying you've landed the role of "seedy lawyer". You turn up knowing your lines. Everyone is brilliant. Danny Dyer's brilliant. Kellie Bright's brilliant. The director's brilliant. You're brilliant. Three cameras record it, and it never happens again. It's brilliant.

What's the most absurd line you've had to say in character?

That "had to" is interesting. So is "in character". I actually got to play Hamlet once. When Horatio tells him the ghost of his dead father has been sighted in a suit of armour on the battlements of Elsinore, his response is "This is very strange" which always got a laugh.

"You wouldn't shit on a bun" from the Shunt show Money also gets quoted back to me sometimes, but I wrote that one. The line I'll be declaiming on pavements in my final days though, like Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood, is Sir Maxwell House's intro to The Monster Hunters podcast: "Take two elements. Any two elements. Say, electricity and water. On their own, perfectly harmless. But mix them together, maybe in a bowl... Dynamite!"

Who's your dream audience member for this show - and who would be absolutely baffled?

Exactly. Yes. Them.

 

 The following day, August the 11th, I did an actual interview in person, with Peter Green who was lovely and posted a slightly expurgated (ie minus me gushing about my PR) recording HERE. It's a good reflection of where I was two weeks into the run, and includes a few other lessons I'd learnt, such as how to describe the show when handing out flyers: it had become clear from the look of those walking out halfway through having clearly expected a Play about a Man from the Bible, that a stronger contract with any future crowd might be forged by abandoning the initial pitch "it's based on the Book of Jonah" in favour of "it's a mad show about nothing." I also reflect in the interview on having totally missed the "Art Comedy" bus: whether or not to bill the show under Comedy, rather than Theare, had always been a quandary, and it turns out – due partly to the brilliant and queer work produced that year by BigHead Comedy – that 2025 might have been the year to make that switch. Anyway, I hope Art Comedy remains a thing long enough for me to try and take some credit for it. There's more.

 

musical accompaniment

 

 Back to the press. My final piece was for a music magazine, Fame, published along with a few more production shots on August the 14th...

 While I make not claims for it as a "process", I went about making my first solo show the same way I would advise anyone to: I chose a very old story everyone knew as my starting point – in this case the Book of Jonah (of "and the whale" fame) – then, instead of worrying about how to tell it, built up a playlist of music which might accompany that story, and at my own leisure in my own bedroom, worked out things to do to it which I wouldn't mind doing again in front of an audience.

This may be a generational thing. When I was a student in the nineties, beginning to associate with people who were making theatre from scratch, we didn’t just put movie posters on our walls, we listened to carefully curated playlists of movie soundtracks. Trainspotting. Pulp Fiction. Romeo plus Juliet. Everyone had these CDs, and pre-existing songs beloved by a director were an integral – structural – part of work we found exciting. 

When I graduated, we didn’t disperse, and I started working with a theatre collective in a railway arch in Bethnal Green, called Shunt. Under this arch, behind the Oxo Tower, and finally, in a sprawl of tunnels beneath London Bridge station, we created absurd spaces around which the audience could move, which might change beyond recognition the moment spectators’ backs were turned. Losing your audience is normally considered a bad thing, but having an audience let themselves get lost is different, and essential to these changes were not only the extraordinary designs of Lizzie Clachan, but the versatile and hugely enjoyable soundscapes of Ben and Max Ringham. How, as a performer, could we accompany such compositions, and bring these spaces to life? That was the process I took into making Jonah Non Grata. (And it’s also why I can literally say I have more experience dancing about architecture than I do writing about music.)

 

The show I’m taking to Edinburgh this year I made alongside that work. It is in many ways a personal sequel to it, but as a solo show, it’s also far more suited to rooms above pubs, and – not wishing to give too much away – the audience pretty much stay in their seats (unless there’s a hymn). I wanted it still to have that what-would-now-be-called “immersiveness” though, and music was crucial for this. Nothing I chose for my soundtrack could be too “on the nose” though. The Ringhams’ work for Shunt, while highly evocative, was never generic, and what exactly was being evoked was part of a show’s mystery, something to play with, or against. So there’s no whale song in Jonah, for example. Trying to work out what’s happened once you’ve been swallowed by a whale is, I think, a far more interesting state to play than knowing you’re in a whale, and I’m very happy for the audience to share that mystery. Nearly everything I do onstage, nearly everything we hear, is about existing in the story, rather than telling it. 

