Interview: 404 Theater on DeepFake (Edinburgh Fringe)

Photo: Amanda Gostomski

404 Theater's DeepFake, which comes to Edinburgh Fringe this August, is an immersive show designed to be experienced by only one audience member at a time. Those who attend are thrown into the deep end of a virtual call, in which they have to argue their case for whether or not their fictional employer should launch a new AI software in the coming days. The show was described by No Proscenium as 'required viewing' and featured it as one of their Best Shows & Experiences of 2025.

Ahead of its Edinburgh Fringe run, we caught up with the show's creators, Grace Goheen and Minh-Anh Day, to talk about the rapid rise of deepfake technology, why the show could only ever have been an immersive experience for one audience member at a time, and their highlights from previous years at the festival.

This interview contains spoilers for DeepFake.

If you're planning on seeing the show, we recommend returning once you've attended.

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Immersive Rumours: Hi Minh-Anh! Hi Grace! Thanks for speaking with us today. Your show DeepFake is heading to Edinburgh Fringe this August. What can audiences expect from it, and what makes it distinct from other shows they'll encounter at the festival?

Grace Goheen: The biggest thing you need to know is that you are the only audience member for the show. You play the role of Alex Doe, who's the head of Public Relations at a big tech company that's thinking about launching a deepfake product, and you're put in the driver's seat of what it would be like to be at a tech company making these big, impactful decisions.

We say it's part puzzle room because during the show, you get an opportunity to explore your environment and look through documents and memos around your office space. You also speak directly with your coworkers who are joining via Zoom calls, engage with the questions posed by deepfake technology in your capacity as head of PR, and see some of that technology play out during the show.

Minh-Anh Day: The other thing I'll say is that there's no wrong way to play the show. There are people who come in, and they have a clear idea of who Alex Doe is - they're referencing co-workers that they know, and they're having tons of fun playing that, and then there are people who come in and say, ‘I'm Alex Doe, but I basically have the same opinions that I, as an audience member, already had.' Both of them are beautiful.

Immersive Rumours: How did your company, 404 Theater, first come to be?

Grace Goheen: The basis of 404 Theater came from Minh-Anh and me seeing a lot of theater where technology was an add-on to the experience, but not deeply and fully integrated into the narrative and the performance. Given that Minh-Anh and I both have backgrounds in tech - I work as a product manager at a data company, and Minh-Anh is a software engineer at a security startup - we wanted to bring the rapid innovation that was happening in the tech world, which we were seeing at our day jobs, into the theater space. Not just as an add-on to a show, but in the right format, which meant it felt like an integrated experience for audiences.

Photo: Amanda Gostomski

Immersive Rumours: And how did DeepFake first come about? Was there a particular news story or question around the technology that inspired the show?

Grace Goheen: I think the biggest thing we were seeing was this rapid shift in deepfake technology. It's existed for quite some time, but it got really fast and really accessible really quickly. We wanted to use the show as an opportunity to push the limits of how fast and accessible this technology is for people. We were also alarmed by how easy it is to spin this stuff up and how little source material you need to make convincing deepfakes, so we wanted to build a show that spoke to that reality.

Immersive Rumours: Was there anything that surprised either of you as you were putting the show together?

Grace Goheen: As we were preparing for our first run at the Denver Fringe, we wanted to leave people with a souvenir from the show. The thing they walk away with is essentially a check to ‘pay’ them for their time. On the back, we wanted to have a little write-up on some of the laws surrounding deepfake technology in Denver. 

That was actually one of the most frightening experiences for me working on the show. Learning that not only was this stuff incredibly easy to use, accessible and pretty cheap, but also that there aren't really any laws surrounding it. We’ve been running this show for more than a year now, and the legal situation hasn’t really changed.

Minh-Anh Day: By contrast, we've updated the materials that you look through as the Head of PR constantly, because new articles are coming out and new people are releasing products that are in this zone, so there's this really stark contrast between the speed of law and the speed of tech that’s visible in the way that we have to update the show, month by month.

Immersive Rumours: Are you worried that at some point, the law will finally catch up and it’ll make staging DeepFake harder?

Minh-Anh Day: We haven’t come up against that roadblock yet, and from what we’ve looked into it for the US, it would probably be fine, even in states with a deepfake law, because art is protected speech in the US, so it’d probably be a case of us saying, ‘Okay, we are doing something illegal in a sense, but it’s within the confines of an artistic show.’ That being said, when it comes up, which hopefully at some point it will, we’ll be speaking with a lawyer.

