“Copycat presents an inventive and challenging look at the knock-on effect AI has in chipping away at our humanity and creativity.”
Joe Sellman-Leava brings Copycat to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, taking residence for the month in the Pleasance Jack Dome. A prescient and thought-provoking piece, it explores the role of imitation in life, creativity and culture, offering an insightful and engaging glimpse into the links between art, fascism and rapid technological change.
Opening with a suite of impressions, Joe Sellman-Leava discusses the ability to jump between different impressions, delving into the role of imitation in our lives. Taking things back to his childhood years, Joe delves into the context of performing at his school leavers’ show, delivering impressions of a beloved teacher. The understated impact brought by said teacher becomes a recurring motif for Joe, opening up conversations on the role of imitation and, in particular, the rapid technological change brought by imitative artificial intelligence. Copycat presents an inventive and challenging look at the knock-on effect this has in chipping away at our humanity and creativity, with big tech’s links to authoritarian ideology creeping through.
From the opening moments of Copycat, Joe creates a welcome, open space, feeling like a trusted narrator for this tale which straddles the lines between personal anecdote and razor-sharp commentary on our contemporary world. Welcoming the audience in, Joe talks about the impact of control over his voice, performing whilst creating a comfortable and casual tone. The recurrent eye contact from Joe reminds us of the importance of it in building human connections, something which emerges as a shimmering light in our technology-driven landscape. A recurrent mantra of ‘saying hello’ with just your eyes – a drama game taught by his teacher – reinforces this.
Joe’s imitations range from re-enactments of film scenes, with dystopian sci-fi on the menu as RoboCop and Terminator are referenced, whilst politically, Starmer, Trump, Burnham, Blair and Oswald Mosley showcase the full range of the performer. The complete Lord of the Rings fellowship are also ably performed. These impressions are threaded throughout the piece, giving further emphasis to the discussion on the role of imitation in life, learning and creativity.
Copycat veers into darker territory, examining the uncomfortable links between artificial intelligence and figures from the extreme fringes of the political right. Out-of-print books are ingested and then destroyed, whilst human art is copied. This is put into a real-life context with Joe examining how his role as a children’s television writer has become significantly more challenging with AI’s ability to create fully realised concepts and scripts in record time. Copycat explores this idea of human data being scraped and disposed of to feed databases, whilst the personal data of the user is absorbed and catalogued.
Told on a stage with some wonderfully handcrafted design ideas, including papier-mâché furniture, hundreds of scrunched-up balls of paper showing the trials of human creativity, and a visualiser that showcases Joe’s hand-drawn creations, the stage becomes a symbol for the human creative spirit.
Rather than offering easy answers, Copycat leaves its audience sitting with the uncomfortable questions raised by its central idea. Where does imitation end and originality begin, and what happens when technology can imitate us faster than we can create? Joe Sellman-Leava’s performance keeps those questions grounded in the human, making Copycat an engaging and increasingly unsettling examination of what we risk losing in a world built on copying.
Tickets to Copycat are available now. The show runs in the Pleasance Dome until August 31st.
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