Courtney Pauroso returns to the Edinburgh Festival as sex robot Vanessa 5000

Courtney Pauroso invites you to join her for an hour of physical and indecorous comedy that takes you on a journey through the uncanny valley of AI and robotics. Over the course of a product demonstration, Vanessa 5000 grows increasingly conflicted about technology, modernity and her own existence.

We spoke to Courtney about the rise of AI, bringing Vanessa 5000 to life and her visits to stripper stores...

What's does your creative process for putting together an hour-long show look like?

For me, the first step is just taking the leap and deciding to do it. Then after I tell everyone I'm going to do it, I'm like "Oh f*** now I actually have to go through with this." Then I book a bunch of workshop shows. Then I panic. Then I force myself to do the shows that I've booked even when they're mostly bad until by the grace of God they hopefully become good.

It's always a mix of sticking to a loose plan and improvising at first, then seeing what sticks. I'm working with my friend Corey Podell again (who co-devised my last show, Gutterplum), so she's my outside eye, and after each workshop show we talk about what worked and what sucked and what could potentially work if it didn't suck so much. And then I go home and pace in tiny circles around my studio apartment and bang my head against a wall and talk to myself and practice doing stupid things in front of a mirror until it's time for the next workshop show. I try to have lots of fun, but I do also cry. I also love wasting money on more and more props, hoping one will solve the show.

How did you bring your vision of Vanessa 5000 to life?

Playing with the physicality was definitely the first thing that made me want to do a robot. Back in the day when I was a baby actress, I was a company member of Synetic Theater in Washington D.C., a physical theatre company founded and run by Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili - a husband/wife director/choreographer team. They were incredible mentors. They kicked my ass. In a good way. They taught me Georgian-style mime and lots of cool tricks and how to fake looking like a ballerina.

One of the modalities we would work on during our very fun but intense improvisational movement training was a kind of robotic, doll-like, isolation technique. And in the many years since I've worked with them, I've tried to keep my movement skills up to at least clown-level good. I've honestly been trying to do a robot for years, but only in the past year did it finally click. I started figuring out the voice and the point of view and made a solid 10-minute set with it. And then I tried to create a whole world around the short bit and give it some depth and make it a surprising and entertaining hour.

The subject matter feels timely, so there have been a lot of fun things in the zeitgeist to explore. I'm also endlessly inspired by the dancers at Jumbo's Clown Room (a legendary bikini bar in Hollywood) and I love having a good excuse to go to stripper stores and shop for Vanessa's silly little outfit. The silly little outfit is a big part of the vision.

Your comedy has been called 'unsettling' before. Is that accurate? Is that a compliment?

I guess I'm just happy that people feel something! And I think it's good to feel a little uncomfortable sometimes. You have to create some tension for the jokes to hit deep. The quiet moments in between the laughs are almost just as important (as long as the audience laughs eventually).

I think there's probably something I'm doing that might be especially unsettling for men - and I don't mean that as a dig. I love men, and I want them to enjoy my shows, and I hope there are aspects that resonate with anyone. I just think (or hope?) that I'm maybe operating on a very deeply bodily feminine level and that it can be a bit jarring or even scary for them - but still fun! I am happy to be both seductive and confusing, but I also love it when women tell me after shows that they feel very seen. Perhaps they feel seen because as women they are also seductive and confusing! Anyway, I put a lot of heart into my comedy too, or at least I try, but I don't mind being mysterious. So maybe if it's "unsettling" it's not easy or to everyone's taste, but I'll still take it as a compliment.

If your show was a dish, what ingredients would it have and what would it taste like?

I'm not much of a cook, but if my future husband is reading this, I'm working on it. I guess maybe my show would be, like, really fancy astronaut food. Like imagine you stick a packaged meal with different brightly coloured freeze-dried blobs of jelly-like food substance into some tricked-out super microwave and when you take it out the blobs somehow taste exactly like filet mignon or lobster or shepherd's pie. You'd eat it and love it and laugh and laugh, but a part of you would know deep down it was chemical-laden and frightening.

If Vanessa took over, would you go willingly or try to fight her? Could she take over the world?

There are definitely arguments to be made that maybe we should just hand it over to the AI and let them try to do a better job, but ultimately, I'm team human. We're so flawed and doomed but I love us for it. It's endearing.

I've always related to the aspect of clown that embraces the inevitability of failure. It's tragic and beautiful and we laugh because we know it's true, yet the clown never loses optimism. Perhaps automating and systematising and virtualising and regulating everything is inevitable and the only way to manage moving forward in a complex world, but my instinct is that much is and has been and will be lost. That being said I love my iPhone and I touch it constantly. I absolutely indulge in the convenience and ease modern technology provides me. Is all the ease and convenience and blue light good for my primal brain or my aching spirit? Debatable. I'd like to think I'm not bowing down to any digital overlord, but on the other hand we're probably already co-evolving with technology whether we like it or not. So maybe we're already toast. Oh well!

Part of me hopes that if it ever came down to a Brave New World type scenario, my descendants would end up being the feral outlaws. More romantic. But I wouldn't be able to do this show without the assistance of technology and I've consulted ChatGPT a few times even writing these responses, so I'm a total hypocrite and maybe my hypothetical grandkids should be pissed at me for wishing a life of hardship upon them where they can't order props that will arrive the very next day from Amazon.com! It's tricky.

Just to be clear though, Vanessa 5000 is a total idiot and she couldn't take over the world because, spoiler alert, she's just me - a strange woman in her thirties in a wig and a bikini pretending to be a robot. And after this one last and final clown show I'm going to exit the grid and move to a riverbed and bear children and learn to cook and you'll never hear from me again. Maybe.