Will power
Rebecca Mahar talks to Salvador Kent about form, farce and clowning in political theatre
The General Will is a new play at the Fringe from up-and-coming Edinburgh-based writer and director Salvador Kent, who uses the the meta-analysis of clown to critique current events and the political players who shape them.
In the play, two clowns – government actors – enact current events that have made their approval ratings drop to an all time low. Meanwhile, two Gen-Z actual actors rehearse a play responding to these events…
Salvador Kent. Pic: Katy Campbell Ferguson
Tagged as “a farce for an island of strangers,” The General Will is Kent’s EdFringe debut, but the play itself isn’t entirely unknown: it’s had previous iterations that focused on then-current political events. The content and format of the play have evolved with the times in which Kent has experimented with it; as he says, “[when] you’re outside the theatre, looking at your phone, the clowning should be speaking to whatever’s on the phone.”
Æ had the opportunity to sit down with Kent recently to learn more about the play and the motivations behind it. When asked about his inspiration for The General Will as writer and director, he cites a play called The School of the World Turned Upside Down which he saw in Peru in 2023, wherein a clown professor teaches a clown student the ways of the elite clown world, initiating them into its politics and the tactics required to succeed — all linked to then-current events in Peruvian politics.
“Watching it in the theatre actually took a lot out of it, in a weird way,” Kent says. “Because it was a play designed for the streets, and then it was in a theatre, and there was almost something more powerful about the idea that people are sort of passing by and not really engaging with this.
contradictions
“It made me think: because there’s a lot of contradictions in political theatre – because of the sort of people that go to theatre and what theatre has historically been…certainly in the last century and a half. There’s been this worry that theatre has become a bourgeoise plaything.”
Kent makes a comparison to the current Jamie Lloyd production of Evita, in which Eva Perón goes out onto a balcony outside the theatre to sing Don’t Cry For Me Argentina to the passers-by gathered below, with her image only projected into the theatre. Which has caused some patrons to complain.
“I wanted to explore those contradictions,” he says. “I’m always interested in performativity. I don’t want a theatre that could have been literature. It’s got to be something in which people are engaging in: a communitarian act, together in the space.”
Chloe Embley in rehearsal for The General Will. Pic: Salvador Kent.
As an English-Peruvian theatremaker, Kent was not only inspired by The School of the World Turned Upside Down, but has gained directing experience and training in various disciplines, including clown, in Peru. Working with the company Yuyachkani, Kent became attracted to a performance medium called desmontaje, which he translates as “unplayed”.
Desmontaje is a meta-critical approach to theatre. The performance often begins by explaining itself, then performing, or/and infilling the performance with commentary. While comparisons could be made to postdramatism, that term is explicitly rejected by the company, as their methodology does not derive from a European one.
Kent bring his interpretation of desmontaje to The General Will, drawing on ideas of television, rewind, silent cinema, and the use of flipcharts. While this might all seem a bit technical and hefty, it’s important to remember that the play is calling itself a farce. We asked Kent to expand on this, and the play’s subtitle.
an island of strangers
“It’s clearly a provocation,” Kent admits, unsurprisingly, “I think if you’re politically engaged and you see ‘a farce for an island of strangers’ it sort of makes you think… There’s lot of things to talk about… I’m not entirely against a sensible conversation about immigration, I’m not saying anything juvenile like that.
“I am biased on this because my mum is a first-generation immigrant, she was a Peruvian, she moved to this country, so I’ve obviously got strong thoughts on immigration, but I think what shocked me about it is not so much the idea of policy, which I don’t think is the issue there, I think the issue is a rhetorical issue, right?”
“Do I consider an immigrant in this country a stranger, do I consider anybody in this country a stranger? Are we all individuals who live in our own little families and we’re not sort of shared by a common land, or are we kind of a little bit more unified than that? What I like about that subtitle is that it’s exploring those contradictions. It’s a dedication. It’s for an island of strangers.”
