Tobias Graham answers our questions ahead of Slugs heading to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Slugs is a provocative and witty semi-autobiographical show exploring gay shame, desire and the ethics of confessional storytelling. Set in a childhood bedroom beneath a Hollyoaks Hunks calendar circa 2008, the show follows one man spiralling through memories of queer adolescence and vulnerability. It’s a fierce examination of sex, shame, and the stories people construct to survive them. We chat with writer and performer Tobias Graham about solo shows, researching slugs and the messiness of true-story storytelling.

Slugs starts as what seems to be a confessional solo show before turning that idea on its head. What interested you in pulling the rug out from under the audience's expectations?

A taxidermied fox fell from the ceiling right by my foot when I saw Kim Noble's Lullaby for Scavengers and I’ve never felt more affected than I did during that show. Theatre has such a brilliant opportunity to be alive and to unnerve a space. I knew I wanted to disrupt and unease audiences because discomfort elicits emotions that really stick with people. The play deals with some really knotty issues surrounding sex and sexual discovery and in order to land the feelings effectively, I needed to lean into the liveness of the audience. They shouldn’t be invisible, they need to be complicit. It’s the Chekhov’s gun of it all. What’s the point of an audience if we don’t utilise their presence?

Shame appears throughout the play as slugs covering Tobi's body. How did you arrive at that image, and why did it feel like the right way to represent those feelings?

Years ago, I had a Grindr hookup who claimed to be unbelievably dominant and arrived at my uni house meek as anything. Inevitably, the hookup was unenjoyable, and he kept licking my neck, like a little cat. I remember experiencing his tongue like it was a slug. And after he’d left, it felt like I was covered in slug trails from the licking. All that to say, tongues, saliva, and other bodily fluids from men I regretted hooking up with, always felt slug-like to me. I’ve never been able to disconnect that association, and so when I started working on this play, when I started to explore that uneasy feeling, it felt like there’d be no better place to start than with the slugs. Once I started researching slugs, I was amazed at how interchangeable the descriptions and sensations of slugs and shame could be.

The play asks whether personal stories become distorted when they're shaped into theatre. Was that question something you wanted to explore from the outset, or did it emerge as you wrote?

It definitely emerged as I wrote. It’s uncomfortable to share hidden parts of your life, and I found myself muting certain things, or adapting things to make myself look or feel better, especially because I knew I would be the one performing these words. Then I started to question myself, and then I started to wonder if every person who writes autobiographical theatre does this, and then I couldn’t help but write those questions into the play. It felt very organic and really exciting to me, and it transported the play into this brand-new realm that I hadn’t seen properly explored before.

The show is semi-autobiographical. How did you decide where your own experiences ended and the fictional version of Tobi began?

Bethenny Frankel says “don’t let the truth stand in the way of a good story”. I knew I wanted to share my own experiences. I also knew I wanted to make a compelling show. Fundamentally, the story I’m telling is real, the anecdotes are totally true and the experiences I share are all grounded in my reality. I don’t want to give anything away, but the play evolves and twists the deeper we get into it, and while I remain authentically true to myself, I was able to explore a more dramatised version of my world and of myself.

Tobi becomes an increasingly unreliable guide to his own story. What opportunities did that give you as both the writer and the performer?

It was so fun to be able to play with this idea of the unreliable storyteller. I spent a lot of time thinking of all the criticisms and holes people could find in my story and then I wanted to be able to dramatise that somehow, to create an awareness of how we all process and recount our own truths. It didn’t feel true to myself to present my play and my story as some form of unbreakable truth. Memories are confusing, storytelling is complicated, and telling a story from your own memories can be really messy. Making the decision to explore that mess, rather than to shy away from it, became liberating.

The show moves between memories of queer adolescence, internet culture and more recent experiences. How did you go about structuring those different strands into a single piece?

With difficulty. I’m horrible at structuring things. I tried post it notes, I tried cue cards, I tried whiteboards, because that’s what writers on YouTube videos told me to do. But my brain doesn’t work that way. I was once described as a worm who needed to be an eagle (I don’t give myself an overview, I just dig right in). The form of the confessional solo show helped. My brilliant director George has been really helpful in finding the links between these aspects of the story and has been patient, sitting with me in cafes while we’ve both tried to make sense of it all. Once I’d realised the show was my way of making sense of an event, by looking backwards over my life, those different strands came together much more easily.

You're working with specialist film and television SFX designers to create the show's unsettling visual effects. What role do those practical effects play in telling the story, rather than simply shocking the audience?

When I first conceived this play, I imagined being trapped in a glass box with hundreds of slugs sliding all over me. For various reasons I let go of that idea, largely because I didn’t think it was fair on the slugs to have to be in such close proximity to me wanging on about my sex life for an hour every night. That said, there was something important in understanding that the show needed to have sensory, visual effects. A lot of the play revolves around language that is sensory and evocative, but words and performance can only elicit so much - visuals elevate the sensations to a whole new level. We worked with SFX artist Alice Flesher on the shoot for the poster, and even people’s response to that image, with slime and slugs all over my face, has revealed how significant these practical effects are in communicating the uncomfortable emotions of the play.

The title Slugs is memorable before anyone knows what the play is about. Was it always the title, or did it emerge once that central image became part of the piece?

Worst answer incoming: it’s what I called the Google Doc when I first started writing. I thought it’d be easy to find it that way. I didn’t intend to make it the title of the play, but I honestly love it. From the outset of writing the play, I knew slugs would feature heavily. I became obsessed with them, researching as much as I could about them. I knew they were the central image, and I knew they perfectly captured the feeling of the play. As soon as I knew we were bringing it to the fringe, there was no other title option. Slugs! SLUGS! It’s punchy. It’s unnerving. It’s memorable. And that’s exactly what this show will be.

Slugs will be performed at 12:55pm at Pleasance Courtyard from 5th-30th August. Booking link: https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/slugs