Interview with Hannah Caplan

Ahead of THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME, I caught up with Hannah Caplan to talk about the themes at the heart of the production, the creative journey behind it, and what audiences can look forward to when the lights go up.

What inspired you to write THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME.?

I have fairly broad influences. I was watching a lot of Charlie Kaufman who is a major inspiration. The Beatles’ Abbey Road informed the structure and Jean Baudrillard's Simulation and Simulacran was key in the development of this script.

All of that fed into a story about Grace trying to stage her version of a relationship while it is still unravelling in front of her, which felt like a really unstable and exciting place - a little bit chaotic and unhinged, which I love.

What central question sits at the heart of this play?

I think it’s circling around who gets to tell the story. Grace and Eli have lived through the same relationship, but they don’t agree on what happened or what it meant. The play follows Grace asserting her version of events in real time, and Eli pushing back against that.

So it becomes a question of whether a shared experience can ever belong to one person, or whether it’s always something contested.

It’s something most of us have experienced, whether in relationships or just in the retelling of a story - it’s always slightly edited to suit. I guess it's how folk stories become warped over time, through repeated retellings. Memory is incredibly fallible and easily manipulated, which I found really interesting to pick at. We can swear something happened, feel it in our bones, and still be completely at odds with someone else’s version.

What is the role of honesty in art and relationships?

I don’t think honesty is ever as clean as we’d like it to be. In relationships, we assume we’re working from the same version of events, but we’re all constantly editing without realising it.

In the play, Grace believes she is being honest in the version she presents, but Eli doesn’t recognise himself in it at all, which creates that central tension. In art, I think honesty is less about factual accuracy and more about emotional truth. You can distort timelines or reshape events, but if the emotional core feels true, an audience will go with you. What becomes messy is when the emotional truth starts to override someone else’s reality.

The narrative shifts between past and present. What challenges did you face in structuring it?

I had to keep in mind what the audience knew at which point of the story. I’m always trying to hold back enough information to make the audience lean in.

Because Grace is actively constructing the story as we watch it, the audience is constantly catching up with her edits, which means the structure has to be really precise, so it still feels coherent and deliberate rather than chaotic.

How has the development process been so far, and have some moments radically shifted from your original intentions?

It’s been a beautiful and collaborative process, developing this show with Amaia and Francis (actors) and Dougie (Director). It has changed dramatically from the first draft and is only getting better! Originally it leaned much more into the romcom elements, but through rehearsals we found the darker undercurrent much more interesting, particularly in how Grace and Eli begin to challenge each other’s versions of events.

How does the meta-theatrical framing affect audience perception of Grace and Eli?

I think it means they have more power in the relationship between them and the audience. Grace is totally in charge of the audience’s evening. She is deciding what we see, what we don’t see, and how the story is shaped in real time, which makes the audience complicit in her version of events. At the same time, Eli’s resistance to that framing starts to destabilise it, so the audience is constantly reassessing who they trust.

How did your collaboration with director Douglas Clarke-Wood shape the final production?

Dougie is the co-parent of this show. He is my collaborator and confidant. Without Dougie this show would not exist. It has been a blast developing this show together and we are now beginning work on our next collaboration. He has been instrumental in shaping how the text lives on stage, particularly in balancing the humour with the more unsettling elements of the piece.

How do you balance humour with darker, more emotionally raw moments?

I’m a sucker for adding jokes where they shouldn’t be. I think lots of people use comedy to deal with those more difficult, raw moments. In this play, that tension felt important because the relationship between Grace and Eli often shifts very quickly between intimacy and discomfort, so the humour allows the audience in before pulling the rug slightly; a bit like a Trojan horse - get them on side with a laugh and then deliver something deeper.

What was the biggest challenge in staging this play?

There is an obscene amount of yarn. It gets in your hair, gets caught round your ankles, in your teeth. It's a nightmare.

What do you hope audiences take away THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME.?

I hope they take away the excitement around storytelling and a curiosity about what we mean when we talk about reality. And perhaps a slight unease about how fixed or reliable our own versions of events really are.

The play was a hit at Edinburgh Fringe. What did you learn from that experience?

I learnt to trust our actors. I knew it before, but they really are amazing. They bring so much nuance to Grace and Eli, which means the audience is never able to settle into a single perspective for too long. It was also my first time staging a play, so I learnt a huge amount about what would translate from page to stage; some things that felt very clear on the page sometimes needed simplifying to ensure it was picked up by the audience, and other moments that I hadn’t overthought ended up landing in a much bigger way than expected.

It gave me a much stronger sense of rhythm and where the audience leans in or pulls away, which has really shaped how we’ve developed the show since.

One final question: why this show, and why now?

You’ll be able to say you saw Amaia Naima Aguinaga and Francis Nunnery before they were famous. You’ll also get to experience the most mindbogglingly creative 70 minutes of your life.

More seriously, it also feels like a pertinent time to put on a show about people disagreeing on what’s real, as that seems to be going very well for us globally.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME heads to the Soho Theatre Upstairs until the 18th April, details here: https://sohotheatre.com/events/this-is-not-about-me/. The show will then transfer to 59E59 Theaters, New York from 11th May to 7th June. For or all updates, follow on social: https://www.instagram.com/thisisnotaboutme.play/

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