Feature Category: Article

by Ed Fortune

Luis Carazo is an actor best known for his roles in the likes of The Last Ship and NCIS: Los Angeles. He’s best known to gaming fans for his role as Zerxus Ilerez in the D&D live play show Exandria Unlimited: Calamity. We caught up with him to talk about his latest role in a brand new live-play show, the horror-based detective mystery Candela Obscura:The Circle of Needle and Thread.

STARBURST: How would you describe The Circle of Needle and Thread to a fan of Columbo?

Luis Carazo: I believe the format of how a case begins in Candela is similar to Columbo, and part of what is compelling is watching how the investigators piece together clues and what they do to try to solve the case. But in Candela Chapter Two, there’s quite a bit of personal history carried by the characters that give it a certain kind of weight.

Who is your character? And why did you make those choices? Did you draw upon anything specific for that role?

I play Marion, who, to use Auntie B’s [Marisha’s PC] words, is a “sweet boy”. He’s a good kid with a good heart who never lost that as he grew up because he had to hold onto that part of himself due to what was taken from him as a child. In spite of that, he has a very pure and almost simple-minded way of seeing the world. He’s loosely inspired by one of my favourite stories, Pinocchio. I was really curious about exploring something parallel to how Pinocchio is trying to become ‘a real boy’ because he feels he would be discarded if he remains as he is.As things unfolded, I wanted to see what would happen if and when he was well on the other side of that lesson.

How do you prepare for this role, and is it a different routine for Critical Role?

The way I prepare for any role depends on the specific demands of that role and the story we’re in, but I always involve some way to try to get behind how they see the world and how they believe others see them. With Marion, I spent a lot of time thinking about a very specific event from his childhood and also some events in the war he experienced with Sean and Nathaniel, Brennan and Travis’s characters, and how that all shaped his POV and what he fears about and hopes for in the future. 

We last saw you in Calamity. That was intense. How does this compare?

I’ll just say… this is intense [laughs]. 

What draws you most to this particular world? Why this particular genre?

Ooooo, I really like the horror genre. I like dark stories, puzzles and mysteries. There’s so much potential for all of that in Candela. It’s exciting to me.  

What other roles in other worlds would you like to play?

I really want to play in a sci-fi futuristic setting, but it looks like I’m about to scratch that itch… 

If you were to rescue a piece of media/art and keep it safe until the sun died out, what would it be?

The Man Who Fell In Love with The Moon by Tom Spanbauer and The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. I know I picked two…

What recent piece of media has delighted you the most and why?

Pan’s Labyrinth. I know it’s not recent, but it will always stay with me.

What is the future of TTRPGs? Is it okay to pronounce TTRPG as ‘Titterpig?’

I’ve never heard titterpig [laughs]. Sounds naughty! More and more people are noticing the power of collaborative storytelling that is TTRPG. I think they’re only going to grow.

Where can we see the show? Should we dress up?

August 31st on the Critical Role Twitch channel, plus at select Cinemark movie theatres! As for dressing up, I’m all for it! And if you want to let me know what you think of Candela, or Calamity, or if you want to keep up with what I have around the corner, find me by just searching my first and last name on any social media, including Instagram, Blue Sky, Threads, and Twitter.

By Nick Spacek

Composer Dara Taylor‘s work can be found in films as diverse as the madcap comedy Barb & Star Go to Vista del Mar and the dramatic The Tender Bar, along with director Jessica M. Thompson’s modern vampire tale, The Invitation. Her score for the new NSFW animal comedy, Strays sees her working in both comedy and action, resulting in “a score that speaks to the heart of the film and its characters, which is finding your support and chosen family.” We spoke with the composer about her work for this new film.

STARBURST: What attracted you to Strays? The idea sounds like a kid’s movie, but then you see that first trailer, and it’s very much apparent this is not a kid’s movie.

Dara Taylor: No. No children allowed. I read the script, and it was hilarious. I had also worked with the director, Josh Greenbaum, before on Barb & Star Go to Vista del Mar, so I already knew his work and his directing style, and I know he makes things that are peak ridiculous and just so funny. This was just hilarious from start to finish.

