Luke Rollason: The Edinburgh Interviews 2019
Who? Luke Rollason
What? Luke Rollason’s Infinite Content
Where? Monkey Barrel 4 (Venue 515)
When? 12:00
What are your feelings as you enter into this year’s Edinburgh Fringe season?
Like the prodigal son returning, but he’s got the wrong address.
What is the premise of your Edinburgh show this year?
The premise of my Edinburgh Show is that the audience is immersed in a live comedy version of what happens to their brains when we go online. I get delivered in a box by Amazon and it’s pretty much non-stop disorientating fun from then on in. Along the way I pretend to be a printer, bombard you all with advertising and everyone’s data is harvested for marketing purposes. Physical comedy so intensely captivating you’ll get motion sickness. It’s a lot more esoteric than last year’s show, which I hear is a real hit with critics.
What is the biggest obstacle you face(d) while putting this show together?
The biggest obstacle I’ve faced this year is making a show about what the internet does to your ability to concentrate without succumbing to this exact thing, rendering me incapable of thinking in any depth about the internet and what it is doing to my ability to concentrate. Someone is reading this on the internet. They’ve probably got bored already.
Second biggest: powerpoint. I’m trying to run a whole show about modern technology off a version of powerpoint from 2007. Good god.
Has your attitude towards the Fringe changed at all in recent years?
Yes! I’m relieved not to be carting around the wheelbarrow of expectations (your own and those of others) that comes FREE with doing your debut hour. There’s something very nice and liberating about not winning awards. I don’t know what the alternative is but I imagine it’s horrible. The last week of Edinburgh last year was perfect – there were no more reviewers, judges or arts industry coming – just audiences. I was staying out later but felt the most energised I had all month. That’s important – without all those other pressures and promises of intangible rewards, it has to be fun.
Do you have any other Edinburgh show recommendations?
Privates: A Sperm Odyssey, because I play a sperm in it. But in the narrow category of ‘shows in which I do not ejaculate’ I would recommend Dave McIver: Teleport. And you know that’s from the bottom of my self-destructive heart because he is literally on at the same time as me. The show I’m most excited about which I can actually see (alas, I will never see myself perform live) is Tom Walker: Very Very.
Where would you like to be in a year’s time?
An internet sensation and a real-life disappointment.
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