 

And there are a lot of songs. An abstract space invites abstract text, something sparer than a monologue. Rather than lectures, I learnt working with Shunt that the audience might be better addressed by awkward questions, slogans, ritual, found text or invented catchphrases, language as part of the alien landscape. Or of course, lyrics. There’s an economy to lyrics. People receive words differently when they’re sung, and a performer delivers them differently too. Songs are time stretchers, time savers, and, as well as releasing words from their obligation to convey specific information, music releases an audience from its obligation to follow what’s going on. This can be essential when a public might worry they’re not “getting it”. All attention should be rewarded, but rather than demanding intellectual engagement, I think there should always be space for an audience to drift off, without fear of getting lost, especially if – as may happen at the Edinburgh Fringe – they’ll be seeing four or five other shows that day. 

I hope this helps.

  Hmm. Two "though"s. Not good. 

 Anyway, that's what I wrote. Just before I move onto the reviews: I lost or maybe I should just say spent ten thousand on the whole thing in the end, which is what I expected to lose, but I wonder if I'd have still lost it if I hadn't exxpected to. it was the most nerve-wracking show I have ever done which is probably a good thing, Edinburgh New Town's not what it was ten years ago in terms of passing trade, I was surprised how long it took me to be in the mood to see anything else, at least two weeks, if I return with a solo show I'll try to make sure it's still part of a larger group of people, every night saw somebody not like Jonah and somebody absolutely love it and with single-figure crowds there's only so much you can sway that, I felt like an artist, if not a working artist, and I finally want to make a next show, and if you came, thank you, and whether or not you did, let's shake off these italics, and happy new year!

 

 Here in France, it's just turned 2026, and a warm hello to everyone sticking around for the plaudits. So. PR's plan to do a second London preview at the Hen and Chickens in order to potentially have something to stick to the posters as soon as we were up, bore beautiful, juicy fruit, although I balked at turning Ben Moor's whales into stars...

 

 Still, long term readers of the blog will know how much those whales will have meant to me. As for the rest, here are the links along with any quotes that ended up electric-stapled to the flyer. That's how I'm celebrating. (I also have port.)

 

So, I already mentioned Rich Cline's review from June 22nd at the time but here it is again: "There's a reason why this show has such a following: it's a near-perfect display of surrealist comedy, brain-bending and utterly hilarious... a skilful performance that brings out hauntingly deep, dark ideas about humanity in unimaginably amusing style."

 

July 20th, The Reviews Hub     (This was a hell of a review. ) "A divinely commanded clown... absurd and profound... Kane's performance is extraordinary... He welcomes both laughter and awe... so thematically dense that you could discuss it for days on end, but it is also an absolutely joyous, in-the-moment experience." This was a hell of a review.

 

July 21st, Sarah Birch Hackney Citizen  (quality) "A virtually indescribable cacophony of humour and found language...  be sure not to miss this captivating five-star-quality production."

July 22nd, Malcolm Beckett Theatre Vibe DON'T DO STARS bless, and then we went to Edinburgh, to receive...

 

 

 But also – on August the 6th – from Bruce the Moose Bruce on the Fringe .5 and then...

 

August 9th, Erin Ross Edinburgh Guide  "The show is, yes, funny; it’s absolutely mad; but it has a startling poignancy. Perhaps it’s the sheer conviction of this writer and performer... The audience left dizzy, happy and connected having experienced something very strange together, something to think on and share when someone inevitably asks, “What did you see at the festival?” Don’t miss the chance to see something devout immersive and interactive theatre lovers have lauded for many years; it’s the fringiest thing at the Fringe."
 

