When ventriloquist Nina Conti put on a monkey suit the result was romance and a road movie

“I couldn’t be happier that the film’s world premiere will take place in the city that has most nurtured my comedy career from day one,” says Conti. “I’m very excited to share it with audiences. It is my proudest work.”

Written, produced and directed by the British Comedy Award winner who also stars in it alongside her partner in life and laughter, Shenoah Allen (half of the The Pajama Men comedy duo with Mark Chaveza), the dark comedy takes her relationship with Monkey to a new level.

This time round Conti doesn’t just voice her uncensored thoughts through Monkey, but steps into his fur by donning a life-sized monkey suit in the comedy road trip love story set in New Mexico. Billed as ‘A woman, a monkey and a dead man’s watch, Sunlight is a true original and sees Conti calling the shots as well taking a starring role.

Working with co-star and co-writer Allen is nothing new as the pair have worked on stage together and in lockdown launched a “filthy but wholesome” podcast, Richard and Greta - two sexually confident pensioners keen to share relationship advice - and the pair spark off each other so well that their comedy is often improvised.

While this is her directorial debut, Conti has experience of film making, with the Bafta-nominated and Grierson Award winning Her Master’s Voice, (2012), where she took ventriloquist puppets bequeathed by anarchic theatre director Ken Campbell to a dedicated resting home in Kentucky.

It was Campbell who introduced Conti to ventriloquism and it was in one of his shows that she made her Fringe debut back in 2002.

Sunlight, executive produced by Spinal Tap’ creator Christopher Guest and with a soundtrack featuring Radiohead, Pixies and Aphex Twin, brings together Conti and Allen as a pair of misfits. Jane is a fugitive in fur, running away from a toxic relationship in a monkey suit that she doesn’t want to shed, and Roy is a misfit radio host who has unfinished business with his dead father.

Speaking from her London home as she prepares for the Fringe, Conti reveals how Sunlight came about.

“I was in Star Wars for a second and it got cut, but luckily I met the creature department and saw these amazing Chewbaccas and commissioned Vanessa Bastian, an Oscar-winning creatures person, to make Monkey. So I had this epic monkey suit but didn’t know what to do with it.

“Then I went into a 50-hour improvised soap in 2018 with Shenoah, thrown on stage together, and he was playing a character called Roy and I had this brand new monkey suit. There was chemistry, so then we did a magical run of gigs that were so fun.”

“I’d been working alone all my life, only ever talking to myself, and Shenoah is an amazing improviser so during these gigs I said do you want to do a film? And he said yeah, let’s do it. I was kind of falling in love with him as well, in the fur,” she laughs, “and I thought ‘this is a love story’. I can see that it would be very difficult if you were funnier and more appealing in a monkey suit and feared that coming out of it would be a disappointment and that’s a healthy obstacle for a love story.”

Actually stepping into Monkey’s skin was a first for Conti who up till now has only had control of his voice. How different was it to play a life-sized monkey as opposed to having him sitting on her arm?

“It was actually a huge relief. Just doing one thing felt very zen. My blood pressure probably went down. I wasn’t spinning plates and being this laughing apologetic companion. Monkey has always been the star of the show and so to just step into it was like ‘ahhh, I know how to do this. This is me, this is more me than I am’, I had no problem with it. It’s the most natural thing in the world.”

Despite feeling natural, filming in New Mexico had its downside.

“I had to get used to having no peripheral vision, hair in my mouth a lot, choking, and then oh god the heat. But that was all part of it. I was somebody who preferred to be a different persona and that all felt true to me.”

Like her Sunlight character Jane, who uses Monkey to voice things she cannot, Conti has also used him as a means to express another side of her personality, and she him along with masks in her ventriloquism once more in this year’s show, Whose Face Is It Anyway?

“The amazing thing is, I’m naturally quite shy,” says Conti. “And many in the audience are shy too. But when I put one of my masks on one of their faces, it creates a monster

that doesn’t give a f*ck about tomorrow. I’m addicted to the liberation it brings

to the room, and I can’t wait to travel with it.”

So was actually becoming Monkey in Sunlight a logical conclusion for Conti?

“Yes, it’s the compression of what I do into its most clean expression I think,” she says. “Monkey is my least cluttered projection of myself into the world.”

But why a road trip in New Mexico?

“Well, Shenoah is half of this film and he’s from New Mexico and that excited me straight away. I could feel the sun on his face and I’ve always loved road trips and Americana. There were conversations that we could maybe film it in the UK and I thought ‘aw, no, no, let’s go out there.

Initially producers didn’t want Conti to direct, but then lockdown happened and as she puts it, “I went ‘aghgghh, I’m going to do it myself goddamit’. The budget was cut by 80% and she secured funding from her live comedy producers.

“That gave me the freedom to improvise, to make a film like no one was watching, and that is the flavour of the thing. It’s created for us to tell our story in the most honest way we could.”

So we have a woman in a monkey suit, falling in love with a man, the pair of them running away on a road trip.

“Well on paper I suppose it would sound really hard to believe, but when you start watching it you realise no, it’s true. It’s a weird thing to be true but it is. It’s emotionally autobiographical certainly.”

Because Conti did indeed fall in love with Allen while she was dressed in a monkey suit.

“Yeah, we fell in love in the process of writing the film. Shenoah is the most lovely collaboration I’ve ever done. We became partners actually, in life.”

So did Allen fall in love with Monkey, her character Jane who inhabits the monkey suit, or Conti?

“Well… I think… I don’t… you’d have to ask him that,” she says.

From improvisation came a screenplay, which Allen wrote down, with further improvising during filming, lending a spontaneous air to proceedings.

“It was just a very lovely and special time. We were rehearsing in London but in my head we were in New Mexico.”