What’s the process of getting started on this? The process of a movie with animals like this and how they make the film is a little bit different than the usual filmmaking process.

Yeah. And especially with four dogs almost all the time, they had to hit their marks, and they had to hit them together. It was fun to watch the different layers of VFX removing things over time or adding things. I think for the longest time, for most of my process, the mouths weren’t fully finished yet, so so I had just gotten used to hearing it as narration.

Other than that, though, it is like working on any other film or any other comedy. I started working while I think they were in production, and I started coming up with some thematic ideas and trying a few things out and sending those over and fine-tuning those until we were ready to start really getting into it.

Strays has this action-comedy vibe, which really demonstrates that, with each new project you work on, you add a new thing to your repertoire.

Yeah. Action comedy has definitely got a fine line that you have to walk between funny and rousing. A lot of it is taking the situation as seriously as the dogs take the situation but also not overplaying your hands, so it feels like a spoof. It’s definitely a fine line, and comedy, in general, is a fine line. I mean, I love comedy in general. If I’m watching something, it’s usually a comedy.

You’ve been able to work with the director twice – what does that allow you to do, in terms of your process, when you already have an idea of how they work, even though it might not be what they want for this film?

I think the best thing is being able to kind of refer back to both old music and old processes and old spotting things. Even old notes from the previous film were like, “Okay, remember how we fine-tuned this? Let’s do something like this timing-wise that we did before.” There was a scene in Barb & Star that had a lot of starts and stops for comedy, and there was a similar scene here. We referred back to that to see if we should play it like we played it then or play it slightly differently.

You came up with different themes for the four different dogs that are in this movie. How did you approach each of those?

There’s a main theme for Reggie, and that kind of became the main theme of the movie and for the journey. Then there’s a theme for Bug, and there’s a melody that refers to the two other characters in certain moments. I’m trying not to give spoilers as we talk about it. [laughs] But yeah, I mean, we didn’t go too Peter and the Wolf with it: “Okay, this person’s on screen, so let’s do their theme,” but some things felt recognisable throughout, and I really hung my hat mostly on Reggie’s theme ’cause that really became the melody of the movie and of the journey.

This film is out now, but we’re curious as to how what you do as a composer has been affected by the strikes that are going on.

I’m grateful to be working at the moment, but there is a time when I’m like, “Okay, I don’t know what the next thing is,” and it’s hard to find the next job because so many things are just paused. So yeah – not sending out nearly as many reels and submissions as I was before all these strikes happened!

The thing about the strikes is that, sure, the first one started in May, but it’s been looming since February, so there was trepidation even then. It’s been a very odd year overall, and we’re just all hoping that a fair resolution can be reached.

Strays is out now in UK and US cinemas.

by Ed Fortune

Ariella Como Stoian is a queer playwright and immersive and interactive theatre-maker who specialises in speculative fiction and magical realism. Their latest work is Hive, a queer, cross-generational, sci-fi play exploring family, shared memory and the meaning of home. We caught up with Ariella to find out more.

STARBURST: How would you pitch Hive to someone who reads a lot of dystopian fiction?
Ariella Como Stoia: I would say Hive is an example of soft world building, where the impact on lives and relationships of a speculative world is shown in the everyday. I’d say while some elements of Hive’s dystopia are exaggerated and fantastical, a lot of it is close and recognisable, slightly heightened, but definitely not a world where humans have emigrated off planet to mine more silicon and live in a replicated exclusionary status quo run by a benevolent yet misguided AI or something.

It’s a gentle apocalypse, like our own. And the dystopian themes speak more to how we live with uncertainty and imagine beyond catastrophe, in this case, when we’ve lost someone or something, and we’re trying to reconfigure our sense of home and family anew. Where nothing is easily resolved and, in fact, gets more wildly, delightfully chaotic. So it’s not 1984. That’s what I would say. And then I’d probably ask what they were currently reading.