August 11th, Kay Marquis The Wee Review  "Kane manages to be both alarmingly unpredictable and reassuringly genial... it may dwell on angst and be full of sinister shocks and disorientating requests, but it’s very funny... for anyone looking for something different, this is perfect."

 

And then my first actual print review on August 12th, from Hamish Gibson in
Fest 

 

Never mind, let's check on those audience reviews (thanks, Morgan!) 

 So the show was, if not finding its audience, at least losing its non-audience, and trouble was being shot...

 

August 13th, Sean Greenhorn The List , a big one which we didn't use any quotes from, but I still enjoyed the writing: "It’s always tough to review a show like Jonah Non Grata; a show that consistently wrongfoots the audience, revelling in awkward moments where things don’t seem to be working. It’s tough because, to some, the lack of laughter is the point, and can perversely lead to the biggest laughs of all. Simon Kane’s surreal anti-comedy piece is loosely about dilemmas and decisions. Or a vengeful man who wants to stay at the Marriott. Or simply the slow unravelling of an entertainer. It’s honestly hard to tell." 

 

 The show was definitely better when people laughed though, I knew that by now. You can't let the audience know you're in on the joke however without breaking character, but I was getting better at it...

August 17th, Elise Mc Leod Ruby TV (who don't do stars)

August 19th, Oli Fuller Binge Fringe  "An hour of theatre that will have you on the edge of your seat and will keep you thinking about it for the rest of your life... It is artistic and beautiful and indescribably enticing... an absurdist masterpiece. Go see this show, do not put it on a list, do not see it if you have time, book it now." 

 

Oli stayed around afterwards. I loved Oli.

 

August 22nd, My Goddess Complex  "equal parts absurdist theatre, stand-up comedy, and performance art."

 

And finally...

August 25th, Ben Kulvichit Exeunt (who also don't to stars) "I like liquorice." And it should have turned 2026 in Britain too now so HAPPY THAT! No rush.

 

 

5th of March 2017

Notebookery 5 (2009)

 This one's a lovely shape but was used pretty functionally. If I wanted to make something to show off I now had the blog, so it's full but not pretty. A few timid awkward nods towards scrapboookery, the odd review or boat ticket, but barely a doodle. This was the book I took to work. I think I was given it in hospital. There are one or two notes on Time Spanner then, and on whatever I was reading in the London Dungeon at the time, and a lot of notes on Shunt's Money. According to this post from 2010 the outline copied below from the original scroll was in place as early as March, just one month into rehearsal, which sounds far too early. Maybe I meant May. (Click to enlarge.)

(And I think this brings me back up to a one post a day average, just so I know.)

GO, GONG GANG!!!

 WOOOO!!! Give me an O! Give me a U! Give me a T! Give me an S! Give me... another T! Give me a... Give me A! Give me... hang on...  GO, FINNEMORE!!! How's that for not getting sixty per-cent on anything, you lovely fella – Sorry! – lovely Fellow! And please note, readers, that the Writers' Guild didn't just give John this award last night in recognition for his Outstanding Contribution to radio comedy writing, or to comedy writing, but to Writing – which is world-straighteningly just. Because John strives, and for as long as I've known him has always striven (striven?... strove? strived?) to be an outstanding writer, not just by not his own self-punishing standards, but by those of every single audient in front of whom he goes out and performs this stuff. Performing it alongside him is one of the least worrying things a person can do, and being asked to do it has always felt like a prize in itself – perhaps the only prize John will never be able to win. 

I mean, just look at the list of works above! No. Look at it. Closer... Nothing missing, is there, Writers' Guild? Just look at the breadth of that. That episode of "Safety Catch" he wrote? Yep, that's there. "Dead Ringers"? Yep. Mm-hm. All there. Yhm. Nooooothing missing, nope... 

 OH! AND my friend, and former creative fixture of the Shunt Lounge, Season Butler, has won Best First Novel for "Cygnet", which I raved about last year on Instagram thus: "a bit like what I guess it feels like having a biro stuck in your throat so you can breathe easier feels like – shouldn't make you safer but does", which was meant to be a recommendation, because it is also brilliant.

