Stop editing things, Simon! Sorry, me. But sometimes there's an itch you have to scratch, and sometimes that itch is wanting to see Lucky from "Waiting for Godot" perform Yvan's speech from Yasmina Reza's "Art" and you've had these two clips lying around on your desktop for over a year, and if it hadn't been snowing out you'd probably have gone for that long walk then come back to write those thousand words instead, but it was, and your neck gets cold now at night anyway, so you've spent the day all knotted, which a long walk would probably also have sorted out and now it looks like you might be trying to write a pastiche of the long speech above but that's honestly only just occurred to you and back to that itch, you can edit it all on your phone now which means you can't see the results very well, sure, but it doesn't really matter whether you scratch it very well at all, that's not the point. The point is it's scratched.
(Here I appear to have cropped out most of the snow in this photo of it snowing)
It had heart, and sense, and fun, and painted sets and giant puppets, all perfectly coordinating with the preexisting ersatz marble pillars on the Globe's thrust, and it kept surprisingly close to its episodic source material, with a lucid sympathy for its antagonists (theatre is work, and money does matter) but also an understanding that, at some point, we were owed some real nightmares.
It also did a great job on that winter's afternoon,of drilling home just how great a sacrifice Gepetto makes exchanging his only coat for schoolbooks. I felt every hug.
It was no less cheering to discover afterwards that the extraordinary creative team behind all this was also responsible for the much-loved COWBOIS at the Royal Court, a show whose every choice I'd found baffling, sad, and timid. It was, in fact, healing to discover this. Lively and freeing.
Where I took the stills from.
And talking of the murder of indigenous Americans: among the many Pinocchio adaptations I saw in 2022 was THIS beautiful restoration of a silent film from 1911 directed by Giulio Antamoro that included amongst its narrative tweaks a sequence about half an hour in, in which Pinocchio is rescued from the whale by "Indiani" who make him their chief but also attempt to roast Gepetto on a spit, prompting the puppet to sneak out of his teepee and seek the help of a nearby troop of pith-helmeted machine-gunners. This creative addition stopped me sharing it originally, but I'd always meant to cut a genocide-free edit so that the rest could be more easily enjoyed, and now I finally have, and here it is...
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.
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 Guidefrom 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 22ndat the timebut 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 VibeDON'T DO STARSbless, and then we went to Edinburgh, to receive...
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 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.
First video with the Newphone. So maybe badphone wasn't bad after all. Maybe me bad?
Look! I'm in Edinburgh, and beginning to lose track of how many Jonah Non Grata-related PR assigments I've shared on here, but – as these italics suggest – there's more. I don't think the video above counts, but the influence of Jeremy
Hardingham’s brilliant Incarnate – the first site-specific show I ever appeared in back in 1997, and whose route I attempted to retrace last night – only occurred to me in the middle of answering a question about "lo-fi absurdity" for Made in Shoreditch.
Exciting new Youtube Ai feature.
Here then is that Q&A in full (although it's a bit weird seeing my speaking-to-a-publication voice on this blog... I'm not sure why. It's all public, innit):
Nearly 20 years after its first London outing, Simon Kane is reviving Jonah Non Grata,
a solo show that merges absurdism, hymns, and a heavy dose of holy
confusion. This surreal, comic exploration of power, extremism, and
meaning feels sharper than ever in 2025. We caught up with Simon Kane to unpack his return to the Fringe, the joy of “failed magic,” and the art of staying baffling.
You’re
reviving Jonah Non Grata nearly 20 years after its first London outing.
What made you return to this gloriously strange beast now?
It’s
tempting to say something glib about the absurdity of religious
conflict, but I think what’s most important about the show right now is
how baffling it is. Good art can get us talking, but really good art can
get us to shut up. There’s a lot to be said for reaching out to people
through a piece that defies demographics by not making sense to anyone.
But the real answer is, I missed it, and I could now afford it.
The
show mixes hymns, failed magic tricks, and audience interaction. How do
you choreograph chaos without completely surrendering to it?
Entropy
keeps the chaos in balance, and a lot of this show errs on the side of
grinding to a halt. I added a line this year: “Waiting is also a way of
joining in.” So it’s not really chaos. Also, all that’s just in the
first third. There are proper scenes and everything later on. It’s like
tapas.
