Jake Mace
Comedian and performer Derek Mitchell returns to Edinburgh Festival Fringe this year with a reimagined version of his show GOBLIN, which last year was beset by a series of logistical issues, including a partial roof collapse in their venue.
The show follows Eliot, an emo kid in 2007 with an imaginary goblin who just wants to be loved. We watch this trusting teenager enter into a manipulative relationship with an older reality TV star and transform ‘unnervingly’ and ‘completely’. We caught up with Derek for a pixelated pint to find out more about the journey the show has been on.
You can catch Derek Mitchell: GOBLIN from July 31st to August 24th (not the 11th or 18th) at Former Gents Locker Room at Summerhall from 21:50 (60mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.
Jake: Hi Derek! You’re bringing your nostalgic theatrical-comedy show GOBLIN back to EdFringe this year – tell us what you’ve been up to since you last graced the Fringe stage.
Derek: Hi Jake! Yes, we’ll be bringing Goblin back following a slightly thwarted run last year during which the yurt we performed in collapsed mid-festival. We’ve also substantially workshopped and changed the show, with dramaturgical support from the fantastic Sammy Glover. I’d say the show now is better than ever and only slightly resembles what we were doing in the yurt!
I’ve also been touring the world doing stand-up around Europe, the UK and the United States since last August. So I’m very much looking forward to living in theatre-land for a couple months, as I’ll also be doing a play called Baby in the Mirror at Summerhall alongside Goblin for the whole festival.
Jake: Tell us about developing and playing the character of Eliot, what inspired the journey they go on, and what you’ve found out along the way.
Derek: Goblin is about a teenage boy named Eliot, an emo teenager in 2007 who wants desperately to be loved but worries that he, like the rest of his family, is cursed to be unloveable. He has an imaginary goblin – played by the audience – who comforts and guides him. But when he meets a much older English reality TV star who readily wields tremendous influence over Eliot, we watch as Eliot begins to transform into an unrecognisably grotesque and possibly evil grown-up version of himself.
There is so much of myself in Eliot and pieces of my life definitely influenced the story. But it’s not a direct or literal rehashing of my life. Much of it is fictional, and it’s been a long and revealing development process – which began about five years ago. During the first COVID lockdown I briefly kind of lost my mind and started just running circles around the city of Amsterdam while listening to Werk B**ch on repeat, and decided I should make a show about an evil gay spin instructor. I tried this and it wasn’t good or funny, so over time the deeper story emerged, about who the evil gay spin instructor was before he became evil.
Jake: Tell us about what the audience can expect coming into the show, and what they might not expect about the show.
Derek: A lot of my work lives between the worlds of comedy and theatre, and Goblin is maybe the truest example of this to date. It’s a very dark and frequently sad show, and it’s absolutely and unequivocally theatre (comedy people are always quick to tell me this). But it’s also still full of laughs. Which is thematic too, and I think plays into something there about how we process and express pain and the effects of harm and trauma.
I think audiences need to be up for both laughs and difficult material. I’d also say that there’s audience participation involved, but I only ever interact with people who are interested and up for it. And more generally, in the show the audience always act as one – they play the character of the eponymous Goblin together.
Jake: What are you hoping the audience might take away from the experience, if anything?
Derek: I’m interested in transformative approaches to justice. The show is, in some ways, about patterns of abuse and how we respond to and sit with the feelings their mere mention can engender. As a society, we’re not good at sitting with, acknowledging and addressing the fact that humans repeatedly and cyclically harm one another in ways that have far reaching and lasting effects. We also do not really have any adequate means for disrupting and bringing an end to patterns of abuse.
It would be wild for me to suggest that this hour long piece of theatre is anything even remotely resembling a solution. But I am interested in inviting people to safely sit in a narrative, theatrical space that pushes them to engage with multiple uncomfortable truths.
Also, I do genuinely want to make people laugh.
Jake: With Edinburgh Fringe 2025 just around the corner, what are you most excited for?
Derek: I’m most excited for: performing theatre everyday; living with my friends whom I love for a month; spending time with many many more friends whom I love in all kinds of beer gardens and street corners in the middle of the night for a month; seeing a huge amount of comedy and theatre (I will be booking tickets in advance so I have no choice but to attend); the crepe stand.
I’m also looking forward to being at Summerhall. It will be weird not to be in the sweet Pleasance Courtyard (though I will definitely still spend ample time drinking beers there). But I’m really looking forward to seeing lots of shows and socialising in and around Summerhall!
Jake: Given the themes of Binge Fringe, if your show was a beverage of any kind (alcoholic, non-alcoholic – be as creative as you like!), what would it be and why?
Derek: I think my show would be a Smirnoff Watermelon mixed with Minute Maid Mixed Berry juice, garnished with a sour gummy worm. Because this is what I used to drink with my friends in suburbia when I was the same age as Eliot 🖤
A reminder, you can catch Derek Mitchell: GOBLIN from July 31st to August 24th (not the 11th or 18th) at Former Gents Locker Room at Summerhall from 21:50 (60mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.
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