Interview: Yannick Trapman-O’Brien on Undersigned

Photo: Yannick Trapman-O'Brien

Undersigned - a deeply personal, interactive psychological thriller for an audience of one - is making its international debut this summer with stops in London and at the Edinburgh Fringe. The show, which has been created by Yannick Trapman-O'Brien, has enjoyed sell-out performances across the United States, and earlier this year was part of Overlook Film Festival's immersive programme alongside 2024's darling of the London immersive scene, The Manikins: a work in progress by Deadweight Theatre.

Our friends over at No Proscenium have previously described Undersigned as "thrilling in every sense of the word", and six months on from their appointment, Todd Martens from the Los Angeles Times commented, "..there are moments I’ll catch myself thinking about the show and the choice I was presented with".

Ahead of Undersigned arriving in the UK, we caught up with Yannick Trapman-O'Brien to find out a bit more about the experience...

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Immersive Rumours: Hi Yannick! Thanks for speaking with us today. Do you mind introducing yourself and giving us a bit of background on your work up until now?

Yannick Trapman-O'Brien: Happy to! I’m a performer and theatermaker based in Philadelphia, and most interested in the things we share and exchange with strangers. I’ve jumped around a lot, working in creative research and performative exchanges, public art and history, circus and immersive nightlife, but in the past five years I’ve built a practice of making responsive, intimate theatre pieces for small audiences - most often only one person at a time.

That shift in my practice started for me with The Telelibrary - an early pandemic-era experiment in telephone theatre that participants really seized and poured themselves into until it blossomed into something much stranger and more powerful than I ever expected. Five years and 2100 calls later, it’s still operating, and still teaching me new things about co-authoring with audiences, rethinking scale for performance, and making better and better invitations for anyone who stumbles in as my audience of one.

Photo: Yannick Trapman-O'Brien

IR: Undersigned is coming to Europe for the first time this summer with shows in London, Amsterdam and at the Edinburgh Fringe. What can you tell us about the show and the role of the audience within it?

YTO: Often, when I say that I make work for an audience of one, and someone understandably asks, “But what does that mean?” I explain it this way:

I’ve written a show about you. You’ll be the only one there, and no one else will see it. And everything in the show is written except for anything about you — but that’s fine, because you’re the expert on anything about you, so when you get there, you can share whatever you choose, and we’ll finish it together.

The show is a place to have a new conversation with yourself; to speak frankly to yourself about what it is you value, and to cement that truth through action.

To that end, there’s not much about the show itself I can tell you, as we make a policy of not discussing the contents of the show at all. In part, this is to provide meaningful privacy for guests, who may well take the chance to discuss things that don’t live anywhere outside of their own head. But it’s also because we want our participants to own as much of the story that emerges as possible. Every guest makes their own calculation of how blindly they are willing to step in, and obviously we’re not opposed to offering some context - I wouldn’t be speaking to you if I was! It’s a very personal experience, it’s 45-55 minutes long, there will be a blindfold, an invocation, and a pointed discussion.

But the invitation is for every participant to wonder what might emerge if they didn’t look to anyone else to confirm what their experience might or “should” be, and instead trusted that their own authentic response to the premise, as they encounter it, is something meaningful and worth discovering.

IR: Where did the idea for Undersigned first come from?

YTO: Undersigned began as a private commission way back in 2019. I got a phone call out of the blue from someone who had heard about my work and was looking to commission a piece of immersive horror. And my immediate instinct was to decline - maybe even to run away, which isn’t a practical choice on a phone call but it serves as a testament to how ill equipped I felt for the genre as someone who has watched a few episodes of Spongebob Squarepants through my fingers, rapt in terror at totally harmless levels of peril. But the client was persistent and offered me enormous flexibility, and I pitched the beginnings of an odd idea, and we went with it.

The event came, and I did like 12 shows in one night, and I was totally bowled over by what those 12 random partygoers made with their time. I felt an enormous curiosity, and an enormous burden of care that I honestly didn’t have enough tools for at the time.

