EDINBURGH 2026: Nathan Sibthorpe on TRUTHMACHINE Guest Blog
Truthmachine is at Edfringe from 7-30 August
Nathan Sibthorpe, Artistic Director of Counterpilot guest blogs for BroadwayWorld on bringing Truthmachine to the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Exploring social shame, vulnerability, self-disclosure with the Truthmachine
Truthmachine is not just a show about a lie detector test - every performance is also a real polygraph interrogation with a brave audience volunteer. Contemporary theatre often seeks out moments of radical truth and authenticity in order to connect with its audience. We want to see ourselves on stage; we want to manifest something real! Our theatre shares this ambition, but our approach is to outsource the truth to unrehearsed audience members.
Counterpilot is obsessed with the wildness of real people. We believe the inherent liveness of theatre is strongest when the audience becomes the protagonist. Not to play a character or perform a fiction, but to be as truly themselves as they can be in larger-than-life circumstances. Over the past 12 years, we’ve been making hi-tech theatre experiences that create opportunities for this to happen.
Truthmachine has become one of the most notorious. A polygraph test creates the circumstances for radical vulnerability - you don’t know what you’ll be asked to disclose, or what could accidentally surface. Volunteering to be interrogated in front of strangers means risking social shame. In this way, the show always feels like a bit of a thrill ride, or a dose of social adrenaline! Even operating the show, there’s a feeling that everyone is meeting each other in this moment with a shared sense of personal risk - will the truth harm us? And will the machine find something we weren’t expecting?
The funny thing about the lie detector is that it can’t really measure the truth - it can only measure your body’s physiological response to being questioned. So the more nervous you are about these stakes, the more likely it will set off a spike in the data. In this way, we’re eager for audiences to meet the show with a healthy sense of fear…
We became obsessed with lie detectors because they are so misunderstood. The limitations, criticisms, and conspiracies associated with the polygraph became our way of exploring the discomfort we all feel living in a post-truth era. Surrounded by fake news and alternative facts, we’re left questioning whether the truth really exists, whether it’s available, and whether anyone really desires it anymore - or whether we’re all just inventing the truth as we go.
A lie detector test aspires towards a binary of TRUE & FALSE, but of course the reality is more slippery than that. A typical polygraph only produces data that must be interpreted by a trained examiner. That person, with all of their subjective biases, is the one to determine the reading. Claiming to witness the truth, but in the process perhaps co-authoring it.
Throughout this performance, every audience member who is not being interrogated takes on the shared responsibilities of examiner. Live physiological data from the volunteer’s heart rate, breathing, and galvanic skin response is translated into a dynamic shifting soundscape that we listen to intently. It becomes very intimate witnessing subtle changes in how a person’s body responds to stimulus. And it can be very curious trying to read between the heartbeats to catch out a lie.
The questions themselves range from juvenile slumber party confessions to existential challenges and personal reflections. The best questions challenge us to be honest with ourselves before we can ever convince the machine of our truthfulness. The cheekiest questions illicit racing hearts regardless of the answer.
But while the interrogation is designed to FEEL like a big social threat, we’re very careful with the boundaries we’ve put in place. We’re pretty confident that no lives can be ruined from what the performance reveals. But still, we’re interested in questions that provoke a strange fear of the truth.
In this way, the true consequences aren’t about the answers to the questions. In fact, often everyone forgets what the answer was. It’s the way the subject feels about being asked the question that betrays a real truth. This feeling is different in every performance - sometimes hysterical, sometimes wistful, and sometimes really bold.
This wildness is what makes the show feel so alive. We might be living post-truth, but grappling with the burden of creating our own truths makes for a sublime and vulnerable togetherness. After all, if the truth is in our hands, it has no right to ever shame us.
Truthmachine will be performed at various times, up to eight times a day, at C Venues C Alto from 7th – 30th August.
Booking link: https://res.cthearts.com/event/34:5337/
Photo credit: Kate O'Sullivan
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