Interview: Lauren Stones talks “Pink Elephants”

June 2023

Friendship, loss, life’s brutal realities and one pretty bad acid trip are all features of promising new work from writer and actor Lauren Stones. “Pink Elephants” will play at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre from 16th – 19th August as part of the Camden Fringe and here, Lauren chats about the show’s style and substance, influences and great advice.

So how did Pink Elephants come to be?

The initial inspiration came from when I was living in a shared house in Newcastle. I had a job at the local pub but lost it as they closed for lockdown. I became good friends with one of my flatmates who worked from home, partly because of our mutually unhinged sense of humour, as well as our forced proximity. We’d been friends before that, but the fact that we suddenly became our only source of human contact pushed the dynamic to the next level.

Because there was little else to do, we looked forward to the nights when we could get hammered and reach total oblivion, which was great for a while. But there came a point where it seemed that the lockdown had no end in sight, and we found ourselves wondering if the cycle would continue forever. I wanted to make a piece that explored this feeling of entrapment, even if it wasn’t directly related to lockdown – and as the nature of addiction can also be quite cyclical, that was how Pink Elephants was born.

And tell me a little about the dynamics at work between your central characters, Emerson and Jerry. What are the driving forces?

Emerson and Jerry have quite a codependent relationship, but I think they both see it in a different way. After their friend Luke’s death, Jerry is pretty much the only person Emerson sees, so she’s looking to him to fill a void and be everything to her at once. Jerry still has his job, he still has a window into normality – yet, he’s aware that his addiction is also getting worse, and as high functioning as he appears to be, knows that it inevitably separates him from other people.

Emerson is like a comfort blanket – he can carry on behaving the way he does without any guilt because she lives the same way. Both of them carry a certain amount of resentment, which they manage to bury at first but it was always going to boil over at some point.

Can audiences expect light and dark, or is this show intentionally all of one, none of the other?

It’s a mix of the light, the dark, and the absurd – grief and addiction are both dark subjects at their core, but there are also elements of euphoria and nostalgia that go hand in hand with the crashing comedowns and feelings of loss. Just as the stages of grief aren’t linear, neither is the play. At some points, it might feel a bit chaotic and confusing. I wanted to include the elements of a bad acid trip, where nothing makes sense and things seem to be ever-changing – I got some inspiration from Gaspar Noe’s film Vortex, where the audience feels just as confused as the characters as the truth gradually unravels.

What can you tell me about your cast and creative team?

Kevin Murphy is our director, fresh from a European tour of Animal Farm, and will be performing in his show at Camden Fringe, End of the World FM at the Cockpit Theatre, which I’m very much looking forward to seeing. Alex Smith plays Jerry and has just finished a three-week run of Trumpets and Raspberries by Dario Fo at the Barons Court Theatre, which was hilarious and off-the-wall. As well as writing the play, I’m playing Emerson – I completed a short course in Method Acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York last year. I’ve since been writing, editing, doing character work, and preparing for Camden Fringe.

Sam Fez is composing some brilliantly nightmarish music for us, and it’ll be the first time I’ve worked with live music during a show, which is very exciting. He’s one of the co-founders of Love Love Records, a label championing unfamiliar music, and is in a band called White Devil Disco, one of my favourite bands right now. I feel very grateful to be working with so many brilliant people.

Sounds like a pretty impressive team to me! Who are you hoping will see this work and what are you hoping that they’ll take away with them?

I feel like the work has something for everyone, as it’s about a universal human experience – even if some of the audience have no experience with addiction, most people do have experience with grief. I’m hoping that people will see this and get a sense of how easy it is for a person to sink into addiction, whatever their substance of choice might be. In writing this play, I’ve shone a spotlight onto some of the most pathetic parts of myself. I simply want to present a situation for what it is, knowing that it has been the reality for myself and many others.

Quick-fire time then… Your first experience of theatre/live performance?

My first experience of live performance was a Disneyland Paris parade when I was probably about five years old. The Mary Poppins float went by and picked some of the children to twirl around with chimney sweeps, and I was one of them. I guess that’s when I first started being obsessed with performing in front of people!

Your route into the arts?

I was always begging my parents for dance and drama classes, mainly because I saw my cousins doing them and it looked so much fun. I performed in every single school play, wrote play scripts at home and when I was old enough, travelled to London at every given opportunity to go and see £12 Travelex plays at the National Theatre. That led to me getting my BA (Hons) in Drama from Edge Hill University and MA in Acting from the University of East London, and I’ve never looked back.

Best advice you’ve ever been given when it comes to theatre-making?

During my course at the Lee Strasberg Institute, I had a class with Vincent D’Onofrio. I was stuck in a rut with writer’s block and he was the one to break it. He said, “You want to write a story? Write it! What are you worried about? You’re writing a story for other humans, you’re not writing for aliens who don’t understand what you’re talking about. As long as it’s human and true, it’s correct.” It removed many of my fears about writing and theatre-making in general, making me more daring as a result.

What would your advice be to up and coming creatives?

Don’t be discouraged if you can’t afford drama school. Work with fringe theatres that offer box office splits and network with other creatives. With social media the way it is nowadays, there’s always an opportunity to collaborate with someone, it’s just about having the courage to dive in.

And finally, why should audiences come along to see Pink Elephants this August?

It’s wacky, it has a killer soundtrack and it has a ball pit – what more could you possibly ask for?

So there you have it! You can catch Lauren Stones’ “Pink Elephants” at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre from 16th – 19th August as part of the Camden Fringe. More information and tickets can be found here.