In this interview, playwright and actress Emma Hemmingford discusses the inspiration behind Foreverland, a dystopian play exploring immortality and biotech. She touches on her fascination with eternal life, the characters’ emotional journeys, and working with her dream cast. Emma also offers advice to aspiring theatre students.

What got you interested in exploring immortality and biotech for Foreverland?

I’ve always been fascinated by stories about eternal life: this is partly, I’m sure, because I’m scared of dying, but also because stories about immortality help us reflect on what makes life meaningful in the first place. When I was little I was fascinated by the legends of immortal Greek gods and goddesses, and by Natalie Babbitt’s book about an eternally youthful family, Tuck Everlasting. Recently, however, I noticed a spate of news stories about Silicon Valley investment into longevity medicine. The more I read, the more it seemed to me that for the first time in human history, immortality was moving from the realm of fairytale into the realm of medical possibility. What might this mean for the world, socially, ethically, and politically? And then I wanted to write a play…

Alice and Jay’s choice to live forever is pretty intense—what made you want to tell their story?

That’s an interesting question. I suppose I think that while their choice is intense, it’s also relatable: most of us have a gut reaction to the question ‘Would you like to live forever?’ Alice and Jay embody different parts of my own gut response to the idea of eternal life – both the fear and the desire. And, I knew I wanted to focus most of all on the way that radically longer lives might affect us psychologically and interpersonally, so it felt like writing about a couple could help me explore that.

How’s it been working with Emma McDonald, Christopher York, Una Byrne, and Valerie Antwi to bring this play to life?

The four actors in this show are my dream cast – they were all my top choices at auditions, so I’m still reeling from the fact they said yes! I’ve been so impressed by the authenticity and truth they bring to a dystopian story – it would be easy to get lost in the concept with this show, but Emma, Chris, Una, and Valerie have a wonderful ability to find the human story at the heart of it. What’s more, they are all making surprising and beautiful choices which are teaching me new things about the characters. This is always a gift for a writer.

You’ve got a mix of dystopian ideas and family dynamics in Foreverland—how do you balance those two?

For one, by having great actors in the show! But also, I think, by telling a small and intimate story that gestures toward wider political ideas rather than getting lost in a huge multi-faceted narrative. I tried to place human choices and their consequences at the heart of Foreverland, rather than have characters discuss concepts in the abstract – I hope this helps too.

With all the talk around biotech today, do you feel like the idea of “curing death” is something that could actually happen?

I think we are still a long way from curing death entirely, but I would say that radically extended life-spans are on the horizon, yes. Experiments on animals have already successfully increased life-span by 25%. Human clinical trials are well underway, and advancements in the field of gene therapy are exponential at the moment. Plus, billions of dollars of funding are being invested into longevity start-ups such as Altos Labs (funded by Jeff Bezos). I’d be highly surprised if very expensive, life-extending medical treatments weren’t available in our lifetimes.

In Flinch, you focused on relationships—how do you see Foreverland building on those themes?

There is still a central romantic relationship in Foreverland, but the way the play builds on the themes of Flinch is by exploring intergenerational relationships too. I’m really hoping that the play can provoke discussion between younger and older people about what makes a good life, and how the decisions of one generation might affect the next.

Does being an actor influence how you write? How does it impact your process?

Being an actor influences me a lot! I’m very focused on finding the natural patterns of human speech in my writing, and so I speak all my scripts out loud while I write them. I hope this makes the dialogue satisfying to vocalise. Punctuation is important to me as it creates rhythm that is useful for an actor to pick up on. I also like to create scripts in which actors can make some of their own choices rather than everything being set in stone.

Who or what inspires you the most when you’re writing?

Other plays always inspire me: when writing Foreverland, I was influenced by Alistair McDowall’s play X, Lucy Prebble’s The Effect, and Nick Payne’s play Elegy. All three of those plays made me cry just on reading the script. But the good thing about being a writer is that everything is inspiration. I find things that my friends have said, stories from the news, or even just objects that I’m looking at all make their way into my work!

What advice would you give to students studying drama at GCSE who are thinking about a career in theatre?

Gosh. I would be lying if I said it wasn’t hard to build a career in theatre, but it’s worth it if you really love it. I think the industry is more open than ever to multi-hyphenate creatives (e.g. actor/writer or producer/director etc) so I would advise anyone to add lots of strings to their bow – you will have more agency this way. Don’t worry too much about making bad work. It’s always better for your career to do something, even if the end result is far from perfect. You have to have a lot of initiative to build a freelance theatre career: most of the time, no one is there to tell you to get out of bed, or that you’re doing a good job. But if you can handle this, it’s a very special art form. People really connect with the experience of watching a play and that’s magic. I have never wanted to do anything else.

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Foreverland by Emma Hemmingford runs at Southwark Playhouse from 2nd – 19th October 2024. Tickets are available from Southwark Playhouse.