Laura Grillo - What Would Jarvis Do? Interview

We just sit and sometimes dance and prance around the room and ask, 'What would he do? What would Jarvis do?' Somehow, that makes us feel a little better."
Didi and GG are best friends and super-fans of Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker.

Photo by Alicia Bridge.

When a pair of yellow trousers, supposedly worn by the man himself, come up for auction through their wildly unconventional therapist, they empty their pockets to buy them. 
Only there's one problem. They might not be Jarvis's trousers at all.
Their search for the real yellow trousers spirals into an increasingly surreal odyssey populated by eccentric strangers, impossible coincidences, and the unsettling feeling that they've been here before.
What Would Jarvis Do? is an experimental absurdist black comedy about fandom, grief, and the stories we attach to treasured objects. It's a playful exploration of what happens when the people and things we hold onto disappear - and how we might find a way forward.
We chatted to writer Laura Grillo to learn more about the show.
The play was inspired by your own experiences of sudden loss and grief during lockdown. How did channelling those feelings through comedy, absurdity, and fandom help you process that period?
It was really the only way I felt I could deal with what was happening. Writing it felt cathartic. In some ways, the early writing was almost like a series of diary entries, except instead of writing directly about what had happened, those feelings came out through these characters and increasingly absurd situations.
I was also listening to a lot of music from the 90s at the time, because it took me back to a period when I felt safe, surrounded by family and optimistic. So, fandom and nostalgia naturally became mixed up with the grief.

I think creating this ridiculous quest around Jarvis Cocker and a pair of yellow trousers gave me enough distance to write about something that was actually incredibly painful. I could put pieces of what I was feeling into the play without having to explain those feelings directly. It became a strange kind of diary, just transformed through comedy, fandom and absurdity.

Jarvis Cocker and Pulp play a massive role in the DNA of this show. What is it about Jarvis’s persona and the broader Britpop era that made them the perfect vehicle for a story about holding on and letting go?
There was always something about Jarvis that felt slightly outside the mainstream, even when Pulp became enormously successful. I remember watching the video for Common People on Top of the Pops and feeling somehow seen. He didn't seem like the conventional idea of a pop star. He was a bit of an attractive oddball, and I think that was part of the attraction.

The 90s era also represents a very particular time in my life. I was young, my family were around me, and there seemed to be a sense of optimism and possibility. I don't want to romanticise the 90s because there were obviously plenty of things that weren't wonderful about that period, but that is how a lot of it exists in my memory.

So, Jarvis and Pulp became a way of representing something much bigger than a band. They're connected to youth, family, safety and a particular cultural moment that has gone.

That's really where the holding on and letting go comes into the play. Didi and GG are in the present, but they're desperately trying to get hold of something that connects them to the past. The yellow trousers are absurd, but they're also something physical they can chase and potentially possess. You can't physically hold onto a period of your life, but you can convince yourself that perhaps an object, a song or a person can somehow take you back there.

Didi and GG’s obsession centres around a pair of yellow trousers supposedly worn by Jarvis. Did a specific object or piece of memorabilia spark this whole concept for you?
There wasn't one specific piece of memorabilia that sparked it. I've always loved Jarvis's style and he wears very cool trousers! His whole look feels like such a statement.

For some reason, yellow also felt like a very “Pulp” colour to me. Yellow and pink, actually. I knew I wanted the object at the centre of the story to be something completely ordinary that the characters could become completely obsessed with. There is something funny to me about giving this enormous emotional significance to a perfectly normal pair of trousers.

For a while it could have been a pair of trousers or a shoe, but I eventually settled on the trousers. I liked the idea that this very mundane object could become the reason for this increasingly surreal quest. They're just yellow trousers, but to Didi and GG they become much more than that.

Laura Grillo.

What Would Jarvis Do? balances heavy themes like grief with a "playful, absurdist, black comedy" style. How do you strike that delicate balance in your writing without losing the emotional core?
I don't really work it out while I'm writing. I'm not consciously thinking, “This bit needs to be funny and now I need to bring the grief back in.” I think the emotional core will always be there because, in essence, that's what I'm really feeling underneath the writing.

Actually, I didn't fully realise for quite a while how dark the play is underneath all the absurdity. I was concentrating on the characters, the situations, the darker tone seemed to emerge naturally.

Perhaps that's why the two things can sit together. The comedy isn't there to disguise the grief and the grief isn't added to make the comedy more meaningful. They both come from the same place. I think life can be like that anyway. Something can be incredibly painful and completely absurd at exactly the same time.

The narrative features moments of repetition, looping, and a world that feels both surreal and disintegrating. How did you use theatrical structure to mirror the feeling of being trapped in grief?
I think you can see it in the way the play keeps repeating a cycle. Didi and GG go through something, there's a musical interlude, and then suddenly here we are again. They keep returning and trying again, even though the world around them is gradually changing and disintegrating.