What makes this weird fiction?
That question is a bit of a spoiler! But I suppose it is weird fiction in how elements of the story sit at the axis of fear, awe, and the sublime, which can’t be understood in literal, pragmatic parameters. The play holds dread and fascination with the unknown, something that hardly fits in the human mind but is inspired by its imagination and limbic-system production value. This multiplicity and warring complexity are also the joy of the piece. I would say the strategies of weird fiction are central to how the characters in the play – Ria and Salve – connect, disconnect and reconnect, blending quasi-sci-fi with weird nature and inexplicable magic.

I hope I’ve been both subtle and informative here. I may have said nothing.

What inspired this show?
Like many things, it’s made of many parts.

At the beginning of the year, I was commissioned to write a piece for The Space on the Isle of Dogs, so Hive became situated through that relationship, sense of place and history of rapid development.

A lot of which sits close to my own experiences around the loss of home, family, and displacement. I’ve also weathered storms and heat waves and experienced disrupted migration patterns that have driven waves of moths into the cities they were flying away from. Plastering windows and doors to the point you can’t see out past their many legs and wriggling confusion.

I would say as well my experiences of grief have been key inspirations in this show, and my relationship with my mum, who is a single working mum like Ria. Whodathunk? I am a non-binary, queer writer, and the character of Salve is a non-binary teen whose identity is never in question in the play. They never have to explain themselves or come out. Rather their story is about processing radical changes in their family structure in a turbulent world and figuring out how to hold and remember someone who gave them acceptance, strength and love. To process a shared yet distinct grief together, as well as having to address the material impact of a loss and subsequent decisions around their home.

Casual representation of queer identities is hugely important to me, as well as discussions being had around grief and change that doesn’t try to solve or resolve anything fully but rather sit in the messy, loving strangeness that grief brings and how it transforms the world, whichever world that may be, but how we remember together.

Then all of these many ideas filtered through my brain, which happens to process and understand through storytelling, particularly through lenses of sci-fi, worldbuilding and the gloriously odd.

Who is this for? It is intended for a mostly queer audience?

I would say Hive is not just for queer audiences, though I’d obviously love all kinds of queers to show up. I think the central relationship between single mum/conservationist Ria and adventurous teenage kid Salve is very relatable for everyone, even if you’re not coming from a direct experience of their context. At the heart of it, the piece is a poetic romp about love, loss, and how you communicate with someone who is going through a very similar experience to you in a weird, complex world. Highly relevant to a number of folks, I’d imagine, and the story is very invested in this relationship between a parent and teen struggling to connect, as well as their previous multi-generational family dynamic.

Why theatre? What does theatre bring to this story that other formats don’t?

Great question. I’d say the imaginative possibilities that theatre provides. I’ve always felt that there was an expansive scope to theatre that could allow you to both question how we understand and construct our reality but playfully and joyfully imagine new possibilities. In a way, the play almost operates like a game of DnD where you’re being offered descriptions of a world that you’re imaginatively collaborating on, collectively making a story more real, more tangible.

Hive tells its story through the tensions between the aural and visual, expressing the inner and outer dynamics of its humans in an unusual, speculative setting. Their interweaving thoughts, whose rhythm is shared between characters, explore the relationship between a parent and child after the loss of the third pillar of their family, ‘Nan’, and their closeness throughout separate, similar journeys that occupy the same space. This world is built on stage through lyrical language and offers made to an audience’s imagination.

These poetics, the radical empathy this represents and this weird-fiction metaphor is uniquely expressed by theatre in this case and its potential for collaborative, non-naturalistic storytelling.

Why the Edinburgh Fringe?

The Edinburgh Fringe is a place of discovery and community with many willing audiences, and so you learn so much about your work. Hive is an experimental, non-naturalistic play in a lot of ways. Though sometimes when words like experimental are used, I’m a little like, is the way I think and experience the world experimental? I don’t know. Not deliberately. Categories for being a human… The fringe is a place of chance and connection. This is ‘Hive’s’ first outing, and we want to find lots of different folks it speaks to and offer this atmospheric, encompassing world to anyone we can. As well as taking a chance on many other worlds ourselves.

