We’re all invited to celebrate Eve’s birthday – in sit-com format! Although, for some reason this year feels different and Eve doesn’t quite know why… We caught up with the creator of Everyone’s Worried About Eve, Alex John, for a pixelated pint, ahead of the show’s arrival at the Bread and Roses Theatre next month. Join us as we dive into neurodiversity, masking, grief, the sit-com format and more.

You can catch Everyone’s Worried About Eve at the Bread and Roses Theatre between March 23rd and 24th at 19:00 (50 mins). Tickets are available through the Venue’s Online Box Office.

Jake: Hi Alex! Your show Everyone’s Worried About Eve is making its London Debut soon. Tell us about the crossover between grief and sit-coms, and what inspired you to write a piece about it .

Alex: Hello! Yes, it’s my first time at The Bread and Roses and I’m very excited. The play originally stemmed from the term ‘laughter is the best medicine’ and Eve definitely puts that to the test!

Parts of Everyone’s Worried About Eve stemmed from my own experiences with grief. I tried to do anything in my power to avoid facing it. This made me think about how neurodivergent people can react differently to life’s big changes.

Neurodivergent people mask in everyday life and with grief this is enhanced. This led to the sitcom set up. I was inspired by talk show hosts and sitcom characters whose main objective was to act like everything was ok! The idea is that everything is supposed to be fuzzy and pleasant by the end of the episode, right? So Eve tries to shoehorn her life into this mode.

So simply put, it was a combination of autistic traits and these smiley sitcom rules which posed an interesting battleground for grief to enter. This eventually led to the show’s title which was influenced by sitcom titles like ‘Everybody loves Raymond’ or ‘I Love Lucy’ and into Everyone’s Worried About Eve.

Jake: The show has been praised at Edinburgh Fringe and beyond for its representation of neurodiversity. Tell us about the experience of writing a show which explores the neurodiverse experience and how it was for you.

Alex: It was important to be sensitive to neurodiverse representation. Even though I’m autistic and have been diagnosed since I was 3 years old my experience as a neurodivergent woman is vastly different from others so my main aim was not to create a ‘paint by numbers’ vision of autism.

But really to show these are commonalities to how a neurodivergent responds to grief but also how it’s very individualised. However, at the same time it felt very rewarding to write about a person I can completely identify by finding the humour and joy of being neurodivergent.

Jake: What are you hoping the audience might take away from the experience, if anything?

Alex: I hope the audience sees someone they can recognise in themselves neurodivergent or not grief is an immensely debilitating part of life. I hope the audience can find comfort in this character. Often with grief people are just doing the best they can and often the person that is smiling the widest and ‘functioning in a

crisis’ is in just as much torment. However, I do hope the audience can laugh with Eve and at themselves, coping is hard and the results can be chaotic.

Jake: Tell us about how the show has developed into being performed at the Bread & Roses Theatre.

Alex: I felt parts of the show had gaps which I wanted to elaborate on. Following the lovely response to its autistic representation this urged me to want to flesh out Eve even more and include more neurodivergent content. I really wanted to show how

Eve’s coping mechanisms such as avoidance and deflection develop throughout the show as Eve masks to avoid feeling anything at all.

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?

Alex: I think she’d be anything with Grey Goose in it because Eve is indeed a silly goose or a quad shot of espresso. She is one high strung lady!

You can catch Everyone’s Worried About Eve at the Bread and Roses Theatre between March 23rd and 24th at 19:00 (50 mins). Tickets are available through the Venue’s Online Box Office.