Gorgeous Avatar was my first full-length play, directed by Philip Howard at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, with a wonderful cast and team behind it. It’s the story of an internet love affair between two people who meet for the first time and find their fantasies and reality collide. It was inspired by hearing that a neighbour had ‘met’ an American girl online, who then came to our village.
These days, the rise of internet dating has made online relationships quite normal, and it’s hard to imagine a time when no one had heard of the word ‘avatar’. So maybe I was ahead of the times <smile> <question mark> <exclamation mark>. The play also includes some experiments with conveying written internet language on stage. Internet culture as a whole is a tricky issue for contemporary drama – how would Shakespeare deal with today’s couch potatoes?!
Cast: Pauline Knowles (Amy), John Kazek (Rafi), Una McLean (Rose), Patrick Hoffman (Dan). Composer: Jon Beales; Choreographer: Andrew Panton; Designer: Mark Leese; Video Artist: John Alder; Lighting: Kai Fischer; Voice and Dialect Coach: Ros Steen; Director; Philip Howard.
Photography: Douglas Robertson