How I become Trump on stage each night

I put Trumpageddon forward as my show for Edinburgh in January of this year. Back then Trump wasn’t the Republican nominee let alone the President-in-waiting as it seems now. It was a gamble because he could’ve been yesterday’s news by the time of the performance.

Luckily for me, but unluckily for the world, he did get the nomination, and I was the only Trump ticket in town. Taking my cues from satirists of the past, such as Peter Cook, Steve Nallon, Chris Morris etc. I constructed a Trump that was an exaggeration of his predatory nature; his garbled speech and scrambled policies. Trumpageddon is also a satire on society's obsession with him and the Snapchat attention span of people who get to vote for the future.

He’s a circus funfair mirror that distorts your dreams and rational thinking

Of course I put on the orange make-up, purse my lips and do the mannerisms (I spent hours on YouTube watching every clip of him until I started believing in what he said. Shudder), but I spend most of my time trying to think like Trump. And the trick to that is to not think at all, and I don’t mean that in a crass way. Someone likened him to the character of Chance played by Peter Sellers in the film Being There. He's a blank canvas that mirrors what everyone wants him to be. Trump is like that, he’s a circus funfair mirror that distorts your dreams and rational thinking, and projects back fear, bigotry and nonsense.

I try not to analyse it too much as the reaction I’ve had has ranged from the intellectual 'Black-Nosed Clown' analysis put forward by a prominent theatre-director to Edinburgh Fringe stalwarts heralding me as an 'insult comedian', I just inhabit a character who loves himself and can do no wrong, can say and do what he likes, and is unaware of his supreme confidence.

I am not just trying to look and sound like him, I am trying to embody something of the real Trump

I also think people expect satire to be simply 'a piss-take' of the superficial qualities of a politician. They have mad hair or spit when they speak. I’ve subverted that a bit, as I am not just trying to look and sound like Trump, I am trying to embody something of the real Trump. That’s why so much of the show is interactive and improvised. You can ask 'Trump' what you like and interact with him in real-time.

Ultimately playing this role is me holding a massive placard that reads 'THIS MAN IS A HUMAN BEING, WHAT YOU SEE IS A VERY FALLIBLE MORTAL'. All politicians, authoritarians, popes and FBI agents are human beings, and therefore equal to anyone else, and as prone to mistakes, self-interest, physical and mental illness and pathology as anyone else. So they have no special quality, they have no quick fix and they have nothing to offer that is somehow going to save us. This is the problem of Individualism, we really think all problems and solutions are the fault of one individual, unfortunately it’s everyone’s problem, and everyone’s fault. Including mine.

You can watch Simon Jay as Donald Trump in Trumpageddon on election night this evening at the King's Head Theatre in London.