Preview: Vitomori, Alma Tavern Theatre

Bristol’s Tobacco Tea Theatre present this supernatural satire of modern life.

“By turns hilarious and horrifying, sensual and cynical, Vitomori is a hard look at just what we’ve become, seen through the eyes of a 1,000-year-old vampire.”

Here’s writer/director Christopher Cutting on the play’s unique atmosphere and big contemporary sweep.

“Vitomori is a good hard look at just what we’ve become in the 21st Century”. And what have we become?
We’ve become conformists. Our addiction to social media has made many of us internalise society’s standards to a degree we have never seen before. We live like public figures now, broadcasting every aspect of our lives to public scrutiny, monitoring one another’s behaviour in a system of mutual surveillance. Consequently, many of us live out our lives as a PR exercise, choosing our experiences in order to impress other people, reducing ourselves to a glib surface image to make ourselves more palatable. We diminish our individuality and suppress our true selves, living the lives we imagine other people want us to live – and then we wonder why we’re unhappy.

Why did you choose an undead vampire to illustrate these themes?
It originated from the idea of being ‘un-dead’ – living a ‘dead life’ or an ‘un-life’, living your life by external standards and becoming bland, colourless, soulless and of course popular in the process – living your life like you’re already dead inside. Vampires are also sexy, desirable figures that exert a tempting fascination over us, willing us to become one of them – just like the ideal of a perfect person we’re constantly presented with on social media.
Vampires spread a form of social conformity by preying upon people, turning them into fellow vampires who then go on to turn other people into vampires and so on – precisely what our use of social media does. Vampirism is a diminishing of the self that seems to be desirable, a form of sameness we enjoy being infected with, and it’s all the more disturbing for that – in the 21st century, this form of suppression is something we all do to each other. I could go on – the play throws up so many parallels that I found vampirism irresistible as a metaphor!

What makes for good satire?
Good satire makes a difference to those who experience it. It’s genuinely challenging and controversial, and makes a powerful argument about society, people, groups, politics, morality or beliefs. Good satire is not tame or safe, it’s provocative and contentious and not afraid to say what it thinks. Anything is fair game in satire, too – we have to be free to offend people and refuse to accept any form of censorship. In my experience, if you make a satire that certain “offended” groups try to shut down afterwards, you’ve probably made something that matters. I also like my satire witty and intelligent, with a good dose of realistic, Machiavellian social politics – I get a real joy out of seeing hypocrisy and lies exposed and I love seeing reprehensible character traits I experience in real life portrayed fully and honestly.

Satire is an uncommon genre these days. Why so?
Again, because people are too timid, too afraid to offend, too repressed by one another to express a genuinely challenging opinion in the public sphere. In the 20th century satire mostly came from young people challenging society, but my generation – Generation Y, Millennials, whatever – is full of people who flee from controversy and don’t engage in politics anywhere near enough to make that kind of work. There’s far too little debate and contention around these days, and it’s slowly killing our democracy. And for those reasons I think making satire is more important now than it has been for the last 350 years.

Is the play a dark comedy that just happens to have a serious theme – or a serious argument put across using dark comedy?
The latter, I think. It’s a comedy through and through – it’s not didactic and most of the show is quick-witted, urbane and played for laughs – but the argument is undoubtedly the point. If you have a dark sense of humour you’ll thoroughly enjoy yourself – it’s risqué and it’s got a very literal bite to it.
I don’t think we’re living in a decadent age or anything – I’m not a Luddite. Vitomori is not anti-technology or anti-Internet – the problems we face are cultural, not technological. What’s needed – what I’m arguing for – is a cultural shift away from shallow conformity, towards a bold and fearless individuality.

What would you like to send audiences away thinking and feeling?
I’d love to send them away thinking about what they’re doing with the limited time they have to live, why they post what they post, whether they really believe in certain ideas or want to be doing certain things, or whether they’ve just been saying and doing it for show. I’ve love to see someone stop worrying about what others think about them and start trying to live a life that really matters to them as an individual – a life that genuinely makes them happy.
If at least one person walks away and decides to be more honest in public about who they really are and what they want out of life, I will consider the show a phenomenal success. 

Vitomori is at the Alma Tavern Theatre from Tuesday, March 24 to Saturday, April 28. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.almataverntheatre.co.uk/theatre/what-s-on