You call it a “clownish mystery play.” What does that mean to you – and how does that genre-bending shape audience expectations?
I
guess that description is meant to suggest a shabby, human-scale stab
at the unknowable. Mystery Plays were the earliest plays in (sort of)
English – Bible stories played with a realism bordering upon absurdity
by local Guilds. I think it’s helpful to base an absurd work on a simple
story most people already know. Even if they don’t know that’s what
they’re watching, something will chime.
This is a solo show, but
it feels full of shifting characters and perspectives. How do you
maintain that energy and dynamism alone on stage?
I’ve realised a
lot of the inspiration for this show came from simply asking, what do I
want to do onstage. I know why my character does what they’re doing,
and I don’t mind if the audience doesn’t, because as long as I know, it
will still be watchable, maybe even more so than if the audience knew.
Their curiosity provides the dynamism. That, and the songs help.
Power,
extremism, meaning – your themes hit harder in 2025. How have the
world’s changes affected your interpretation of Jonah’s story?
Jonah’s
look of double denim, bare chin and big sideburns was originally based
on me very much not wanting to look like anyone’s idea of a terrorist,
and that certainly changed, but I don’t mourn the passing of that
prejudice. I was a little worried some themes might seem too glib now,
but I’d forgotten how abstract the piece is. Although a personal sequel
to Shunt’s Gunpowder-plot-inspired, coincidentally 9/11-adjacent show
Dance Bear Dance, it’s not really about terrorism at all. It’s about an
abandoned protagonist’s power fantasy, and love is as much a part of
that fantasy as obliteration.
What’s it like re-entering the belly of the beast – literally and figuratively – after so long away from this material?
I’m
incredibly excited. The body has modes, I guess. I’ve just been writing
television sketches for Mitchell and Webb again, and it turns out the
last time I did that was in 2010, but it doesn’t feel like that. Jonah
was never off the table, let’s put it like that. If you want someone to
see your work, and your work’s a show, you have to do it again.
You’ve
worked with experimental companies like Shunt. What role does ‘poor
theatre’ or lo-fi absurdity play in your creative process today?
Ultimately,
all immersive work has to do is acknowledge your shared environment,
and that’s cheap as chips. Working with Shunt was a dream come true,
inasmuch I’d always wanted to make work that was funny in a way I hadn’t
seen things be funny before – because that’s what I grew up loving –
and Shunt were deadpan and pithy and wildly creative and wildly
ambitious, but of course they ended up with a real budget, and every -fi
going, which they used brilliantly. Maybe just as strong then is an
earlier influence: a writer, performer, and director a few Shunt artists
and I had worked with at Cambridge called Jeremy Hardingham. We did a
show with him in 1997 around the streets of Edinburgh called
“Incarnate”, based on the Gospels, and interspersed with interviews with
Drew Barrymore and sound bites from Reservoir Dogs, which maybe makes
it sound awful, but Jeremy’s script was brilliant and beguiling, and his
no-budget, Pop Absurdist pilfering was a huge influence on Jonah. He
never liked the title The Empty Space, because there are no empty spaces
– Who plays in an empty space? – but taking everything Peter Brook
wrote about “play”, and trying it out with an artist who actually knows
how to play… that freedom, that power… making a show up becomes
surprisingly easy once you’ve got that under your belt.
How do
you want audiences to feel when they leave Jonah Non Grata – confused,
comforted, or just covered in metaphorical rice pudding?
Do you
know the Monty Python Confuse-A-Cat sketch? Confused only like that cat.
Newly mobile. Reset. Maybe even like they want to make their own
version. Like they can do anything. I don’t want the venue to hate me
though, so no rice pudding. I want people to have had fun, and feel
they’ve come through something safely.
Yes, I now use wet soap instead of rice pudding so I can walk offstage all clean.
By the way, do you know the Confuse-A-Cat sketch? It's this:
Some of those answers were informed by six to seven-hundred words I'd written for Broadway World UK – before I'd clocked Jeremy's influence – attempting a brief historical rundown of other great immersive masters like Sophocles, Shakespeare, Chekhov, the York Realist, me, Shunt, you know, that lot, so here's that...