They are thousands of shows at the fringe. Why should Starburst readers seek this out?

It’s a unique experience, gorgeously immersive in its multidisciplinary design and wonderfully distinct in its style of storytelling. Honestly, it is a bit of an unexpected time. Beautiful and eerie, with love poured into it from every member of the team. It’s a brilliant bunch of people working together to realise an adventurous story. Taking you on a journey that allows you to feel and process without demanding a particular response from you, a gentleness held alongside its wild scope. Why wouldn’t you give it a go? It’s cool and genre work, human with a touch of eldritch. Someone said it was like Solaris; someone else said it was like if Annihilation met Studio Ghibli. I’m not sure I agree completely with these takes, but it’s obviously lovely to get the comparisons, particularly to Ghibli. I’m here for it all and looking forward to more references and responses. Nerds assemble.

The Mushmoss Collective list LARP as an inspiration. What sort of LARP have you drawn from in your recent works?

Another great question! Our recent show ‘You wake up/octopus’ (CPT, Theatre Deli, The Space) was developed structurally with inspiration from Nordic Chamber LARP, mixed with a more compositionally-driven, experimental (there’s that word again) play akin to happenings, or collaborative live rehearsals. ‘You wake up/octopus’ is about chosen self, transformation, becoming and memory. It’s a completely silly, otherworldly endeavour where you play one tentacle of a newly conscious octopus who might decide to go to space. So it’s like interspecies roleplay meets a TTRPG, but then you build a spacefaring vessel out of fabric and light with strangers, sharing in the creation of the story, world and soundworld.

Additionally, this show takes place in a shared archival space, filled with games and co-created artefacts, fairy lights, projections and flowers, called the ‘Memory Tree’. Visitor responses and contributions influence the stories that then take place in this archive, developing a collective, joyful, ongoing lore, repositioning what memories we value and how we might collaborate on empathy. (Did someone say tentacular thinking?) Structurally, we were both onboard into the world and shared ‘character’ through interaction and immersion with the ‘Memory Tree’ as well as debriefing post-shows.

‘Hive’ is not interactive, nor does it involve roleplay. It is a traditionally end-on play, but I would say it values these same principles and an imaginative relationship with an audience. Honestly, I’d love to do an immersive, interactive version of the story set in an actual multi-level construction site. But I guess one highly ambitious thing at a time.

How would you describe your process?

I would say my process is made-up of layering and finding resonances between ideas. I’m very driven by rhythms, musicality and humanity in my writing. My work is often referred to as poetic, but I think that’s more to do with a playfulness or irreverence toward language than any kind of sonnet stanning on my side. I’m intuitive, multi-disciplinary, and really excited and enlivened by collaboration between different practices. I’m a tad non-dramatic in my art and really like there to be space held open for audiences or players, as the situation may be. As you’ve probably gotten by the amount of times I’ve used the word, I highly value imagination and possibility. I’m very driven by story, even when it may not be the foremost way of creating meaning in a piece. I’ve only had one commercially viable idea in my life (for a reality tv show), and I hope one day it’ll fund more of our immersive art about jellyfish and space-moths. Or it’ll be stolen and make someone else millions because I keep bragging about it loudly in public. Either way, I won’t shut up about it until I’ve willed it into the world, and that’s my process too.

What media are you currently enjoying?

I’ve been playing Tears of the Kingdom, and as a part of playing TotK, I’ve been on Reddit reading about other people playing TotK and watching other people play TotK on YouTube, as well as consuming all the timeline and Zelda lore videos.

I don’t know if I’ve been enjoying this, though.

I’ve also been reading Ursula Le Guin’s ‘The Lathe of Heaven’ for the first time and watching Boots Riley’s ‘I’m a Virgo’.

What’s next?

While we’re in Edinburgh, we’ll be presenting a scratch of new work, ‘Do plants sleep’ for Summerhall Surgeries. It’s a WIP gamified experience about energy management and choosing to rest, equating everyday tasks with the scope and scale of adventure, i.e brain fog=swamp, etc. Interwoven with quiet reflections, found moments and mutual care with a plant. It’ll be on later in the year for Theatre Deli’s Social Model…& More Festival in London this November.