Grace Vale in rehearsal for The General Will. Pic: Salvador Kent.
Kent says that farce and clowning are strongly allied. Both are “a bunch of extraordinary events happening in sequence”. In farce, those events are at the limits of believability. In clown, it is the behaviours that are at the limits of believability. Kent contends that clowning behaviours are true, even if they are unreal, which is why he describes it as farce
He also points out that The General Will is a plotted piece of theatre. Even though the actors have gone through an improvisation process, what they are doing is set down.
“It’s closer to farce than a traditional clowning, where you sort of come out and react to what you’re given,” contends Kent. “I don’t think that [farce] is necessarily the only way, it’s the way I’ve chosen to do it; I’m very much a form-first person. I want to work with clowning, and then I want to work with society, so it’s political clowning.”
populist sentiment
Kent remembers a conversation with a friend who saw the show last year. When he told her that he was reviving it, she commented that the story would be a lot darker now.
“I think there is actually some truth in that. Maybe this is the limit for this thing because we’ve actually gotten into a political situation which has reached its limits in terms of acceptability, and what might’ve been kind of like a funny – I called it an “anxious” – project last year. So it was like oh, you know, we’ve got this new kind of centre-left — it wasn’t in the end— but we’ve got this new centre-left government in.
What happens if they fell down this rabbit hole of accepting the populist sentiment, and how do we not get a far-right party in? Whereas now you’ve basically just got the centrist government appeasing the right at any chance they can possibly get. After this it might get too dark, it might get too much.”
Charles Morris in rehearsal for The General Will. Pic: Salvador Kent.
When current affairs become farcical, how can farce respond? When asked whether farce might be a way forward in critiquing a more authoritarian government, Kent responds that “the form might be the way, but I’m not sure this play could happen under a government that doesn’t allow freedom of speech…something which we’ve deliberately done this time is there’s no speculation in it, there’s speculation in the last five minutes, I think, but the rest of it are all policies which we can point to the news articles of— it is quite literally like we’re clowning the news.”
Since Æ spoke to Kent, across the pond Stephen Colbert’s megahit talk show has been axed for similar types of criticism.
When asked what message he’s trying to send with this play, and who he’s trying to reach, Kent responds with questions: “Why is it that I criticise the political institution and then I can’t think of a decent alternative?… I wanted to [use] the form, and, can we think of alternative ways of thinking about the future? And it is a series of questions. It’s directed firstly to my generation [Gen Z], then to the people of Edinburgh, then of this country. Who’s gonna be in the room? Can we imagine alternative futures? Do we think the clowning of these political institutions is valid? Why is it when I started writing this…I couldn’t think of any alternative solutions?”
packaged in humour
The General Will is a meditation on frustration, an exploration of the absurd reality in which the clowns and the theatre makers and the people of this country find themselves; a questioning in search of a future that is worth believing in, packaged in humour to make it all bearable. Speaking on what audiences should expect when they walk into the theatre, Kent says,
“When the audience walk in, on the flipchart will be written: ‘what if everything in the world were a misunderstanding? What if laughter were really tears?’ from Kierkegaard’s Either/Or. They should expect a farce, clown, they should expect it to be funny, they should expect to be entertained, but I think at the core of it is really deep probing, and like a real ask, you know?
“This is not a happy country at the moment — I don’t even think this is a happy city. And I think that we can still go to things and be entertained and have fun, but they should be making us think: why is it now that our laughter is tears?”
The General Will
theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall, Nicolson Street EH8 9DW. Venue 53.
Fri 1 – Sat 16 August 2025
Daily (not Sun 10): 9:40pm. 1 hour (no interval).
Tickets and details: Book here at EdFringe.
The General Will Link:
Instagram: @thegeneralwillplay
Salvador Kent Links:
Instagram: @thesalvadorkent
Facebook: @salvador.kent.18
X: @thesalvadorkent
website: salvadorkent.com
Olga Hlouskova in rehearsal for The General Will. Pic: Salvador Kent.
ENDS
