The Camden Fringe Interviews
Edith Keays on How You Died
As you will have noticed, we do most of our interviews in a very simple Q&A format, which is very much due to time. But every now and again, one of our team will take the plunge and do something more. So when Alastair Ball offered to meet up with Edith Keays to do an interview, well, we’re always going to encourage such things.
And that’s how Alastair found himself in Foyles coffee shop with Edith to ask her about her play, How You Died, which will be making its way to Hen and Chickens Theatre for Camden Fringe this August.
“Grief is something that we’re quite bad at talking about,” Edith Keays says to me in the Foyles coffee shop on a warm Thursday evening. “We do a kind of I’m always here if you need to talk type thing, but it places a buffer when someone actually wants to talk about it [grief],” she adds.
We are discussing How You Died, a play written by Edith, which will run at the Hen and Chickens Theatre in August as part of Camden Fringe. How You Died previously had a well-received run at the Old Red Lion, and now Edith is looking to take it to a bigger audience at the fringe.
How new technology is changing the grieving process is explored after the protagonist’s childhood friend dies young. “It’s about friendship. It’s about grief. It’s about loss. Then you also have this technology. These two things meet together to provide an outlet for people who can’t talk about their grief.” The other character is a hologram of the protagonist’s dead friend. “One character is alive, and one character is dead. So, it’s an ABBA Voyage meets Black Mirror picture.”
The play specifically looks at the emerging field of grief technology and asks: “if you could pay to visit someone that had died, and they would replicate an artificially intelligent hologram, what would that be like?”
Edith recently completed a masters in drama writing at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Here she met director Ellie Jay Stevens and designer Hugo Dodsworth whom she is collaborating with on How You Died.
“I’ve always been really interested in technology,” says Edith. “It’s something we interact with all the time and integrating that within stories is really important. Part of the motivation for writing this play was the fact that grief tech is seen as this dystopian near future entity, but actually, it’s very much already happening. People are using Chat GPT to speak to the deceased and to deal with their grief. Often there’s an association with technology and dystopia, but it’s very much part of our lives and probably will be only increasing. I do think that [the technology in the play] will exist within three to five years’ time.”
I ask Edith if her take on technology was more positive than Black Mirror. “I think the play very much poses questions about our post-mortem rights,” Edith replies. “It’s about someone that has died when they were young, in their 20s, and has been resurfaced by their friend as a hologram. It really poses the question of whether they have consented to that. If we have our uploaded self going through this format for someone else, it poses a lot of ethical questions.”
I ask if How You Died is science fiction and Edith initially says it is not, but then adds: “We’re very much in a digital era, making everything feel more like science fiction. The play reflects this while also exploring universal themes such as loss, consent, death, and grief. The setting acts as a vessel to explore these themes. However, the very nature of this setting, which allows the characters to meet, is ethically questioned throughout the play.”
We discuss genre in theatre and Edith says that genre on the stage is not as rigid as other mediums. “Genre doesn’t feel so applicable. You don’t sell things so much by genre, but more by story. The plays that you will see don’t necessarily get pinned down to genre in the same way that TV and film do. Even if it is a romantic comedy, it’s not necessarily always sold as a romantic comedy within theatre.”
We then talk about what must be considered when working with actors to explore emotionally difficult topics such as grief. “The director, Ellie, is amazing. She’s really good at making everyone feel comfortable. We’ve created a very safe space within the rehearsal room. Ellie is really amazing at check-ins and making sure everyone feels okay. She creates such a warm and welcoming environment.”
“In terms of an audience we always put content warnings, because it is a massively triggering subject,” Edith adds.
Right now, Edith and Ellie are busy preparing How You Died for their run at Camden Fringe. “We’re hoping to elevate it and explore it within the rehearsal room, but not make major changes at this point. We’re pretty happy with what it is,” she says.
Edith also says that they are running a crowd funder for support How You Died. The Go Fund Me page says that funds will go towards an “R&D project in autumn, which will be a two-week exploration of creating a hologram on stage combined with a physical actor.”
The page also states: “Starting a new theatre company without funding is challenging in today’s theatre landscape. However, our determination is strong. We rehearse in unconventional spaces, operate on minimal budgets, and use recycled materials. We rely on donations and future ticket sales to bring our artistic vision to life.” (The page can be found here.)
As I leave the Foyles coffee shop, I reflect that whatever the future of grief tech, How You Died is certainly one show to watch at Camden Fringe, judging by how passionate Edith was about the play and how relevant the issues she is exploring are.
“It’s not something that we think about now, our post-mortem rights. There is an association with death that that’s it. But if it’s an artificially intelligent, sentient being, that is serving the living, that’s a very scary reality.”
Massive thanks to both Alastair and Edith for finding time to chat.
How You Died will played as part of Camden Fringe 2024 at Hen and Chickens Theatre.
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