But we’re hoping Hive has a future life beyond the fringe. We’re looking for the right home!

Tickets for the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe run can be found here. You can find out more about Ariella’s future work here.

by Martin Unsworth

Independent British film Isaac gets its world premiere at this year’s Pigeon Shrine FrightFest as part of the New Blood strand. The film stars STARBURST Fantasy Award-winner for Best Performance Johnny Vivash and Kathryn Louise as a couple who enrol into a trial that involves raising a child created with genetic engineering. Genre legend Catriona MacColl plays the doctor working for the GM company. We caught up with her while the movie was being shot to find out more about her character and more…

STARBURST: What can you tell us about Isaac?

Catriona MacColl: Well, I can tell you that it is quite an ambitious project for a first film, but [writer/director] Tariq Sayed seems to be pulling it off! It’s a horror film, but it’s disturbingly close to home, despite the fact that it’s slightly futuristic – it could be possible. There’s no gore as such. There are some special effects, though. It’s psychologically terrifying, let’s put it like that. There were several reasons why I wanted to do it. The first one is that it’s very, very good. Secondly, the subject matter and the part that was offered to me. She’s a tough lady at the top of the game as a scientist, and it’s a challenging part to play.

How did you how do you approach this character?

As I grow older, I tend to be playing like this more and more. I don’t want to get give away too much of the story, but she’s fairly awesome and frightening from right when she appears, just through what she’s saying. It’s in a very cold and seductively calculating way. She is, nevertheless, a doctor, and the way I have approached the way she looks is terribly important. I had a discussion with Tariq about that. He had a very clear idea of what he wanted her to look like. He gave me the idea that helped me compose the part. I trust myself to be able to play those parts quite well and to be able to have a ball. So I went with my intuition. It seems to be right from what I’ve understood. Tariq seems to be happy with it! So hopefully, I’ve done it right!

Most people will know you from the Fulci films and the like – do you feel your presence brings a level of gravitas to the film?

Quite possibly. I guess I am known as a ‘cult’ actor, but it’s thrilling for me that these young directors want to work with me and that I represent something. I don’t mind at all if I just do short films at this point in my life. There’s a fresh energy to working with the younger generation. I feel I’m helping the younger generation to get off the ground, and that’s very exciting because they’re going to be the filmmakers of tomorrow.

Isaac gets its world premiere at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on Saturday, August 26th. You can buy tickets here.

by Ed Fortune

Marc Burrows is an award-winning comedian, author, journalist and musician. In 2020 they wrote The Magic of Terry Pratchett, the first-ever full biography of the beloved author, which won the 2021 Locus Award (non-fiction). Their new show, The Magic of Terry Pratchett, is currently on at the Edinburgh Fringe before it tours the UK. We caught up with Marc to find out more.

STARBURST: How would you pitch The Magic of Terry Pratchett to someone who has heard of, but has never read, Terry’s work?

Marc Burrows: This man, Terry Pratchett, was the most-read living author in the English language in the UK for a lot of the ’90s. Whatever ideas you have about the type of books he wrote or the type of people that read them, I promise there’s more to it. That many people can’t be wrong, can they? (Ignore that pile of Fifty Shades of Grey in the corner of the bookshop). I’ve worked really hard to make sure this show will work for people who have never read a Pratchett book as well as it does for people that have read all of them multiple times. It’s the story of a man with a fascinating life who wrote great jokes and had a really interesting worldview. After you’ve seen it, you might even want to pick up one of his books.

Why was the Discworld series so beloved?

That might be the biggest question of all, you know. I can tell you why Terry’s books are great, how nuanced, fascinating, funny, angry, and exciting his work is, how well he understood people, and how vivid his imagination was. But those are just… factors. They’re not explanations. It’s like when someone you love asks you why you love them. You can list a million things you love about them, but you can never really define why you love them.