Photo: Amanda Gostomski

Immersive Rumours: Did you know from the beginning that DeepFake had to be presented as an immersive, one-on-one experience?

Grace Goheen: Absolutely. I think people sometimes assume we’re a company that only makes immersive theatre, but we're really just interested in picking the right medium for the technology that we want to talk about. 

I can't imagine a version of the show that's not immersive. It’s a completely different experience to see a play about deepfake technology or watch a TikTok about how someone’s grandma got scammed because of a deepfake than it is to see it happen to you. 

There’s no world where this wasn't a one-on-one experience where you were the sole participant and seeing the actual technology being used against your own face and your own body. 

Immersive Rumours: What kinds of reactions did you get during early performances of the show, and how has that changed how you now present the work?

Grace Goheen: The very first person we ever showed this to was a friend of ours named Katie, who screamed at the top of her lungs and frantically tried to attack the computer. That was really informative and helped us create a much safer environment for someone to experience the show in, because even though it’s deeply impactful and emotional, we also don't want people to feel totally frightened. 

We've changed a lot about the show since then. We created the role of Alex Doe for you to step into rather than playing yourself. We have a lot of signage letting you know what you're getting yourself into so that you're prepared for the experience. I would say 80 to 90 percent of our audience members end up laughing now, and it's this sick, delighted kind of laughter.

Minh-Anh Day: I will certainly reinforce that we had a concern of ‘Are we going to really freak people out in a way that we don't agree with?’ Neither of us is really interested in making the kind of theater that is destroying the audience. Grace has done a lot of work on making the immersive part of the experience feel like something that audiences can really sink into and play the role to the fullest without fear.

Grace Goheen: I think one of the coolest things about this show is that most people who see it walk out and want to talk to whoever's playing the receptionist for the next 30 minutes about the show. People often email us or message us on Instagram days later and say, 'I'm still thinking about this’ and ‘I told my parents about this.'

The lasting effect of having an experience where you’re engaging with content about the technology that maybe you haven't looked into deeply before, coupled with the really emotional high that happens during the show, I think, leads to a place where it really sticks in people's minds and hearts. That feels so important to me because this is not an experience you can get in non-immersive theater.

Photo: Amanda Gostomski

Immersive Rumours: You’ve both been to Edinburgh Fringe as visitors before. What have been some of your highlights from when you’ve attended previously?

Minh-Anh Day: Our experience of the Fringe has been that every year we discover a totally new genre and get to see something totally incredible in that genre. Two stummers ago, it was clown, and we really hadn't seen modern clown very much before. We loved [Lil Wenker’s] Bangtail. We loved Stamptown. There was a lot of really amazing modern clown work, and we didn't know that some of these things were possible. 

Grace Goheen: Last year, a big addition for us was circus. We'd never experienced modern circus, and there were some really incredible performances. We saw Sophie's Surprise 29th, and I was like, ‘I didn't know circus could be so silly and fun and delightful and hilarious.’

The Fringe has helped expose us to all the genres that are out there and helped us bring that back to our own work, especially if we're in the nature of looking at a piece of technology and thinking about what’s the right narrative or format for it. We're totally inspired by all the different forms that we see at the Fringe and are bringing that back into our own work.

Immersive Rumours: And finally, how are you feeling ahead of your month-long run at the Fringe with DeepFake?

Minh-Anh Day: I’m really excited. The longest run we’ve done with DeepFake so far is five days, and I’m so excited to be in a situation where we get to do several hours of this show every day and then go see shows at the Fringe, which is my favorite thing to do every year. To be part of that mix is a really special thing.

Grace Goheen: Another thing that's going to be very cool about being there all month is getting to tap into the community that is also there as performers and artists bringing their shows to the Fringe. Specifically in the immersive space, there’s so much connective tissue because we're all looking for slightly odd spaces and all trying to get similar types of audience members. I'm just really excited to meet a lot of people and connect with folks.

Guide: Edinburgh Fringe's Best Immersive and Interactive Shows (2026)

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404 Theater's DeepFake runs from 6th to 30th August (excluding 10th, 17th, 24th) at Top Belly at Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61) as part of the Edinburgh Fringe. For more information and to book tickets, visit edfringe.com

Immersive Rumours will be at the Edinburgh Fringe this August. See our pre-festival coverage here.