Pulp Theatre London presents Tabu at GrimeFest

Pulp Theatre is thrilled to announce its second production, ‘Tabu’ , written and directed by Zach Lonberg.  Part of GrimeFest running from 20-31 October. Tabu runs from 24 – 27 October. The venue is located in the basement of The Curtains Up Pub, 28a Comeragh Road, West Kensington, London W14 9HR.

Preview by Emilia Matyja.

"Sex always sells – we're just the newest trade in the world's oldest profession. "

 In the age of AI, Tabu is the start-up of everyone’s nightmares. Letting users explore their ‘deepest, sickest fantasies’ through artificially generated porn, nothing is off limits to those willing to pay.

But when a string of scandals threatens to strike, junior lawyer Morgyn sneaks off to meet company founder Alister to confront what their product has unleashed upon the world.

Themes of artificial intelligence, Big Tech, misogyny and abuse – political, sexual, bodily, digital – form the backdrop to a tense, uncomfortable two-hander about the power we wield over one another, both person to person and more systemically, in an increasingly unequal world.

Reviewer Emilia Matyja interviewed Zach Lonberg to find out more.

Emilia: What is the central question or tension at the heart of Tabu, besides AI at the forefront of the conflict?

Zach: “There’s a line in the play where Alister (Louis Cavalier), Tabu’s founder, muses out loud that the firm relies on ‘people with a sick imagination’. The context might seem obvious – he runs a deepfake porn site. But he’s actually implicating Morgyn (Ananya Sahay), one of his in-house lawyers, who spends much of the play storming up ways Tabu can evade legal notice and consolidate its power.

“In just a few years, AI has activated the imaginations of lots of bad actors in lots of ways. There’s the obvious, like the deepfake epidemic. But there’s also people laying off employees in favour of tech that has proven time after time it isn’t reliable. Or companies monitoring their workers’ expressions.

“People resort to this argument that AI is ‘just a tool’, and that it only reflects the morals of the people using it. I agree – but I don’t think the debate ends there. What does it say about us that with a brand-new technology, our first instinct has been to break down the protections we used to enjoy and make the world more volatile and less safe? How much of the gloom right now is attributable to AI – and how much is really just us, through a smokescreen?”

Emilia: How have you approached it in terms of tone, staging, and design -- and is there something an audience might not expect?

Zach: “There’s definitely a few twists planned – can’t say much there! When writing the piece I was attracted a lot to dark ambient music. We’ve got a sound designer who’s composed some pieces, and one of my biggest inspirations has been the Oscar-winning soundtrack for The Social Network by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who then went on to score Gone Girl under David Fincher as well. Their music is full of these haunting, disembodied techno drones. I played the whole catalogue back-to-back while I was writing this.”

Emilia: Did you have any particular challenges in bringing this production to the stage?

Zach: “The extreme darkness of its subject matter isn’t something I’ve really touched on before – I’ve mostly written comedies! But I’ve always seen myself working across genres, and I wanted to make something that didn’t shy away from the intensity of its themes. I was pretty nervous to stage this at first, but I’ve been lucky to have such a fantastic cast (Ananya Sahay and Louis Cavalier) and a great team in the room with me (Jaimee Doyle, the associate director, and Lindsay Duet, our stage manager). We’ve been a really close group of five, and I think we’ve benefitted so much by being comfortable around one another.”

https://app.lineupnow.com/event/tabu Suitable for ages 18+. Running time around 50 minutes without an interval.

Visit Barons Court Theatre website for news of all the show in GrimeFest: https://www.baronscourttheatre.com/grimfest2026