Why did these books capture the imagination? I’ve got theories. Firstly, it’s that they’re funny. And they’re funny before they’re anything else. That’s important. Secondly, I think Terry understood people, our lives, our thinking, our society, our weird foibles, our strange desires, the best of us and the worst of us better than any other author since Dickens. I mean that sincerely. He could see how and why the world ticked. Something about that resonates. It makes his work addictive, and his characters are people you fall in love with. You read his books, and you want to read another one.

How different is this show from your work with The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing?

That’s a fantastic question, actually. Because on the one hand, obviously, it’s totally different – The Men is a punk rock/metal band – it’s loud, it’s shouty, it’s a wee bit obnoxious, and it has guitar solos and considerably more swearing.

But… it’s not a massive stretch to see that there’s considerable crossover between Terry’s fans and ours. I think 90% of people who love our band (and there are, weirdly, quite a lot of them) are also Discworld fans. There’s a lot of thematic cross-over. Terry LOVED the Victorian era, and our band is entirely Victorian-themed. He also had a sharp sense of injustice and a filthy sense of humour, both of which we do as well, although remarkably, I’m the only Pratchett fan in the band, despite Andrew, our guitarist, literally being in Good Omens 2.

Why this show? Why now?

I suppose the obnoxious answer is, “Why not?” There’s never a bad time to celebrate Sir Terry. It may as well be now. More broadly, though, I always knew I wanted to turn my book (of the same name) into a stand-up show, although in truth, the show moved quite a long way from the book. Terry’s life is a great story, and his message is powerful – think for yourself, don’t suffer injustice, don’t tell people who they should or shouldn’t be. Have a large brandy. That’s good advice, whatever the year, but in 2023, amid all the fractured identity politics, propaganda, fake news, media saturation, oligarchy, patriarchy and cryptocracy, it feels like a message worth hearing. I just want people to remember him. To say his name. To pick up the books. I think we need it now more than ever.

What is the appeal of the Edinburgh Fringe?

Great falafel and pubs that open late. But aside from that, it’s a completely unique setting. You can see comedy and theatre anywhere, but there’s specific magic to having so much of it in one place. As a comedian, it gives you a chance to write a real show with a beginning, middle and end, something that says something about who you are and your worldview, which isn’t always easy to do in a club set. It’s a rich creative opportunity. It’s also a place where audiences take chances – they’ll go and see something weird, they’ll take a flyer and pop into a show on the off chance they’ll like it. Also, many comedians and performers in such a small, concentrated space for such a long time always run the risk of punching a hole in space-time, and that’s an annual rollercoaster. Terry would use a metaphor here with weights on a rubber sheet, I’m sure.

Why theatre? What does theatre bring to this story that other formats don’t? They are thousands of shows at the fringe. Why should STARBURST readers seek this out?

‘Theatre’ is an interesting word, isn’t it? Is this show ‘theatre;? My natural inclination is to think of it as a stand-up comedy show, which isn’t necessarily the same thing. A “one-man show” is theatre, but stand-up is always stand-up, and though this is a show that can be at times very earnest and deals with some tough subjects, I never wanted to lose sight of writing a comedy show. I was very keen for it to be in the “comedy” part of the Fringe brochure. Terry was a comic author – he was hilarious. The first sentence of the first page of the first Discworld novel has a great honking pun in it “on an astral plane that was never meant to fly”. I wanted the story to be funny, and funny works best out loud. Terry’s jokes sing on the page, but they SCREAM when you read them out. You could also call it a lecture, which is technically true, but I promise I’m funnier than most of your lecturers.

As for why this one? It’s a good story, I promise. It really is. Terry’s life was fascinating, and it’s a joy to be allowed to share it. Plus, you get a free booklet of Terry Pratchett writing unseen since the ’70s. You don’t get that from free-entry improv shows, I promise you that.

What’s your favourite Terry Pratchett work?

My answer to this changes week on week and probably day on day. I think his very best book is probably Nation, a staggering YA story about a young Pacific Islander whose entire world is wiped out by a Tsunami, leaving him to rage at the gods. It’s his masterpiece in every sense of the word. My other favourite is Night Watch, the 29th and angriest Discworld novel and the closest Terry gets to writing a thriller. It’s a really special book.

