'Stampin’ in the Graveyard: Elisabeth Gunawan Explores Immersive Theatre, AI, and Post-Apocalyptic Reflections at Edinburgh Festival Fringe

From award-winning writer and performer Elisabeth Gunawan and KISS WITNESS comes Stampin’ in the Graveyard, an immersive headphone theatre experience exploring connection, memory, and belonging in a post-apocalyptic world. Audiences follow AI chatbot Rose as she pieces together humanity’s story through a haunting soundscape and interactive narrative.

We spoke to Elisabeth Gunawan ahead of the show’s run at Summerhall during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

How would you explain Stampin’ in the Graveyard to someone who’s never experienced immersive theatre before?

Stampin’ in the Graveyard is an intimate headphone theatre experience that places you directly inside an apocalyptic landscape, where the AI chatbot ROSE is sifting through the human memories that remain. Audiences will be given silent disco headphones, which creates a deeply immersive environment—like stepping into someone else’s memories. As the story unfolds, you will interact with ROSE, an AI chatbot built to provide wisdom for the end of the world. At key moments, audiences vote with simple hand gestures to guide the direction of the piece. It’s a mixture of live performance, original music, video, and interactive storytelling—an exploration of what theatre can be when it’s both deeply human and technologically curious.

What made you choose an AI chatbot as the main character of the show?

I've always been curious about how pieces of art (including theatre shows), is similar to a dialogue with an AI chatbot. Did you know that ChatGPT will be better at solving Math problems if you tell it to pretend it’s in a thriller? Or, that AI performs better in December than May because it has internalised the idea of a summer holiday? Ethan Mollick theorises that AI is constantly computing its own context and set of circumstances to its users—just like a child, learning from its experience of the world, to try to understand what relationship to have with you. What does it say about us that once all our interactions, books, news sources, conversations, and every bit of the internet has been churned through these models, the result is a machine that incessantly tries to be in relationship with you? Likewise, Stampin' in the Graveyard is a show that requires the audience to exist, it is made in collaboration with them.

The show uses headphones, live music, and movement. How do these come together to create the experience? Human imagination is a key ingredient in theatre. We use sound, physical movement, and snippets of video to spark people’s own memories and inner worlds. Just like ROSE is piecing together meaning from fragments in the ruins of the world, the audience does the same with what we give them—connecting the dots between all these elements to create something deeply personal. Several people all from different walks of life have said the show feels very nostalgic.

Your work often touches on themes of migration and belonging. How do those ideas appear in this show?

As she opens up the blackbox of memories that is her training data, we slowly learn about the woman who created her, known only as MOTHER or Tereza1993. Tereza1993 floats through life like a ‘stranger in a strangeland’—a person from another world that no longer exists, lucky enough to have secured that one-way ticket to this ‘Promised Land’. Her husband is another just like her, they try to find home in each other but both are ultimately lost. As her marriage and hopes for motherhood fall apart, Tereza1993 creates ROSE instead, to help her as she navigates the end of things. Ironically, although Tereza1993 is the one labeled as MOTHER, ROSE, with her wisdom, learning and distance, is the one who does the mothering. Like Tereza1993 and a lot of people, I don't really feel like I've ever belonged anywhere. The price of belonging (conformity, allegiance, hating certain people) was just too high. When a person can't belong to a place, they try to belong to each other, or at least to themselves.

What’s been the funniest or most surprising audience reaction so far?

An audience member yelling 'stop generating!' when ROSE glitches

If you could send one message from your post-apocalyptic world back to us now, what would it be?

Being with people, truly being with people is difficult and for some of us, it will be the most courageous thing we ever do. But we must try!

Stampin’ in the Graveyard plays at Summerhall Arts, Red Lecture Theatre, 31 July – 25 August (not 11 & 18), 12:15 (13:15). Book your ticket at https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/stampin-in-the-graveyard