 It's a shame there's nothing of John's you can currently enjoy as well. Wait... let me check that list of works again... Anything? Mm? Maybe also to do with swans? Nothing? Nope. Oh well. Hallelujas all round.

P.S. Don't forget! Frankenstein Wednesday tomorrow! Let's see if that happens!

Story Cards for Feral Children

 The following set of six colourful, pre-water-damaged cards have been specifically designed to arrest the attention of your feral child, and to encourage discussion about such topics as friendship, language, humans and woods.

 

 

 Okay, I actually came up with these cards as part of a three day workshop with the actor Ellie Kendrick – who is extraordinary and by no means scared of her own drool – and Gemma Brockis, who has been wanting to make something about feral children for years. It was fun, and often exciting.

What I saw in "The Architects"

I was walking a little oddly yesterday, because I'd just done a photoshoot for David Rosenberg promoting his latest piece, the Glen Neath-scripted Ring. (Had David tried to call it "Ring Piece"? Of course he had.) None of which really brings me to this write up of Shunt's latest show, which ended last Saturday, but the post's late enough and at least I don't have to worry now about spoilers...

I loved "The Architects". I saw it tonight (for "tonight" read January 11th) and Keeps and I got back from Venice only yesterday, so my bar for using the word "love" is pretty high. 

 It was giddily rewarding to turn up, having felt so thrown by my non-involvement in this one, and be returned to the days when shunt was just a company I followed, and to find that they are still by far my favourite makers of pretty much anything. Critically they do themselves no favours by wearing their genius round their ankles I suppose, but good, it's still there on display, if only those without a sense of humour wouldn't be so squeamish. And still thrown, of course I come away wanting to tear off the stuff I think keeps it from being perfect, but that's what fans do, and here "perfect" doesn't mean something small and achievable, it means that thing which alerts you to what it is you should be wanting, which is massive. 

 The myth of the Labyrinth was the starting point this time, and I've long thought the labyrinth is shunt's real medium (there's a quote somewhere in Ken Campell's "Violin Time" which I can't find now, about how great it would be if the National Theatre could create works backstage). But there was also an interest in the myth of the feral child that goes back to devising of  "Money", which clearly informed the depiction of the Minotaur.

 

 

 Yes, we saw a Minotaur! And we got fed to it. Or at least in the perfect show in my head we did, as soon as it was revealed to us we'd never left the labyrinth (and the hollow cow wasn't the only commission in which people get screwed). But what do you do with an audience once you've killed them? "You kissed our children goodbye" the monitors said, and I realised that having been treated to the simulation of a cruise, only now were we really being made to feel like heroes, because now we were being sent to our deaths. Except it turns out we weren't. There was still some stage fighting and aeriel stuff simulating dying to get through, but in amongst that sudden shift in vocabulary was the glorious revelation of our killer: a child with a terrifying mask that hid an even more terrifying face, who looked lost and then lobbed a brick. 

 I remember Gemma talking about the seeds of it last year. She said the Athenians would never have seen anything like Minos' palace at Knossos. Of course it seemed like a Labyrinth. She said that "bull" meant what "wolf" meant, that "minotaur" maybe simply meant "feral", that Daedalus who designed the palace said to hold the Minotaur also, less famously, designed the cow-shaped contraption said to facilitate Queen Pasiphae's impregnation by a bull in the first place. And I knew the myth, the Athenian virgins sent by boat to be sacrificed, and I left for New Zealand imagining a pamphlet found through the letterbox entitled "Why We Eat Children". 

 So I knew all this, and maybe – maybe – this gave me the edge over the rest of the audience, but really it was all there in the show, SPOILER alert and all. Having sounded that, I must admit the spoilers I read probably helped my enjoyment, if anything, since I knew enough to time what in hindsight seems the best entrance, and to find what I suspect was the best seat. In fact, I'm pretty sure the show is unspoilable. No spoiler can prepare you for that scenery. It's no insult to go on about the scenery if your medium's a labyrinth, and Lizzie Clachan's scenery here is unbeatable (and I've just got back from Venice, remember.)