What’s your next project?

Currently, I’m consumed with Fringe stuff. I’m taking this show, plus its companion show The Magic of Terry Pratchett: The Footnotes, which is a full-on fan core nerd-out in a smaller space straight after the main one, and I’m doing a straight stand-up show every night, Marc Burrows In the Glom of Nit [at City Café at 11.15pm], so that’s kind of filled my thinking. We’re doing a big London performance of The Magic of Terry Pratchett in October at the Bloomsbury Theatre and then touring it next year. Then there’s something that Rob Wilkins, who runs the Pratchett estate, and I are working on together, but I can’t tell you anything about that just yet. I’ve also got a book about Nirvana coming out if I ever get time to finish it, and I want to do a sequel to my last book, The London Boys, which was about Bowie and Marc Bolan’s teenage careers in the ’60s. The next one will deal with their ’70s pomp. And like everyone else, I want to write a novel. Oh, and I’ve started writing songs for the next Before Victoria album, which is my little indie-rock off-shoot from The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing.

I’m not sure which of these counts as my “next” project 😬.

What media are you currently enjoying?

Predictable answer, but Good Omens 2 is BRILLIANT. Neil has done such a wonderful job of capturing what worked in the first series. I really hope they do a third. I’m also devouring Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2, which is, I think, the best season of Trek we’ve had since the ’90s. And in a year that also had Picard Season 3, that’s really saying something. Music: new albums by Blur, Nicky Wire, Tim Arnold. Podcasts: The Inadvisable Trapdoor by Andrew O’Neill.

How can we help?
Say. His. Name. The message of the show is to keep talking about and celebrating Terry Pratchett. With Good Omens 2 being written entirely by Neil Gaiman – and John Finnemore, who has done a great job with it, I want to remind everyone that Terry is sewn into its DNA. Terry still lives while we talk about him. While the ripples are still spreading. As far as the show goes – spread the word! Come see! Find me on social media! I’m @20thCenturyMarc on pretty much everything.

Where can we see the show?
At the Edinburgh Fringe, at the Gilded Balloon Teviot, 2-28th August, with a day off on the 14th, with The Footnotes show straight after at 7pm. Then we’re doing the Bloomsbury Theatre in London on October 14th, which will be a big celebration for the 40th anniversary of Discworld with some really special guests and a tour next year.

The Magic of Terry Pratchett will be performed at 5.30pm in Gilded Balloon Teviot (Dining Room) from August 2nd – 28th (not 14th).

Read our Five Star review of the show here.

by Ed Fortune

Eric Rose is the Artistic Director of Ghost River Theatre and the Co- Sound Designer, Director and Adaptor of Tomorrow’s Child, a show based on the Ray Bradbury story of the same name. We caught up with Eric to find out more about this show, which is currently on at the Edinburgh Fringe. 

STARBURST: How would you pitch Tomorrow’s Child to someone new to the fringe?

Eric Rose: Tomorrow’s Child is a one-of-a-kind blindfolded listening experience that brings Ray Bradbury’s retro-futuristic sci-fi world to life through audiences’ imaginations and a high-fidelity soundscape.

Why this particular Ray Bradbury story?

Bradbury is one of the world’s literary sci-fi giants, and he’s at his classic best with Tomorrow’s Child [also published as The Shape of Things in 1948]. Bradbury wrote Tomorrow’s Child coming out of WWII in the late ’40s, imagining the futuristic world of 1988. For audiences in 2023, it’s a retro-futuristic world that is full of a symphony of mechanisms, buttons, motors, and machinery.

In other words, Bradbury’s world is full of mechanical gadgets that make sound, unlike our silent contemporary digital devices. 

Not to mention Tomorrow’s Child poses some fun and unique sci-fi challenges. For example, creating what it sounds like to be born into the fourth dimension. Or even better, conceptualizing the sounds of a baby in the fourth dimension who appears to everyone as a blue pyramid. These lush audio challenges are a fantastic starting point for a piece of immersive theatre. 

