Renée Rossi Donlon discusses Renee Rossi: God Bomb at The Hen and Chickens Theatre
After the success of our 2025 Camden Fringe Interviews, we thought it only right to attempt a repeat for 2026. So throughout July we’ll be publishing new interviews each day to give a taste of what to expect from London’s best fringe theatre festival. The festival starts Monday 3 August this year, so we may give ourselves a couple of days off inbetween the end of the interviews and the first shows… then again, we might not.
You can find out more about Camden Fringe, along with details of every show playing this August here. You can also find all of this year’s interviews as they are published here.
What happens when an unsatisfied saint files an appeal, Mother Mary throws a chaotic baby shower, and sheep go on strike at Nativity auditions? You get Renee Rossi: God Bomb, an absurdly funny, spiky, and profoundly silly debut solo show landing at The Hen and Chickens Theatre for Camden Fringe 2026.
Written and performed by writer-actor Renée Rossi Donlon (incoming Artistic Director of The Hatchery by Unrestricted View), God Bomb uses rapid character switches to throw playful grenades at organized religion. Beneath the high-tempo sketch comedy sits an honest, secular question: in a world obsessed with holy wars and divine gatekeeping, what if we stopped waiting for answers from the clouds and claimed our own messy human divinity instead?
We caught up with Renée to chat about growing up “Catholic-adjacent,” crafting props out of tinfoil, taking on ten wild characters, and why she refuses to do a show without a six-foot fish.
If you had to describe the vibe of your show in just one sentence, what would it be and how does it manifest on stage?
A profoundly silly, shallowly religious, deeply human solo show: overtly, it’s a mad dash of daft scenarios and spiky characters that playfully lob bombs at organised religion. A rejected saint takes her gripes to an appeals board, Mary blows up her baby shower, sheep fight typecasting at auditions for The Nativity, God’s publisher gives constructive criticism, and Jesus’ mom just wants one photo of Him looking nice. These absurd sketches make you laugh, but under the stupidity, they sneakily ask a serious question: What miracles might humans achieve if we stopped waiting on God and embraced our own wonky divinity?
Why is 2026 the perfect time for this show to be seen?
Amidst yet more holy wars in the Middle East and the rise of the nominally Christian right, who gets to be the voice of religion? It affects us all, but rarely do the doubters, non-believers, and the undecided get a voice in the conversation. (Traditional family values? Which tradition? Whose family?) So in this show, I give the pulpit to heathens, heretics, and off-brand saints. And plain old people. I’m sick of the whose-god-is-cooler game. So with God Bomb, while I’m mainly interested in making you laugh, I also invite you to wonder: Why do we outsource our divinity to dudes on clouds instead of finding greatness within ourselves? This show celebrates the innate holiness, the sloppy glory, of being human.
What was the ‘eureka moment’ that made you realise this story had to be told right now?
I was raised Nothing but grew up Catholic-adjacent, equal parts fascinated and repulsed by Church. Frilly dress on your Communion? Hell yeah! Pictures of an emaciated naked guy stapled to a stick? Um, pass. I was eight when a man asked me: ‘How do you know how to be good if you don’t have religion?’ I didn’t have an answer, of course not, I was eight! That stuck with me for years. But finally I have an answer: ‘Because I have a heart and a brain and other humans.’ This show is my answer. (He’s probably dead now. I wonder where he ended up.)
What do you enjoy most about performing in this show?
I play at least ten characters. Isn’t that the joy of acting? Getting to live a thousand crazy lives within your one little boring one.
Being fringe and a festival, we all know sets have to be bare minimum, how have you got around this?
I love concocting props out of tape and tinfoil on my kitchen floor! I’ve had to control myself for the Camden Fringe. It’s challenged me to experiment with movement and voice, to trust the audience’s intelligence, and to embrace the playfulness, the suspension of disbelief, and the imagination that you can create in theatre.
How important is audience interaction to you?
It is very important the audience not interact with me. Please sit still and laugh quietly. Do not clap.
Are there any plans for what comes next after the show has finished its run – for you or the show?
I plan to tour God Bomb, refining it with every performance. Also, I’ll be building my next solo show, tentatively titled EX-PAT, STILL FAT. Plus, I will be stepping up as the new Artistic Director of The Hatchery, an innovative creative initiative launched by Unrestricted View at The Hen & Chickens Theatre, designed to foster the development of new theatrical work. When The Hatchery launched in January 2025, the aim was to build monologues written by its members into full-length shows to be performed at Camden Fringe 2026. As of September, the process begins again with another round of artists arriving to build their shows with a view to staging them at festivals in 2027.
What does “success” look like for you this August, beyond just selling tickets?
- Having done it.
- People having enjoyed it.That’s it. That’s everything! Though I’ve written and performed for stage, film, and web for years, this is my first full-length, one-person fringe show (ta-da!). I grew up thinking sketch comedy was the purview of lads and posh boys, not girls. I thought I was supposed to write Ibsen meets The Vagina Monologues, and then let someone prettier and thinner act in it. But here I am, for the first time, doing absurd character sketches on stage. ‘Success’ will be that I wrote and performed the stupid shit I actually wanted to write and perform, and that I showed the silly, spiky, unexpected part of my brain to the world.
What meal what would God Bomb by?
A slice of pizza topped with crumbled-up Jesus biscuits. You know the Christ crackers? Because my show explores how human mundanity (the weekly shop, recycling) intersects with the sacred and on-high.
What’s the weirdest or most unconventional prop used in your show?
A 6-foot-tall fish. Nightmare on the bus. It became part of the production because I refuse to do shows without giant fish.
Write a one-sentence “fake” review of the show from your parents:
“Why can’t she just write a Harry Potter?” — Renée’s parents
Many thanks to Renée for her time. God Bomb plays at The Hen and Chickens Theatre on Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 August (3pm both days).