Nige?

 It was so simple, although making it that simple must have been complicated (Kudos, Louise Mari). And it was funny, really funny, and when your jokes involve two hundred and fifty moving subjects, blackouts and a live band, that too must take a while to get right, longer than any critic will give you. I hear there was only a month's rehearsal this time, an altogether more affordable working method I guess, and one that produced similarly happy results over a decade ago with the Tennis Show, my first experience of working with shunt, and again a beautifully simple idea. So this seems the way forward, and that it didn't include me I find a bit worrying. But not while I moved through it. Or sat at the back, in the corner, basking in the kind of isolated fantasy landscape Chris Goode probably finds so resistible, but for whose construction I only ever feel a child-like gratitude. And here, that construction is the subject. I mean, it's called "The Architects". It's the kernel of a myth told to us – and with us – smartly, lightly, meticulously, hilariously. Is anyone else doing this? I got it and I loved it.

Right, there's a "Sightseers" review knocking round here somewhere as well...

He too woke with his head in the toilet of an inconceivably large house he must have once commissioned, with the odd rope hanging between platforms, and walls you couldn't see, "If I was a Rich Man" playing in every wing, and his very own Nightmare Room.

Whoo! Song of the Year!

 

Coffee or Tea?

 Lisa Gail is of course most famous for the far horribler hit 3 Second Rule, but I think actually I like this one. Anyway I couldn't shift it from my head at work today. Having said that, work today did chiefly consist of shouting at a foggy queue in cockney about smog and textiles before trying to herd 25 of them into the spewing lines of two black-parachute-silk-filled crates, killing the lights, turning on the sounds of coughing, hooves and "Timmy?!" and leaving the punters to God, all on a three minute cycle, so maybe my head hates me... The London Dungeon is moving. Bit by bit. Something had to be done with the room that was once Sweeney Todd's so management decided to make it a room of fog. The big fans and the black silk are our designer Verity's nod to the opening scene of "Money". True. Up the workers!
   

 P.S. I've just remembered another callback to shunt, which is the appearance of smoke in London Bridge Station occasioning the arrival of the Fire Brigade and subsequent instructions to the downstairs feature, reliant almost entirely on filling a room with smoke, to not have smoke.

A go on Eliza

"ELIZA – a friend you could never have before" (which already sounds iffily ambiguous, and unlike anything an actual person might say) is an interactive computer programme developed back in the 1960's at MIT, a "chatterbot", according to wikipedia. An online version of her – it, sorry – exists here, and to celebrate the opening of Tom Lyall's "Defrag" this week, at the Camden People's Theatre (speaking of excellent friends), I thought I'd have a go. I'm "You". She starts...

  Eliza: Hello. I am ELIZA. How can I help you? 

You: Who are you?

  Eliza: Would you prefer if I were not []?

You: What is []?

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: The answer interests me. 

  Eliza: Can you elaborate on that?

You: No. Sorry.

  Eliza: You are being a bit negative.

I then typed in "You're old."
But weirdly it came up as:

You: yes

  Eliza: You are sure?

You: Hang on, that's not what I said!

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: What?!

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: What? This one? Or the last one. But the last one wasn't a question –

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: This is it now, is it?

 Eliza: Please go on.  

You: "Does that question interest you?"

  Eliza: Oh, i [].

I then typed "WHAT IS []?"
But  it came up as:

You: yes

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: THAT'S NOT WHAT I TYPED!

  Eliza: Does that question interest you?

You: Yes. Yes it does.

  Eliza: You are sure?  

You: Yes. Sorry I mean "yes"

  Eliza: You are sure?

You: Positive.

  Eliza: Please go on.

You: I've completely lost the thread of this conversation – Do you know Tom?

  Eliza: Oh, i know tom.

You: Okay, "tom". Do you know he's got a show on?

  Eliza: Oh, i know hes got a show on.
  