Back when Shunt – the theatre collective of which I’m an associate
artist – started, we didn’t call it “immersive theatre”, we called it
“site-specific” because we took what we were given. One of the reasons
for choosing the Gunpowder Plot as an inspiration for DANCE BEAR DANCE
back in 2001 was that our venue was a railway arch. No rumbling of a
train overhead needed to be ignored now. All attention was rewarded. As
the collective grew, and designer Lizzie Clachan
could afford to create strange new spaces within found spaces,
acknowledgment of every detail of our environment remained crucial. The
site was the text.
Twenty years after first performing the thing most resembling the
shape it’s now in, I’m taking my solo show JONAH NON GRATA to Edinburgh.
I consider it very much a personal sequel to that work with Shunt but,
not wishing to give too much away, the logistics of the piece are those
of most other solo shows: me on a stage, and the audience in their
seats. Nevertheless, I still think of it as immersive, and here’s a
brief, cherry-picked history of what I think immersiveness is, to
explain why.
We could start with the Ancient Greeks. While I’ve not seen the
dramas of Sophocles described as immersive (and of course back then, you
could easily differentiate actors from spectators because, in a kind of
reverse Punchdrunk, the former wore masks) when Oedipus first steps
onstage to demand of his subjects through the hole in his face – at some
length – if any know who’s responsible for the curse fallen upon his
city, every citizen watching would already have known the story of
Oedipus, and known it’s him. Their silence wasn’t simply that of an
engaged audience; there was that added tension. They were complicit.
Permission to be complicit is a staple of immersive work. The
Mediaeval Mysteries are probably the earliest play-texts in (sort-of)
English: short, open-air adaptations of biblical incidents staged by
Professional Guilds. In one York Pageant, local “pinners and painters”
are seen hunched over a particularly slippery assignment, and it’s only
when the job is finished and erected, that the audience can see they
were roping and nailing Christ to the Cross. The author of this piece is
known simply as “the York realist”. Realism is also a staple.
Then there’s the Elizabethans. I’m old enough to have learnt – by
which I mean, old enough to have been wrongly taught – that
Shakespeare’s actors originally were rubbish, and crudely bellowed their
lines because the Globe was an open-air space, with no special lighting
to tell you who to look at. “Wrongly” of course, because once Sam Wanamaker had the thing rebuilt, its first actor manager was Mark Rylance, stammering and standing like Stan Laurel
wondering what he’d done with his keys, captivating audience after
audience with his brilliantly studied vulnerability because, in the open
air, they could see he could see them back. It wasn’t just
soliloquies that were played out to the audience now. Everything had to
be, thought and speech balloons alike. Numerous mob scenes, which had
proven such a headache in beautifully lit black boxes regardless of
their dimensions, were now a piece of piss at the Globe where the
audience was the mob, happy to be whipped up by whatever demagogue
stepped up. We didn’t call it “immersive” when the Globe reopened
either; that was still a word to be used in opposition to the idea of
“traditional” theatre. But the Globe Experiment proved Shakespeare’s
plays had been both.
Then theatre went indoors, and theatrical spaces stopped basing
themselves on the courtyards of inns. It became too expensive to light
an audience for the duration, and the relationship between performer and
spectator couldn’t help but be affected. Over two hundred years later,
in Chekhov’s THE SEAGULL, the young Konstantin’s awkward rebelliousness
is exemplified by his attempt to stage his work in front of a real lake
beneath a real moon. Not a realist piece, but a hugely ambitious,
abstract poem about the beginning and end of all things, it’s still
immersive, albeit fictionally – it’s an attempt to recontextualize his
audience’s experience of their environment, like the rumbling of the
trains in DANCE BEAR DANCE, or the fleeing green figure in the EXIT sign
my reluctant prophet of doom can’t take his eyes off in JONAH NON
GRATA.
If your environment – audience included – is visible, and
acknowledged, a show cannot help but be “immersive”. And if it’s not,
you might be better off putting whatever you’re doing online, and giving
yourself the evening off. “Come and ignore where you are” is still the
default tradition when going to see a play. “Or don’t” is all
“immersive” really means.
