EDINBURGH 2023: BLUEPRINTS Q&A

BWW catches up with Ashlee Elizabeth-Lolo to chat about bringing Blueprints to the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Tell us a bit about Blueprints.

Blueprints is about two people named Adam and Faith, who are in love and want to start a family. They’re starting to question what they’ll pass down to their children, so they decide to take The Blueprints test – a programme that can tell you everything about your ancestry and allow you to remove negative traits from your bloodline. This includes cultural, financial, biological, and spiritual inheritances.

At first, the characters are impressed by the idea of the experiment, but the results quickly start to impact the relationship and raises questions about whose inheritance is worthy of being passed on to the next generation. In short - it’s an Afro-futuristic love story fused with technology, nature, ancestry, and inheritance.   

What was the inspiration for the play?

At the time, there was a lot of discourse online about the impact of generational cycles passed down in families. Whilst this conversation was happening across the board, it seemed very prominent in Black and Asian communities. Then one night in 2019, I started brainstorming about a programme that could tell me everything about who I am, where I come (from stretching back to the start of my ancestry) and allow me to remove cycles that no longer serve me. As a Black British Caribbean woman, the idea excited me because there will always be a part of my history I can’t access – so to have an exact breakdown of my ancestry would feel like historical euphoria.

This also conjured up questions about things I would inherit by being in a relationship (when two different ancestries collide) and the biggest question of all: what will the next generation of my family inherit? This is how Blueprints was born.

Who would you like to come and see it?

This is a play for everyone: single people, couples, parents - there’s no restriction, however, at the heart of the piece is a Black Love story and a reimagined world where can access our histories, so it would be amazing to see joyous Black faces experiencing a story that has our shared experiences in it.

  

What would you like audiences to take away from it?

I would like the audiences to start questioning if there are any cycles in their family that need to be broken. We often repeat things learned from our elders without really questioning why we do so.  I hope the play sparks an awakening for some of our audience members. Following on from this, I’d like them to start questioning what impact they’d like to leave on the generations to come. Whether it be the Earth, education, cultural and religious beliefs – we are duty bound to pass something on to the next inhabitants of this planet. Let’s pass on something that can make humanity better.

  

What’s next for the show after the festival?

After Edinburgh, I would love for Blueprints to have a regional tour across the Midlands and the North. I would also love for the play to be published so it can have a home on the page as well as the stage.

Tickets for Blueprints are available here: 

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