Tomorrow’s Child is mastered for high-fidelity sound featuring more than 10,000 individual sounds created by over 50 artists – making it an extremely vivid, deep listening experience for our blindfolded audiences.

The other reason we chose Tomorrow’s Child is its story. At the time we were making Tomorrow’s Child, I was a new dad, and the struggles of the main character Polly had a significant resonance for me. 

The story follows Polly as a new mother who, in isolation, suffers from postpartum depression, trying to navigate caring for a baby who is different. I believe Polly’s story is especially relevant at a time when the world is emerging out of physical disconnection with a renewed focus on mental wellness. Indeed, the story challenges our assumption of what is ‘normal’ and how we treat families and individuals that don’t conform to traditional ideas of what people or families look or act like. 

Hang on, blindfolds? What does theatre bring to this story that other formats don’t?

Tomorrow’s Child is part of a larger body of Ghost River Theatre’s work which explores what happens to the boundaries of narrative when you focus on stimulating the audience’s senses. When you take away sight – our primary gateway in the world – how do our imaginations open up to narrative? How can being deprived of sight prime us for a unique performance experience? 

At the forefront of Ghost River Theatre’s work is the question of liveness: how we unearth and reveal the world differently for audiences based on the immediacy and interactivity of the performance experience. Tomorrow’s Child, along with our other blindfolded immersive work, challenges us in our devised practice to better understand and trust the imaginary space our audience needs, to fully engage in the live performance experience.

How different is this from other Ghost River Theatre projects?

Tomorrow’s Child is part of a collection of sensory-based immersive experiences produced by Ghost River Theatre over the last decade. 

Would you adapt other classic sci-fi works? 

YES! I am a huge sci-fi fan and love the strange shifting experience of working on stories that ask us to exist between the past, present and future. I am endlessly fascinated by how science fiction defines the present moment by the way we imagine a fictional future. 

As a sidebar, we have had a number of academics write about our production, including an article in the Canadian Theatre Review titled: “Nature Exposed to Our Line of Questioning”: Tomorrow’s Child as Quantum Theatre. Cool, eh?

Why did you bring this particular project to Scotland? 

Scotland has an incredible, complex and rich history that offers a vast perspective when imagining our future. Every day in Scotland, you can’t help but be confronted with architecture, artefacts and monuments that often push up against the contemporary present. So, the Scottish are primed to imagine the retro-futuristic world of Tomorrow’s Child. Also, Edinburgh is renowned for being a city of audiophiles.

Why should STARBURST readers seek this out?

To experience a rare and adventurous immersive audio experience that is surprisingly visual even though the audience is blindfolded! Also, if you are a lover of rich sound and Sci-fi, this experience is for you!

What media are you currently enjoying?

I am a big fan of podcasts (Radio-Lab, The Stranger, Serial, Love and Radio, The Moth) along with TV Series like The Foundation, Westworld, and The Twilight Zone) and am just finishing the classic Stephen King novel, The Tommyknockers.

What are your plans after the Edinburgh Fringe?

Our hope is that we will build a tour for Tomorrow’s Child out of our run in Edinburgh. Immediately after the Fringe, however, Ghost River Theatre will be going into post-production for a new Cli-fi (Climate-change Science Fiction) streaming series, So Dark The Sky, that I co-wrote and directed.

Tomorrow’s Child runs at the Edinburgh Fringe until August 28th, 2023. You can find out more about Ghost River Theatre here.

We interviewed the cast and crew of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts in our latest issue ahead of the film’s theatrical run, and now, to celebrate its digital drop, we present this exclusive ‘Making Of’ clip, which takes us even further behind the scenes!

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is available to Download & Keep from the 14th August and on DVD, Blu-ray™, 4K UHD™, 4K UHD™ + Blu-ray™ SteelBook® and HMV exclusive 4K UHD™ + Blu-ray™ SteelBook® 9th October.

To read our interviews with director Steven Caple Jr., series producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, and stars Anthony Ramos & Dominique Fishback, pick up a copy of our new issue in stores now, on digital through Magzter, or get it delivered to your door by clicking the cover below!