What happens when a system designed to optimise the future decides what no longer belongs in it?
FLYOLOGY is a sharp, feral new musical about civilisation, control, and the things that refuse to be tidied away.
At a high-profile tech launch, founder Callum unveils a predictive AI built to stabilise what comes next.
Trained to identify disruption before it happens, the system promises calm, continuity, and progress without mess. It learns fast. It works beautifully. Until it doesn’t.
When the system glitches mid-demo, three historical women are pulled into the simulation at full cognitive fidelity: Ada Lovelace, Ethel Smyth, and Emmeline Pankhurst. Brilliant. Inconvenient. Unoptimisable.
As the AI tries to resolve them, something breaks. Music refuses to behave. Love can’t be reduced. Collaboration won’t sit still. The very qualities the system was designed to eliminate turn out to be the ones holding everything together.
Part sci-fi glitch, part feminist riot, FLYOLOGY is fast, funny, and unapologetically loud. With razor-sharp dialogue, fourth-wall breaks, and banger songs, it asks a dangerous question:
When efficiency becomes the goal, who gets erased first?
And what happens when the answer refuses to comply?
We sat down with Cathy Farmer (Book/Lyrics) and Tamiko Dooley (Music/Lyrics) to learn more about the play.
Cathy, you’ve chosen three women who were ‘ahead of their time.’ In Flyology, they are literally pulled into a future they helped seed. Does the AI see them as its ancestors, or just as data errors to be corrected?
Callum’s system was built on a sanitised version of history – the neatly packaged, easily digestible version. Ada, Ethel and Emmeline were edited out before the upload. So when they glitch back in, the system has no framework for them. They’re not founders. They’re not ancestors. They’re just… noise that the algorithm never accounted for. And noise, in Callum’s world, gets deleted.
Callum’s AI isn't necessarily evil—it just wants things to be tidy. Why is 'tidy' such a dangerous goal for humanity?
The conversation we kept returning to was: who defines efficiency? Because the answer is always the person with the power to set the parameters. Callum, our EdTech bro, isn't cartoonishly evil. He genuinely believes in optimisation. That's what makes him dangerous. The women aren't erased because he hates them; they're erased because the things that make them extraordinary, their inconvenience, their insistence, their love, don't fit the model. We wanted audiences to sit with that discomfort and recognise it. Not just in AI, but in every institution that has ever decided that certain kinds of humanity are inefficiencies to be processed out.
How do you use music to show the system breaking? Do the songs start out structured and optimised and then devolve into something more primal as the women take over?
I let the songs misbehave in the same way the women do. They shift register without warning: tender then furious, funny then devastating. Certainly the songs have an emotional truth running through them and they refuse to be dialled down – each woman leans into her emotion, her chaos – and discovers her voice in the process.
Ada, Ethel, and Emmeline come from different eras and social spheres. How do their individual musical languages clash or harmonise when they’re forced into the same simulation?
Ethel and Emmeline were in the same social circles and Ada was just before them – and all were based in Surrey. Each character adds her own texture to the sound world, and the ensemble numbers have unapologetic quodlibet sections where voices intentionally clash to show that the riot has arrived. The chaos isn't decorative. We wanted a sound world where you could never quite settle, because these women never could.
The show suggests that the things that make us 'messy'—love, collaboration, defiance—are what hold us together. In the writing process, did you find yourselves embracing 'mess' over traditional musical structure?
It’s definitely curated mess. Cathy and I don’t take ourselves seriously, but we take the music creation, the performance and the writing very seriously. So we purposely have overlapping/clashing lines and unapologetic quodlibet sections in some songs to give the texture of defiance, chaos and “mess”. In fact, the songs have structure and we’ve carefully considered each one.
The show features fourth-wall breaks. Is this the characters appealing to the audience for help, or is the 'simulation' leaking into the theatre itself?
The audience are welcomed as the investors (in a Dragons’ Den style set-up) for Callum’s pitch, so they are “seen” by Callum and immersed into the world of AI and tech speak. We love playing with the idea of bringing a modern, live audience into a show where an investment pitch that goes wrong. We’ve all seen the TED talks and Shark Tank style shows – here we have a tech bro failing to present his AI dream as the historical women refuse to behave as the digital case studies they are meant to be.
What was the first piece of theatre you remember having an impact on you?
I remember seeing Joseph & The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat at the Palladium with Jason Donovan when I was 6 and it blew my mind. My dad bought the vocal score and so began my obsession with collecting musical scores to play through them on the piano at home after every show. The dream to write a musical began then – and here I am 35 years later bringing FLYOLOGY to the stage!
What keeps you inspired?
The world of new plays and musicals is thriving in the UK, and we’re inspired by the success of everything from Ballad Lines to Operation Mincemeat, from Dear England to Cable Street and SIX, to name but a few. Seeing this fresh writing makes us optimistic that audiences want to see new voices and are receptive to new songs. The musical theatre community regionally and in London is effervescent and we love being part of this dynamic and generous group, from writers’ groups to collaborations with theatres, piano shops, bars and artists.
The world of new plays and musicals is thriving in the UK, and we’re inspired by the success of everything from Ballad Lines to Operation Mincemeat, from Dear England to Cable Street and SIX, to name but a few. Seeing this fresh writing makes us optimistic that audiences want to see new voices and are receptive to new songs. The musical theatre community regionally and in London is effervescent and we love being part of this dynamic and generous group, from writers’ groups to collaborations with theatres, piano shops, bars and artists.
What would you hope someone takes away from seeing Flyology?
We live in a world of broken systems; from fake news to AI bias to sanitised TikToks about revolution. We want audiences to use their noise – their voice – to tell their story. Ask yourself - what do you want your legacy to be? Then fight to speak it – and leave a real trace.
We live in a world of broken systems; from fake news to AI bias to sanitised TikToks about revolution. We want audiences to use their noise – their voice – to tell their story. Ask yourself - what do you want your legacy to be? Then fight to speak it – and leave a real trace.
Flyology runs at The Union Theatre in London from Tuesday 5th until Friday 8th May 2026. For tickets and more information visit https://uniontheatre.biz/show/flyology/
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