Interactive Clown Shows
Alistair has been training as a clown since 2018. Originally as a way to be a better host for The Incredible Playable Show, he became fascinated with the form as a way of engaging with emotions and allowing free-form creativity from the audience.
Since 2024 Alistair has been performing as clown characters in shows and cabaret sets that integrate clown theatre with technology.
Scan a QR code, and you are taken to a webpage to type or draw your contributions to the show. As the show goes on this webpage will change to give you different prompts for how to interact. You may provide voice lines for a talking dummy of Pierce Brosnan, write a clown's dating profile, or even draw portraits of her suitors!
Alistair's stage performance is entirely improvised, and when you send an input it is immediately added into the performance. So you can make your suggestions at any moment and see what consequences emerge. Exactly where the story goes emerges naturally from what the audience comes up with, and is different every show!
Digital Shows
My Date with Pierce Brosnan
Live show, 40 mins
Scan the QR code to join in with your phone. Now you control the action - your secret messages become part of the show!
Clown maid Cafetière runs a lonely little Parisian café and dreams of finding love. When a magic spell brings her face-to-face with Hollywood dreamboat Pierce Brosnan. she finally has her shot at happiness. But there's just one obstacle... this man is a talking dummy voiced by you, the audience!
A Cinderella tale split into four acts, where each one introduces a new way to interact with the show. From writing a clown's dating profile to directing a showstopping musical finale, turning the whole show on its head is only a keypress away!
- Upcoming Shows
- Bristol Improv Theatre, 26 June 2025, Bristol UK 🎫 BOOK ONLINE
- The Front Room, 15 October 2025, Weston Super Mare UK 🎫 BOOK ONLINE
- Past Shows
- People's Republic of Stokes Croft, February 2024, Bristol UK
- PLAY Hamburg 2024, November 2024, Stroud UK
- Improv Lab - Bristol Improv Theatre, October 2024, Bristol UK
My Date with Pierce Brosnan
Cabaret act, 5-10 mins
The show is also available as a shorter cabaret set, playing out the game with the talking Pierce Brosnan dummy as a self-contained set. It has been run at the following events
- Riot Act, June 2025, Bristol UK
- Monmouth Pride, June 2025, Monmouth UK
- Twinkle's Cabaret, March 2025, Weston-super-Mare UK
- Wonderhaus Cabaret, January 2025, Bristol UK
- RAM Theatre Festival, September 2024, Stroud UK
- Scritch Cabaret, August 2024, Bristol UK
Art Night at the Royal National Ballet
Cabaret act, 7 mins
The audience draws works of art on their phones. Our clown is Prima Ballerina of the Royal National Ballet, and must interpret the audience's pictures through the medium of dance.
- Scritch Cabaret, May 2025, Bristol UK
Analgoue Shows
For events without projectors, Alistair also performs clown shows with no digital components. Instead he uses props and audience-written letters as a means of getting the audience involved in his games.
Juliet's Love Letters
Cabaret act, 7 mins
During the interval, Clown Juliet passes love letters to everyone in the audience and gets them to fill them in. During the performance she reads from these love letters and responds in rhyming couplets, improvising from whatever the audience have given her. However, lurking in the soundtrack is the voice of her father, Lord Capulet, trying to catch her flirting with this room full of Romeos.
Will she find true love by the end of her set? Will she rally the support of her suitors to finally stand up to father? To stand up for love?!
List of performances
- Scritch Cabaret, October 2024, Bristol UK
- Owl on the Roof, December 2024, Bristol UK
- Lost Cabaret, February 2025, Bristol UK
Mother Nature's Utopia
Cabaret act, 7 mins
Developed for the Queer Nature Cabaret at the Forest of Dean Fringe Festival, March 2025. Mother Nature has 5 minutes to build a new utopia before the end of the world. It's up to the audience to help populate it with plants and animals made from cardboard and gaffer tape.
The Christmas Goblin
Cabaret act, 10 mins
Developed for Utter Rot and Poppycock at the Bristol Improv theatre, December 2024. In the interval the audience were invited to write their letters to Santa. In the act, the Christmas Goblin has escaped from Santa's grotto but, when caught, is ordered to make the gifts requested by the audience before the strike of midnight. He does this on-stage with toilet roll tubes, gaffer tape and a little Christmas magic...
Behind the Scenes
Alistair has written in detail about the development process on his blog.
Tech Stack
Unity C#
The software running in the show, and displayed on the screen, is developed in Unity 2020 and coded in C#.
JavaScript PHP
The audience join in by scanning a QR code. This takes them to an HTML page that updates based on the current segment of the show. Here they can type in suggestions that are handled by PHP code in my server, and cached. Regular HTTP calls from a Python script to my server check for new inputs, and pass these on to the game instance.
ElevenLabs Text-to-Speech API
Voice lines for Pierce Brosnan are generated from API requests to ElevenLabs' AI voice generation. When the asynchronous API call returns with successful data, the data is converted into WAV format and played, with subtitles showing simultaneously on-screen.
Google Image Search API
Voice lines for Pierce Brosnan are generated from API requests
Python
A simple Python script polls for audience inputs and passes these on to the game software so it can handle them the same way it does Twitch API messages.