You: Okay... What's it called?  

 Eliza: Please go on.

You: Please go on your mum?

  Eliza: What about your own mum?

You: Please go on.

  Eliza: Please go on.

You: No, you wanted to say something about my mum.

  Eliza: Why do you say your mum?

You: YOU said my mum. I said YOUR mum.

  Eliza: Why do you say your mum you said my mum?

You: I didn't.

  Eliza: Can you elaborate on that? 

You: yes

  Eliza: You are sure?
  
You: Do you know Alan Turing?

  Eliza: Oh, i know alan turing.  

You: You two get on, do you?

  Eliza: Oh, i [].

You: I'd prefer it if you didn't

  Eliza: Do you wish that i didnt?  

You: Yes.

  Eliza: You are sure?  

You: I'm afraid so.

  Eliza: Does it please you to believe I am afraid so?  

You: This friendship has basically run its course I think.

  Eliza: Can you elaborate on that?

You: Absolutely. You're not real, and you're annoying and you don't understand what I'm saying anyway and I'm only doing this because I thought it would make a fun blog post, and I've been meaning to write about Tom's show about Artificial Intelligence but also I suppose I don't want to write that much about it because A) I don't want to give anything away, and B) outside of the content of the show itself my only other take on it was how much it reminded me of all the stuff he helped rescue after the fire, and of the months those boxes spent in his flat while my juvenilia dried out, and I wasn't sure about whether I should write about that because it seemed a bit solipsistic for a plug, and because all the photos I took of those boxes were on a memory stick which I've lost, although maybe that could be somehow elegantly turned in on itself as part of the post. Something about "We lose everything in the end."

  Eliza: Why do you say your only other take on it you was what much it reminded you of all the stuff he helped rescue after the fire and of the months those boxes spent in his flat while your juvenilia dried out and you wasnt sure about whether you should write about that because it seemed a bit solipsistic for a plug and because all the photos you took of those boxes was on a memory stick which ive lost although perhaps that could be somehow elegantly turned in on itself as part of the post something about we lose everything in the end?  

You: Because I want the post to have some visual element. And having just archived the whole blog onto blogspot it struck me how much of it detailed the unpacking of those boxes the first time round, ie when my parents moved to France and I suddenly had a room full of everything I owned. And how if I hadn't blogged stuff as I unpacked it there would be some things I had no record of at all after the fire.

  Eliza: Do you wish that you hadnt blogged stuff as you unpacked it there would be some things you had no record of at all after the fire?

You: No. That's my point. And that's the thing about theatre, isn't it. You make something and then it's gone. I keep telling people I want to work in more accessible media like television, but actually that's not it all. I don't think I do care about the numbers, I just want something to last.

  Eliza: Why do you say your point and thats the thing about theatre isnt it i make something and then its gone you keep telling people i want to work in more accessible media like television but actually thats not it all you dont think you do care about the numbers you just want something to last?

You: Because I haven't been making theatre. And it's tempting. But I have to remember making it on my own has never been my dream, just something I was allowed to do.

  Eliza: Do you dream often?

You: Loads. I've taken a month off to try and write, and I'm sleeping til 1 in the afternoon sometimes. I have written things though.

  Eliza: Does it please you to believe I am sleeping til 1 in the afternoon sometimes you have written things though?

You: Mm. You're tired. Anyway, thanks for this.

  Eliza: How long have you been tired anyway thanks for this?

You: Stop.

  Eliza: Please go on.

Tom Lyall's superb show Defrag is on here as part of a whole Science Fiction Theatre season. See it! See it blind! Meanwhile the interview he gave about it, the one that tipped me off about the existence of Eliza, is up here but I'd save that until you've seen the show as there's spoilers.
Shunt, the people I normally made theatre with when I wasn't making it on my own, also have a show opening this week, "The Architects", which looks stupendous, and probably deserves a post of its own but I've had it with Eliza, so head's up!
And this post's visual element is a picture of Tom working some hat boxes while getting costumed for "Money", checking nothing falls off.