I spent a few years looking for resources, talking to other artists and therapists and sex workers and all manner of people who hold heavy things and practice care and aftercare. At the same time, I logged more and more hours with The Telelibrary, and I found my own growing set of tools and practices. And so in 2022, I brought the piece back down from the shelf and started putting into practice all the questions and ideas I had about making safe places to be dangerous, and offering discomfort as a form of care. 

Photo: Yannick Trapman-O'Brien

IR: In the years since it was created, has Undersigned changed and developed based on the way audiences have approached the show?

YTO: One of the great gifts of doing these low-throughput shows is the luxury of having something small, adaptable and sustainable enough to hold it year over year, and to gradually let hundreds of people pour through over time. As dorky as it sounds, I think about a school field trip as a child where I was brought to a cave and they told us how a stalagmite forms gradually from the steady repetition of just little drops of water, and I feel a touch of that same awe.

For Undersigned, there’s an element of that accumulation; some mark of the generosity of every participant lingers, and comes to hold the next participant. And there’s a way that all the hands running over the surface make some parts of the experience smooth and worn over time - guests have really shown me what the piece is about, where they are inclined to linger, and how to stay out of their way. But I also think there’s a sharpening that happens too; there’s a fine point at the center of the question we present, and we’re always using the lessons from each guest to shift and adjust and ensure that edge stays keen, and that we can hold it steady enough for someone to press as far against it as they dare.

IR: Do you find people go into Undersigned with some trepidation about not having a safety net of other participants around them, or do they instead find that to be freeing?

YTO: I have to imagine participants sometimes feel nervous to be the only one there, and I know there is some subset of audiences for whom that’s just a dealbreaker. I’ve met people who say, “It would be my nightmare to be the only one there.” But I think that when those participants actually try it, they may find the experience isn’t at all what they imagined - which is maybe informed by the image of an empty theatre and you all lonely in the middle.

The truth is we all spend time alone in our own heads, and I think for most of us it’s quite a crowded room. As facilitators, our job is to help that experience be as freeing as you suggested, and to guide someone away from the concern that they need to “do” anything or make something happen. The show is a chance to just respond organically, and to notice how your responses may be freer or stranger or different as you settle into the fact that there is no one there but you.

Photo: Yannick Trapman-O'Brien

IR: Finally, what advice would you give to those looking to attend on how to best prepare themselves beforehand?

YTO: Well, for starters, I would say that there’s nothing anyone has to do in preparation for this beyond grabbing themselves an appointment time and showing up at the right time and place. I’m really proud of the work we’ve done building the ramp into and out of this experience, and as someone who has frequently found myself only checking the confirmation email for an event while already on the train to get there, I’m always grateful for experiences that understand how expensive it can be to have to give energy and brainspace to something before it starts. 

But for those who enjoy looking forward with anticipation, or for those who are inclined to plan and prep (somehow also me, on the train heading to the event I haven’t read about with a backpack full of things I might need), there are a few things you can do to give yourself more space for whatever experience emerges. We give you the choice to bring an offering to use in the process, and it can be a great gift to spend a little time in the days preceding noticing what small objects in your life seem to have some kind of heat or charge to them, and choosing one that feels like it’s at a tipping point.

And since I’m always in favor of people holding themselves with more care, I’d say to do so you could arrive early, so that when you’re inevitably later than planned, you’re still not rushing yourself. Better still, if possible I’d even recommend you save yourself some time for after the experience that you can spend alone; maybe there’s somewhere in the area you’d like to grab a solo meal afterwards, or a shop you’ve been meaning to pop into, or even just a nice walk you can talk through a nearby park, or to a tube station a little further away than is efficient. Some participants find that the time spent in their own company at Undersigned leaves them hungry for more - and some participants find that having plans after gives one a very functional alibi should one decide to keep their time at Undersigned as their own little secret.  

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Undersigned will run at an unannounced location near London Bridge from 24th July to 26th July 2025, and at Underbelly Cowgate from 31st July to 12th August as part of Edinburgh Fringe 2025.

The show asks for a Down Payment of £80.00 for London performances and £13.50 for Edinburgh performances. To join the waitlist for London appointments, visit yannickto.com/undersigned, and for Edinburgh appointments, visit underbellyedinburgh.co.uk