Auntie Empire storms into Manipulate with Disaster Plan’s trademark blend of bouffon clowning, dark satire, and political bite. Led by Julia Taudevin and Kieran Hurley, the show casts Taudevin as a decaying, delusional Britannia figure inviting her “family” to revel in imperial nostalgia while confronting a far grimmer truth. Evolving through earlier versions as live‑gore cabaret, short film, and stand‑up, this latest incarnation delivers a sharp, riotous takedown of colonial mythmaking and the stories nations tell to survive themselves.

We’re thrilled to speak with multi-award-winning theatre artist and co-Artistic Director of Glasgow-based theatre company Disaster Plan, Julia Taudevin about the next evolution of Auntie Empire

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Dearest Auntie, many thanks for letting us borrow some of your time. But, there’s a whole family behind Auntie: so if you wouldn’t mind introducing yourselves, and those involved with the show?

Disaster Plan is myself, Julia Taudevin, and Kieran Hurley and we’re both together and independently multi-award winning Scottish theatre makers who have been collaborating for nearly 20 years on hit shows like Beats (The Arches/Traverse), Blow Off (the Traverse) and Rantin (NTS). Collaboration is core to our shared practice and on Auntie we have been working with bouffon director and magician Tim Licata, the award-winning playwright Sara Sharaawi as dramaturg, Fergus Dunnet and Gretchen Maynard-Hahn on Auntie’s extraordinary puppets, effects and costume, Niroshini Thambar and Nik Paget-Tomlinson who have been creating an epic sound design which includes an exquisite fart-scape, Fraser Lappin on Auntie’s magnificent set and Emma Jones bringing her signature skills at being able to light weird stuff beautifully.

Now, Auntie has lived many lives — How did we get to this point, and at what moment made you realise this grotesque, tea‑pouring embodiment of Britannia wasn’t done evolving yet?

Auntie began in 2019 in a Summerhall lab when I was experimenting with live gore. The audience for that scratch found Auntie hilarious. The idea then went through a number of different developments – firstly in a short film which I co-directed with the brilliant Niamh McKeown of BBC’s Dinosaur fame, then in a traditional play structure through the Traverse and IASH Creative fellowship, then as stand up with help from Josie long, then a devising phase with Jordan & Skinner which introduced puppets to Auntie’s world and finally with Tim Licata as Bouffon director Auntie has found her form. Bouffon only exists with an audience. The bouffon seeks to put that audience at ease through laughter and fun so that they might begin to feel at ease in time to then be punched in the gut with political provocation. Every audience is different making each show different so the continuing evolution of Auntie is now in her audience’s hands.

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How thin a line, and how tricky is it, to balance the show’s use of horror with humour. How do you negotiate that tightrope without tipping too far into either?

Well we start off light and fun and silly and get gradually darker until we expose the true rot at the core of Auntie Empire. With Tim’s expertise we have been able to really lean into the traditional bouffon form which uses grotesquery and horror to expose the ugliness of its subject matter. True to the bouffon form, the show uses sexually explicit content and scatological humour, and test audiences have been pushed to their limits in this regard. But we have taken the time to talk to a diverse cross section of those audiences to ensure that although the show pushes the boundaries of what’s palatable, it is also hilarious, entertaining and acutely relevant to the historical moment we find ourselves in..

 The show skewers myths of nationhood and British exceptionalism. What contemporary conversations shaped the satire as it moved from page to screen to stage?

When Niamh and I shot the short film Brexit had only recently happened and the pandemic hadn’t even begun.  Six years later, cost of living is not a crisis but a constant, the Tory Party are haemorrhaging members to Reform UK and Reform is polling second in Scotland, Kier Starmer is more concerned about popularity contests than anything else on the political agenda, the SNP rarely makes headlines for any reason, Britain is one of over 50 countries involved in armed conflict, the Duke of York is apparently now no different from the rest of us commoners and there is a figure in the White House who could inspire the bouffon show to top all bouffon shows. The question of the legacy of Empire as present in contemporary liberal democracies is more alive than it has been in my lifetime. It’s an uncomfortable conversation but it’s got to be had if anything’s going to change and unfortunately for the conflict-avoidant amongst us, that conversation needs to be had in person. 

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 The show contains audience participation and bold content. What strategies help you keep the room feeling safe, even as Auntie gleefully pushes boundaries?

Participation is not optional in this show but the audience meets Auntie at the point of entry into the space so that they have the opportunity to decide how close they want to be to the action. The way each individual audience member responds to Auntie during the show determines what happens in each show and we have spent a lot of development time considering different possible reactions. But ultimately we won’t know what’s going to happen each moment until we’re in it. Sara Sharaawi has focussed a lot of her work as dramaturg on considering the impact of the work on audience members with lived experience of colonialism and the inherent racism of the British Empire. And we have prioritised finding test audiences who have been willing to go into detail with us in their experience so that we can be sure that the target of our satire cannot be misconstrued. 

After touring festivals and theatres, what conversations do you hope audiences continue having long after Auntie’s bow?

I mean, it should surely now be impossible to ignore the clear fact that the majority of the British and American ruling classes play, and have long played, an active role in the most heinous crimes possible. If Auntie prompts even one conversation where someone decides to do whatever they need to to help bring these people to justice then that would be good.

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