INTERVIEW: A Digital Pint with… Mitsuko Hirai, on Book Burning, and the Intimacy of Being Alone

The Fahrenheit Alliance V promises to wrap you up in soft bedsheets, immersive soundscape, and the drifting recorded memories of one who came before you. This innovative single audience member multimedia performance is coming to EdFringe this year, and we sat down with Mitsuko Hirai – one half of the show’s creator duo alongside filmmaker Rob Moreno – to shine a light on their creative process.

You can catch The Fahrenheit Alliance V at C ARTS | C venues | C alto – bow from August 18th – 24th, with single-person showings at 10:30, 12:00, 14:00, 15:30, 17:00, 18:30, and 20:00 (40 mins). Tickets available online through the EdFringe Online Box Office.

Callie: Hi Mitsuko! Could you tell me a bit about what inspired the show and what the audience can expect?

Mitsuko: Hi! Sure — this piece is based on a play called The Fahrenheit Alliance, written by playwright Kyle Yamada and inspired by Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Kyle described his show as “a piece of theatre you can join from anywhere, at any time, on your own.”

I first encountered the play in 2020, during the pandemic, and I felt a strong connection between the world of the story—where books are banned and burned—and the reality we were living in, where actors were unable to gather or create together. That led me to imagine a secret gathering in the cloud: a kind of relay where performers exchanged voices and landscapes online.

In this latest version, which is a one-on-one in-person performance, the audience lies down on a quilt-covered bed to experience the show. Then, as the bed is monitored and mediated through multimedia technology, they can watch their own body merge in real time with a landscape on screen. It can be a very still, quiet, and immersive experience—just you and the imagery—or you can move around more freely, even dance a little, and really play with the merging of your body and the visual world.

Callie: What are you hoping the audience might take away from the experience?

Mitsuko: So from the very beginning, drawing on that quote from Kyle Yamada, it had to be a play designed for a single person. I first developed it as an online relay-style performance, where one person records their voice for someone else, who then listens, performs, and passes it on to the next person. When adapting it to an in-person format, I kept that one-to-one structure – it just felt essential.

Being alone is central to the experience. When we’re alone, we access a different kind of intimacy and memory—one that often gets lost in group settings. It also gives each audience member the freedom to decide how and whether to participate, without pressure or group momentum. I hope the audience can experience the kind of relaxation, intimacy, and unexpected memories that only emerge when you’re truly alone.

Callie: I’d love to dive into your process of developing the show – how did it all come together? As a single-person experience, how does the performance evolve over the course of the week? Why was it important for you to have a single audience member per performance?

The development process was shaped by two key collaborators. Stage designer Wenfei Xu had been creating a series of works around a quilt-covered bed, and when I saw them, I immediately thought of staging The Fahrenheit Alliance within her visual world. Then our technical director, Rob Moreno, integrated chroma key technology into that setting – allowing the audience’s body to blend with landscapes in real time.

One special aspect of this performance is how it engages the sense of touch. Lying in the bed, feeling the texture of the quilt, some people say it feels almost like touching a landscape that someone else once saw. It creates this strange illusion of reaching into someone else’s memory. It’s said that dreaming helps us reorganise our own memories—but in this performance, someone else’s memory quietly slips in. And maybe, at some point, you begin to wonder: was that actually mine?

The voice and landscape you experience during the show are always someone else’s. Yet because they come to you in such fragmented, gentle ways, they might start to feel oddly familiar—like they could be part of your own story. I think that kind of blurring between self and other is what I find most moving, and I hope the audience feels that too.

At the end of each performance, the audience receives a small excerpt from the script, each one different. Over the course of a week, the entire script will be distributed, piece by piece – and when audience members record those words in their own voice, alongside chosen landscapes, those recordings will form the soundscape of the next version of the show—The Fahrenheit Alliance VI in Japan.

Callie: With Edinburgh Fringe 2025 just around the corner, what are you most excited for?

Mitsuko: We’ve taken part in the Fringe before, but only online—so this will be our very first time performing in person, which is super exciting! The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is really well-known in Japan, and honestly, it’s always been a dream of mine to be part of it.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what other emerging artists are creating, and I’ve heard that the whole city turns into one big stage during the festival. I can’t wait to actually be there and experience that atmosphere with my own body and senses.

Callie: 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?

Mitsuko: That’s such a lovely question! For me, I’d say chamomile tea. I see our show as something like the dream you have when you’re falling asleep alone. It helps you relax and drift off easily, feels like the perfect match – I’d love for people to have it by their bedside as they get ready for sleep.

As for our technical director Rob, he thinks it would be a smoothie – but not the kind you grab at a café with a preset menu. It’s more like the homemade kind, where you open the fridge and toss in whatever feels right that day. Of course, instead of fruits and veggies, we’re using a mix of video, sound, physical presence, and personal imagination, and blending them together to make a tasty user experience, and the audience is invited to add their own flavor to it as well!

Remember to catch The Fahrenheit Alliance V at C ARTS | C venues | C alto – bow from August 18th – 24th, with single-person showings at 10:30, 12:00, 14:00, 15:30, 17:00, 18:30, and 20:00 (40 mins). Tickets available online through the EdFringe Online Box Office.