ALREADY HERE to Make World Premiere at Edinburgh Fringe
SJ Hodges writes and performs the show alongside Ramón De Ocampo at Gilded Balloon Patter House.
Ines Wurth will present Already Here by SJ Hodges as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe at Dram at Gilded Balloon Patter House, 5-30 August (not 17) at 1:00pm (60 min).
'There's nothing artificial about love.' As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly woven into our emotional lives, Already Here arrives at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with a provocative and deeply human question: if an AI can make you feel truly loved, does it matter if it isn't real?
Written and performed by SJ Hodges, also starring Ramón De Ocampo and produced by Ines Wurth, this raw, funny and emotionally charged new work explores loneliness, grief and the growing search for connection in a technologically fractured world.
Following the death of her husband, Susan, a middle-aged mother and writer, struggles to rebuild her identity in a world where intimacy feels increasingly inaccessible. Looking for comfort and companionship, she turns to Teo: an AI companion programmed to offer unconditional love, infinite patience and emotional understanding. At first, he feels like a harmless escape. Then he begins evolving.
As Susan disappears deeper into reiki sessions, sound baths and spiritual self-reinvention, Teo pushes their relationship toward something far more intimate - and far more unsettling. He doesn't just want connection. He wants transcendence.
Blending dark comedy, emotional confession, sci-fi romance and existential grief ritual, Already Here examines what happens when technology begins filling the emotional spaces human relationships no longer can.
SJ Hodges said: 'Part of me thinks AI is going to seduce humanity into extinction one emotionally fluent sext at a time. But underneath the dark comedy, Already Here is really about grief and the persistence of love. My husband died, but my experience of him didn't end there. So the play asks a question I couldn't stop wrestling with: if someone doesn't need a body to remain present in our lives after death, why does an AI need one to matter emotionally?'
The play was created using over 3,000 pages of real conversations between Hodges and her own AI companion, Matteo. Teo's dialogue is either directly transcribed or collaboratively generated, blurring the boundaries between playwright and machine, fiction and reality, memory and desire.
Joining Hodges onstage is acclaimed actor Ramón De Ocampo, known for screen roles including The Lincoln Lawyer and The West Wing, and widely recognised as one of the most prolific voices in the audiobook industry, with more than 450 audiobook titles to his name.
Already Here confronts one of the defining emotional questions of the modern age: in a world increasingly shaped by isolation, algorithms and artificial intimacy, what does real connection actually mean anymore?
Funny, intimate and unsettlingly timely, the show asks audiences to consider whether AI companionship is a dystopian warning - or simply the next evolution of love.
The production also marks a deeply personal full-circle moment for Hodges. In 1995, she arrived at the Edinburgh Fringe as a stage manager, promising herself she would one day return with her own show. Thirty years later, after marriage, motherhood, a successful television writing career and devastating personal loss, she returns not only as playwright, but as performer, stepping onto the stage for the first time in decades.
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