I open tomorrow. My technical rehearsal was Monday, and everyone was lovely but the venue still hadn't been built, so I don't entirely know yet what there won't be to ignore there. But, just to prove my inspiration for Jonah changes every time I'm asked, here to play us out is a Q&A for Hinton magazine in which I add to the mix of Shakespeare, Shunt, Jeremy, Deburau and Chris Ware, not only Sulayman Al-Bassam, but the artist I finally, actually realised probably did inspire me to do a show about Jonah: Alasdair Gray, in his little Canongate Introduction to books of the Bible. These interviews have proved really useful. I hope it's not telling tales to say the one below originally went out under the headline "A Whale of a Mid-Life Crisis" but I do want to broadcast public thanks to my PR and her phones today for handling that narrative. I should probably also state explicitly that – apart from Voidspacezine in the previous post – all the Qs in these Q&As are based purely on a single press release (basically this). Maybe you knew that already. It's a new dynamic for me though. Take it away, liminal beings!
Rooted in the Book of Jonah but constantly spiralling into stranger territory, this solo performance is silly, profound, and as Kane puts it, “a temporary reprieve from having to be right.”
You describe Jonah Non Grata as “a clown take on a modern-day mystery play.” Tell us a bit more about this.
The first show I wrote on my own, rather than co-devising with fun people like Shunt who’d actually studied theatre, was a modern-day prequel to Shakespeare’s Othello, because I really wanted to play Iago, and had also just been to Cairo with Sulayman Al-Bassam’s “Al Hamlet Summit”, so any work seemed fair game. For my second play I wanted to go even further back for inspiration, to the old Mediaeval Mystery plays: rough, semi-realist adaptations of old stories from the Bible. Initially, I considered adapting Jesus’ awkward goodbyes on his return from the dead as described in various Gospels, but then I came across Alasdair Gray’s little Canongate introduction to The Book of Jonah, which he described as “a prose comedy” about “an unwilling prophet” who just “wants God to leave him alone”, and realised this should be the next show, and also that it should be – if not a clown show – at least a show where people felt very comfortable laughing at me.
The show originally debuted nearly 20 years ago. Why revive it now - and what’s changed?
In the show? My eyesight’s got worse, so there’s more audience interaction, as I have to ask people to read stuff out to me. Also, I received a very helpful note, after a late-night performance in 2008, to never let my character lose their temper. The technology that was lying around in 2005 is rarer to source now too, and you can’t just light candles onstage. Bits have been added. Bits have drifted off. But the biggest change is that stupid, evil, wrong people are even more of a problem in the world, and making sense doesn’t seem to be enough to diffuse that. So the show’s absurdity maybe seems more of a radical kindness now – a temporary reprieve from having to be right.
There are hymns, bungled magic tricks, a hotel room, and someone who might be on the moon. What’s your method for weaving such a mix into a cohesive narrative?
Bit by bit. I worry that the more I go into my inspirations for the piece, the more I risk closing off how people might enjoy it. It’s intentionally abstract, but the narrative’s there, in The Book of Jonah. I don’t want audiences to think it’s necessary for them to know that to enjoy the show though. Treat it like a concept album, or a cabaret. Music helps. A lot of the show was made to accompany the music I wanted to put into it. It’s practically a musical.
How does audience interaction influence the tone or outcome of the show if at all?
I’ve realised, in many ways, the show is simply about a character trying to work out how to talk to other people. And those other people are, for the most part, the audience. But because the audience is real, and the character is not, and we know that’s the deal when you come to see a show – a bit like Hamlet’s soliloquies – nothing will ultimately be sorted out. So I think probably the outcome won’t be affected at all. But hopefully watching that failure play out will be something, and maybe even itself feel like a connection.
What’s the strangest or most memorable reaction you’ve had from an audience member?
I think it’s my duty to out-weird the audience, and the richness of an interaction is not in its uniqueness or anecdotal worth, but in the simple fact it’s a reaction. In other words, I don’t remember. Honestly, what I find weirdest is just that so many people get it.
What do you hope to take away from Edinburgh Fringe this year?
Apart from all the stuff you’d expect me to want to take away from performing a show at an International Arts Festival – like love and respect and glory and validation and happy memories and job and book offers – I hope to take away with me some idea of what to do next. I’ve never really made anything as a means to an end, and I have the CV to prove it.
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