The daughter of Scottish actors Tom Conti and Kara Wilson, Conti is someone who struggled to find her voice, including working with the RSC as a young actor until she discovered ventriloquism, and is all about giving one to others.

“Everyone’s got to find their voice, and maybe you can’t, maybe you don’t get to say things that you need to say. Maybe you have to go about it a weird way. I have gone about it all my life in a weird way, and maybe it’s saying ‘yeah well, that’s how I’m going to do it’.

“So you grow into some other weird thing, do whatever it takes. You don’t have to be this integrated person who’s found themselves. For me it’s a little bit like standing up for those that can’t speak or become weird instead.

“It’s also saying love comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s a little bit like Beauty and the Beast, where you’re not trying to get the Beauty, you’re celebrating the Beast. And I definitely wanted something that would spread some joy.”

Conti is a Fringe veteran but this year it will be a family affair as Allen has his own show, Bloodlust Summertime, while her mother, actor and artist Kara Wilson will be performing Beryl Cook: A Private View.

“Shenoah’s show I’ve been watching develop over time and it’s a stunning piece of work. It’s really from New Mexico, Albuquerque and there’s a mix of very trashy and dangerous with very loving, hippyish. You can see what led to his part in the film.

“And my mum is doing her first Fringe at 80. She plays Beryl Cook who painted those large ladies and has all stories from her son and does one of her paintings during the show. She’s been babysitting my sons year after year while I’ve been doing shows, and now she’s doing her own. I’m so excited for her.”

Meanwhile, Arthur, one of her sons and the third generation of the Conti acting dynasty, is making making Beatlejuice 2 with Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Jenny Ortego.

“He’s a very serious, good actor, much better than I ever was,” says Conti. “He’s really got that natural thing.”

She’s also bringing her cat Minnow so watch out for a woman walking a cat on a lead, as Conti takes time off between shows, heading up Arthur’s Seat or around The Edinburgh Royal Botanic Garden or along the prom at Portobello.

As ever Monkey will be with her, appearing in Whose Face Is It Anyway? Which will go on a UK tour next year. Like much of her work it’s unscripted as she lets her imagination take masked members of the audience on a free-wheeling journey of comedy, freed from the constraints of self.

“The concept has grown around what happens when I put a mask on someone. Something uninhibited arrives that isn’t me and isn’t them and is greater than the sum of our parts. I’m enjoying what happens in that little Venn Diagram bit when you cross two people. It’s liberated chaos. I’m going into each show and audience afresh and seeing what we create.”

While Conti has sculpted her own masks for the show, it’s Monkey who takes over and selects audience members.

“For their likeability usually,” says Conti. “And one leads to another and the combinations are fun. Recently I had somebody who was investing in the legalisation of cannabis alongside somebody working with addiction, and I had an ex-cop and an ex-dominatrix. I thought, well, you guys need a session.”

“You get away with murder when you don’t have a script. People are very much on your side, in the moment. It’s a nice, relaxed cooking pot place. All of us can improvise because that’s just what life is. When you’re having a conversation you’re improvising, and on stage it’s just a bit heightened because everyone’s watching.”

While it’s second nature for Conti to improvise, does she think having actor parents helps?

“I’m sure it does. My dad has always talked about acting in a very simple way, that you just act like it’s in life. You have to be real or it doesn’t fly. So I definitely wanted to try and be real with my ventriloquism. I didn’t want it to seem like a Vegas magic act. I wanted it to seem like we were talking and that I think came from my father’s influence - just make it real.”

Now turning 51 during the Festival, would Conti say she’s less shy.

“I think I’m less shy because I’m old now,” she says. “I guess I’m more independent. I’ve always been quite fiercely independent because I don’t know what it takes to get your own show or jump through those hoops or do them the proper way. I’ve always had to do them my own way. But am I still shy? Yeah. I find socialising kind of painful a lot of the time. I’ve always preferred one on one. I’ve just realised talking about it now that by being on stage you make other people, the audience, one, so you get a one on one effect. You’re talking to them, kind of getting your arms around them into the focus of one.”

And just in case there’s any doubt, Monkey will definitely be there too - in more ways than one.

SUNLIGHT World Premiere, Edinburgh International Film Festival (on 17th Aug) Saturday 17 August at The Cameo Cinema, 9.15pm, followed by further screenings across the festival (details below). Tickets here. Further ‘Sunlight’ screenings, 18 August – Inspace (Screening Room), 9.30pm, 19 August, 50 George Square (Screening Room), 9.30pm, 20 August Summerhall (Red Lecture Theatre), 1pm (Pay What You Can - £3-£11).

Edinburgh International Film Festival, 15 - 21 August, venues across the city centre. ‘Sunlight’ is competing as part of The Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence alongside nine other feature-length World Premieres with the winner decided on by an audience vote and announced at the end of the festival.

Nina Conti’s brand-new live show ‘Whose Face Is It Anyway?’, Pleasance Grand, 7.30pm (31 st July – 25 th August, no performance on 7th, 13th, 19th). Age Restriction: 14+, Previews: 31 July-1 st August £12, Show: 2–25 August, prices £16-£22, dependent on date. 2 For 1 Tickets: 5–6 August. Tickets available at pleasance.co.uk or ninaontour.com. edfringe.com

A 21-date UK tour follows in 2025.

Shenoah Allen: Bloodlust Summertime, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Just the Tonic at the Caves, Just Up the Stairs (Venue 88), 1 Aug (preview) 2 –25 (no performances on 12 &19). Pay What You Want or £5 in advance. edfringe.com

Kara Wilson appears in Beryl Cook: A Private View, Pleasance Courtyard - Attic, Jul 31 Aug 1-11, 13-18, 20-25, edfringe.com