Grief can feel a bit like that. You want to fix something, but you don't really know how to fix it because ultimately the thing you actually want to change can't be changed. So instead, you find something tangible that you can fix or pursue and convince yourself that if you can just sort that out, you'll feel better.

It might make you feel better for a moment, but it hasn't fixed the real thing, so the cycle begins again. That's what happens with Didi and GG. The trousers give them something tangible to pursue, something they believe they can actually get hold of, while the thing underneath it all can't really be fixed.

Treasured objects often act as anchors when we go through difficult times. What do you think our obsessions with fandom and celebrity memorabilia reveal about our human need for connection?
I think we just attach so much meaning to things. Something can be completely ordinary, but because it belonged to someone we admire or reminds us of a particular time, suddenly it becomes really important to us.

There's almost something magical about memorabilia. It's a bit like the master having the magic touch and somehow passing a little bit of that onto you. If this person you admire actually wore these trousers or touched this object, then by owning it you somehow feel a little closer to them or to whatever it is they represent to you. Of course, it's still just an object, but we give it this enormous meaning.

I suppose fandom is also about wanting to feel connected to something. It's not only the person or the band. It's where you were at that time, who you were with, what you were wearing, what your life felt like. It all becomes mixed together.

That's what Didi and GG are doing really. They're obsessed with getting these trousers, but it's not really about the trousers at all. They're trying to grab hold of a feeling and perhaps a little bit of the magic as well.

After two sold-out development performances at Omnibus Theatre, what has it been like bringing the production back for a full two-week run with support from Arts Council England?
I just feel incredibly lucky and privileged that Arts Council England has given me the opportunity to bring the play back and give it a proper run. This time we have a designer, costumes, sound, a full creative team the whole shebang! It's quite amazing to see something that started with me writing on my own become this whole production with so many people bringing their own creativity to it.

And Omnibus Theatre is such a wonderful theatre with fabulous people. It really does warm my heart that they've allowed me to keep developing and showing this play there. Having had those first two sold-out development performances and now being able to come back for a full two-week run feels very special.

I'm also just really excited to see what the play becomes this time. It has grown and changed so much, and now we're able to create the world of it much more fully than we could before.

Collaborating with director Maiya Pascouche must bring another layer to the text. How has seeing the script transition from the page to the stage shaped your view of Didi and GG's journey?
Maiya is amazing! I love watching Maiya direct. There are things in the writing that I hadn't even realised were there, and then suddenly I'll watch something happening in the rehearsal room and think, “Oh yes, of course!”

It's really interesting seeing Didi and GG being rediscovered through a new production. I've seen the play performed before, but different actors and a different director find completely different things in the characters. A line can suddenly be funny in a way I hadn't thought of, or a moment between Didi and GG can reveal something new about their friendship.

I think that's one of the most exciting things about theatre. You write the play, but then other people come in and bring their own ideas and instincts to it. Maiya has really embraced the strange world of the play while also finding the very human relationship underneath it all.

It's made me look at Didi and GG again too, which is quite exciting because they're characters I've lived with for a long time.

What was the first piece of theatre that had a big impact on you?
Well, I actually hadn't seen it performed, but I have to say Edward Albee's The Zoo Story because it's the play that made me want to start writing plays myself. I was in my early teens when I read it and I probably didn't fully understand it, but it really moved and excited me. I remember thinking, I didn't realise someone could write like this.

There was something about the characters that really got to me. I felt as though I understood them without fully understanding them, if that makes sense? There were all these things underneath what they were saying that I could feel even if I couldn't necessarily explain them at that age. I think that stayed with me.

Before that, I had gone to the theatre as a child and I remember things like David Wood's adaptations of The Witches and The BFG having a big impact on me. I loved the magic of seeing these strange worlds actually created on a stage.

But The Zoo Story was different because that was probably the moment when theatre went from being something I loved watching to something that made me think, I want to do this. I want to write plays.

For audiences who lived through the 90s Britpop era versus younger generations discovering it for the first time, what do you hope people take away from Didi and GG’s wild odyssey?
I hope people who lived through the 90s recognise something of that time and perhaps have their own memories brought back by the music, the references and the world of the play. But I also really hope you don't have to know anything about Pulp or the 90s to connect with Didi and GG.

For younger audiences, perhaps it's a glimpse into this slightly strange period before social media, when popular culture felt very different and almost tactile in a way.

I think Didi and GG's journey is ultimately about friendship and trying to hold onto something when everything around you is changing. They think they're chasing a pair of yellow trousers, but of course they're chasing something much bigger than that.

I'd like people to come away thinking about what their own yellow trousers might be. What's the ridiculous little thing you've given enormous meaning to because of everything it represents?

What Would Jarvis Do? will run at the Omnibus Theatre from 6th-16th October. https://www.omnibus-clapham.org/whatson/what-would-jarvis-do%3F

Annabel Smith and Isabel Butt in rehearsals.