Rosy Carrick is a writer, performer and translator. She is co- curator, alongside Luke Wright, of the Port Eliot Festival poetry stage, and has co-hosted the Latitude Festival poetry stage (now The Speakeasy) since 2010.
Rosy has a PhD on the poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky, and has published two books of his work in translation: Volodya (Enitharmon, 2015) and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Smokestack, 2017). Her debut poetry collection Chokey was published by Burning Eye Books in June 2018.
At the Brighton Fringe this year Passionate Machine won the award for Best New Play 2018.
Passionate Machine is coming to Zoo, what can you tell us about the show?
The premise of the show is that I, Rosy Carrick, have to make a time machine. Why? Because I’ve just received an SOS letter from my future self who has already made one and is now stuck nearly 100 years in the past after a failed mission to rescue the long-dead Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Given that my scientific knowledge is limited to the works of Arnold Schwarzenegger, I must summon the help of heroes Einstein, Hawking and Rocky Balboa if I am to save my future, but self-doubt threatens to beat self-determination as certain demons from the past re-emerge along the way…
What’s the one thing about Passionate Machine that makes it different from all the rest?
The most frequent question people ask after the show is: Is this a true story? Which for a time travel narrative feels very exciting and unusual. Passionate Machine is plotted so closely to the events of my own personal and professional life that the line between fact and fiction becomes blurred very quickly. From start to finish, photos, video montage and interactive visual elements are used to show documentary evidence as I tell the story, and to bring in new characters and scenes, which makes the whole experience feel even more immersive. I started writing a time travel blog several years ago, and since then I have received hundreds of emails from people asking for time travel tips and sharing their own uncanny time-related experiences – I also share some of these in the show. Accumulatively, these elements have erased the line between theatre and the “real world”, which I love.
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What inspired you to write Passionate Machine?
I’m obsessed with time travel. I grew up watching Back to the Future and Terminator, and I fell in love with the magic of convoluted time paradoxes and almost plausible theories. So when, one day while I was mourning the suicide of the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, a friend said: “wait – all you need to do is build a time machine, scoop him up right before he kills himself, let him live out his life here in the future and then return him at the time of his natural death to reset the timestream!”, the idea for Passionate Machine was born!
How does this show differ to other works you’ve written?
I’m predominantly known as a poet, a compere and a translator of Mayakovsky. My poetry is densely written and often quite dark in its humour, and my academic work is necessarily serious and scholarly. Meanwhile, at home I’m a total grotbox, usually watching shit 80s films in two day-old pants. Passionate Machine is the first piece of work to represent all my various selves put together. It’s complex and often silly – 80s pop culture crossed with HG Wells-style sci-fi geekiness, all rooted in the question: what would you change if you could travel through time?
What’s the most challenging thing about performing in Passionate Machine?
In Passionate Machine I play myself, and I talk very frankly about the events of my own life. In some ways this feels very powerful, but it can also feel exposing at times. Of course some things are fictionalised, or changed around, and the time travel structure has been interwoven, so there is the safety net of the structure of the play as a play around me, but the strength of the show – and the purpose of it for that matter – comes from me telling my honest journey to the audience, and inviting them to think about their own journeys in return.
How does it feel to be at Zoo?
At ZOO I have a great sense of being part of a carefully curated programme. Their eye for bringing together interesting and eclectic theatre is wonderful and, for Edinburgh programmes, quite rare, and I’m so happy to be putting my show on with them. They are also an extremely friendly, supportive and professional team, which has been invaluable to me – it’s an overwhelming experience to be bringing a show to Edinburgh for the first time so it’s nice to feel well looked after!
Who will Passionate Machine appeal to the most?
For sci-fi fans there are lots of pop culture and science references, from time travel fashion tips (always take a banana to a party!) to the inner workings of the Large Hadron Collider. But Passionate Machine is mainly a story of self-care and self-determination, and in this sense it appeals to everybody. In telling my story I invite the audience to reflect on the ways they engage with and look after their own past and future selves. For example, did your drunk last-night self leave out a pint of water for your hungover morning-after self? Will you leave out a pint?
Passionate Machine is Zoo 3rd – 27th August (not 4th).
