Lorna Rose-Treen on Surrealism, Silliness, and the Women of “24 Hour Diner People”

With jittery Cold War spies, sentimental truckers, and a diner full of absurd archetypes, Lorna Rose-Treen’s new show 24 Hour Diner People is a cartoony love letter to the ridiculous. For Rose-Treen, surrealism isn’t just playful - it’s a way of seeing the world’s chaos for what it really is. She spoke to Hinton Magazine about growing up on American TV, why every character she plays is a woman, and how a silly prop or an annoying voice can spark an entire character.

24 Hour Diner People is described as a love letter to the ridiculous - what do you think surrealism can reveal that sincerity sometimes can’t?

I think it can help you see the world for what it is - absolute nonsense. For me, life is better when we embrace chaos and the irrational. It can be really tiring trying to make sense of everything all the time. We spend so much of our time trying to do the ‘right’ thing but there isn’t actually really a right thing to do. We are all floppy bags of bones who want to be loved.

The whole show is set in an offbeat American diner, suspended in time. What made you choose that setting - and what lives inside it, metaphorically speaking?

I watched a lot TV growing up in the 00s, and so much of that was American. Gilmore Girls, Cheers, the Simpsons, Saved by the Bell, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Hannah Montana… so whenever I played pretend, with my sister and friends, we’d all adopt absolutely piercing Mean Girls/valley girl American accents. And we’d all be going to the mall or the diner or the baseball game. It was a fictionalised version of America, existing really from whimsical sounbytes and misunderstandings. I think I wanted to honour that by creating a cartoony diner, and using it as a playground. It adds to the nonsense. 

Every character is a woman - what draws you to exploring female tropes through comedy?

I just want to be as funny as possible as a woman. I’m from a generation (very young) where women were still daily called ‘not funny’ so I wanna be as funny as possible as women. I play a lot of film tropes, like cowboys and spys, but they’re all women, but people will come after and gender those characters as guys. 

Is it important to you that your shows have a world or setting, not just a series of characters?

Yeah it depends what I’m doing in that bit, I guess. Some characters are so cartoony you wanna be with them for 30 seconds but you get a sense of their world from what they’re saying, and how they speak. Others, like my brownie girl guide in my first show or the tourist in this show, have a real background and that’s what’s funny - family and relations and wants and needs. Something a bit more living. I like to have both. I think the later characters can live longer and are maybe more suited to sitcom or longer narratives because of it, but the cartoony ones live more intensely and less gently. 

From jittery Cold War spies to sentimental truckers, your characters are wildly unexpected. How do these women arrive in your head?

I wish I knew because then I’d churn it out! It’s different every time - and every time it happens I think I’ve cracked it. The trucker started because I got a friend to make me some long arms and I thought… hmm who would have long arms. And then when I arrived at the trucker, I thought ‘great I guess the secret is just having a stupid prop.’ But then my next character that came into my head came from a silly voice I was doing to irritate my niece. So there’s no formula but if I work it out I’ll write a best selling book. 

What do you hope audiences take away?

I just want them to leave having had fun and having forgotten the horrors of the outside world for 55 minutes. 

Lorna-Rose Treen will be performing 24 Hour Diner People at Pleasance Courtyard (Beneath) from 30th July - 24th August. Ticket link HERE.