Reflections on You're So Jealous I Bet You Think This Episode Excludes You (20th July 2025, S01E04)

After taking time to rest and recharge, I'm reflecting on the fantastic performance of our fourth episode. Massive thanks to everyone who was able to participate live. We had a beautiful, active audience who created perhaps the best procedural rants we've had so far. It feels like we've hit our stride in terms of the voice and aesthetic of the show, our production process, and our technical execution. The audience feedback reflected how far we've come, bringing together so many different elements to respond to the needs and concerns of our communities.

"The interactive format, the disability centred approach, the political narratives and use of humour, the innovative digital design, the DIY community approach, the Q+ A which allows to understand context and have questions answered."

In this post I've pulled together some quotes from the surveys we carry out at registration and after the show, as well as the live Q&A, all anonymised. I'll try to highlight just some of the talented people on our team who've made all of this possible.

Innovative format

"Big round of applause! First episode ever and it is the most wildly advanced art I've seen in ages! :D"

"The evolution of this from episode 1 to this one has been incredible! The writing, acting, and all the tech...just wow!"

Intrapology's format builds on Squinky's pioneering work in the mid 2010s, and connects it to technologies that have become mainstream in the 2020s - video calling and live streaming. One of the things I'm most proud of is that we're offering something that strikes people as truly new and unlike anything they've experienced before, and yet it's all built on what already exists around us. The "wow" comes from the connection and the message, rather than from some high-tech spectacle.

"The tech team killed it, I can't even imagine the logistics involved"

"This kicks ass, what a wild and interesting format. The procedural monologues!!"

Huge props go out to our partners at Transcend Streaming, who once again delivered an incredible audiovisual experience. We had a terrific time working together on the psychedelic CRT punk visual effects, which were more than a little bit inspired by Balatro. To accommodate the prerecorded mumblings of off-screen characters, this episode had by far the longest cue list we've ever had, and it all came out feeling so slick.

Performance

I think I'll never forget Squinky's absolutely stunning performance of the audience-generated monologue on losing someone you love. There were so many other highlights - Cait's silent reaction as Iris seems to mentally slip away while Paris is distracted by their hungry polycule, the very gentle shade Fadumo brought to Hedi's dismissal of Tea's "god is a gamer" theory, and Xander's outstanding comic delivery of Tea's declaration of the winner of the audience's vote for who would be the gatekeeper to the zeitgeist.

"enjoyed discovering that a character would perform monologues composed of audience statements on theme, and it was integrated well - Squinky did great job performing them in the moment!"

"It was a quite a wild thing watching Squinky read the proc-gen'd audience monologues on such serious themes and subjects! To me it felt like quite the high-wire act. We all sorta know how 'audience participation' can work out on the internet--often it's quite abusive or bad, haha--so I saw it as kind of a brave and audacious 'interactive art' type move for them to read the proc-gen monolog verbatim"

"It's very zappa-esque to me, this sorta thing where the performer is 'playing' the audience and/or the audience is 'playing' the performer"

In addition to the amazing work of our actors, credit also goes out to Tanya Vital, our performance director. Tanya works within a very short period of time to understand each new episode on a deep level, in all of its possible permutations. She works with actors to bring out the emotional power of the story, with special attention to the challenges of live screen acting for webcam.

Creative access

"Thank you for exploring creative access <3"

"The creative access - integrated access for the win."

"Everything you all have been doing so far has been incredibly accessible!"

One of the core goals of this project is to reach audiences that experience barriers to in-person venues, due to chronic illness, disability, or regional inequality - 46% of the people who registered for this performance identified themselves as such, identifying factors such as risk of COVID infection, lack of public transport infrastructure where they live, and the need for accommodations to manage their chronic illness. In addition to the access benefits of online performances, our format makes it very easy to include other supports such as captioning.

"Having been chronically ill & living rurally for a long time, I rarely get to see anything here bc I use all my energy for parenting and work. It's been rough. Was delighted to find this accessible piece of theatre that I'll be able to watch from wherever I happen to need to be. Home, I hope."

I've benefitted hugely from working with access dramaturgs Quiplash to incorporate more access supports into our format, most prominently the audio description that appears to be in the voice of whatever computer or device the protagonist is using. We're continuing to develop this, so that the show gets ever closer to being fully audio described. Also, huge thanks to BSL interpreter Tracey Tyer, who came in at very short notice and took in a huge amount of information to get to grips with our unusual show!

Visual design

It's been so much fun to develop a new aesthetic for each episode, reimagining the video call interface for each character's device. This episode took place on Paris's utopian commune inspired by their experiences in counterculture movements of the 1970s. Art director Jennifer Booth and I started out by looking at hand-drawn psychedelic animation of the 1970s and the smooth, curved designs of space age designers such as Ernest Igl, but then pivoted to a look focused more on CRT televisions of the 1970s.

"The art throughout the episode was incredible! 💜💜"

"Really enjoyed the Teletext sections"

This gave me an excuse to dive into Teletext art that has been inspiring me for several years, especially the art packs published by digital arts collective Mistigris. I was over the moon when artist Atonal Osprey agreed to let us use some of their work, in addition to creating my own Teletext art using edit.tf. I've been dreaming of creating an installation art piece that would use Teletext to convey the existence of a utopian society that broke away from ours in 1979 - that's not exactly how Paris's world came into being, but the outcome is much the same.

Quality of writing

This was the first episode that I co-wrote with Squinky, and it's really a testament to the breadth of their talents. They did a particularly outstanding job creating believable dialogue between members of a polycule, a skill they've honed this year in their game A Post-apocalyptic Dinner Party in Purgatory with a Dysfunctional Polycule.

"It was a great show y'all! Really something special. I've never seen anything like it, and that's nice; but beyond the sorta 'novelty' or 'innovation'-type lens is just the fact that the storyworld and content is really good."

"I appreciate that the script speaks on issues that are sorta overtly dangerous to speak about in public (e.g.: talking about freedom for Palestine and that sorta thing)... in this way it continues a long tradition of queerness and/as resistance that I am into"

"Insane how well it balances serious current issues with humour"

When it comes to my own writing, I'm proud that I was able to make people laugh (on purpose!) quite a few times in this episode, while also getting to talk about concepts that I think no other project would allow me to cover. I got a great deal of pleasure from writing Paris's explanation of the zeitgeist: "The interference pattern between yin and yang. A place where distinctions matter immensely, yet everything defies categorisation."

"The increase in drama was really important I think. Videochats are such perfunctory, banal things most of the time (even though it's magical to be able to connect like this). Adding huge spikes of drama and world-ending stakes to videochats helps to solidify this innovative storytelling format (IMO)"

"I love the way the characters attempted to explain 'dialectics' to each other, reminds me of when I was trying to grok Hegel lol"

"Something about the characters reminded me of Good Omens. Love it"

"I like the diverse representation of characters and actors and I think this can be built upon further as well as the narratives and script but I like that the audience gets to influence that also."

In the end, the audience voted for who would be the gatekeeper to the zeitgeist. I won't spoil it here - the edited recording will be available soon, so if you didn't watch it live, you'll get to see it for yourself! Register for updates here or on Patreon to be notified when it happens.