Dan Bishop is one half of the sketch-duo Mudfish (with Molly Windust) He wowed audiences last year with his show Brainsluts, and he has returned to the Edinburgh Fringe this August with his new show, TARGET AUDIENCE. We caught up with him to find out more.
Introduce yourself please.
Hello. My name is Dan Bishop, I am the writer/director of Target Audience. Target Audience is a new comedy play about a TV production company which is owned by a tech company with links to a weapons manufacturer. Then, in an attempt to sanitise the image of the defence sector, the producers are then tasked with developing a ‘pro-weapons sitcom’.
How would you pitch Target Audience to someone who thinks AI is really useful?
Well, I agree that sometimes AI can be useful, but it’s mostly useful if you want to make literally everything so much worse!!!
And how would you pitch it to someone who has watched Terminator too many times?
I would say Target Audience is exactly like The Terminator (I’ve never seen The Terminator).
Does money ruin everything?
The Indus River Valley invented numbers to track beans, but now we use numbers to track money on the stock market, rather than beans in the river. Need I say more?
What was the oddest thing you learned when researching this show?
Meet The Fockers was script edited by the CIA.
What is your favourite part of the show?
Genuinely, my favourite parts of the show have all come out of improvisations from the actors. They’re all just so, so funny.
Why the Edinburgh Fringe?
I was going up there anyway for a tech conference, so thought I’d kill two birds with one stone.
What was your inspiration for the show?
The show was inspired by the current domination of big tech companies who have infiltrated all aspects of our lives, particularly our media and the military industrial complex. Take Amazon for example, they are simultaneously a huge movie studio whilst also owning a platform that hosts AI software used in drone warfare. I find all of this confusing and weird! So I thought I’d try to make it funny.
Where else can we see you?
I am also directing Amazing Global Solutions, the character comedy ordeal by Rob Preston – so you can see me in the audience for that show every SINGLE night (20:20, Pleasance Below).
Theatre or AI Datacentres?
Theatre!
Robots or Trees?
Trees!
Truth or Beauty?
Trees!
You can get tickets to see Target Audience here.
