David Farr is perplexed by two small questions: might it be possible to live for ever, and what would it mean if we could? “I’ve heard rumours of Putin having cryogenic chambers, and Elon Musk has some kind of foundation looking at what happens beyond death. They’re all obsessed by the one thing they can’t defeat,” says the 52-year-old writer and director, who has neatly embodied this question in a woman called Kath, who has reincarnated herself as a cyborg.
She has done so by spending years downloading her thoughts, memories and feelings, in a process that doesn’t seem so far removed from an intensive course of psychoanalysis. Like all good speculative fiction, Farr’s new play A Dead Body in Taos – which recently began a four-city tour in Bristol – is not just about an imagined future but about the quirks and paradoxes of society today.
