Opening at the Voila! Theatre Festival next month, Blip Blarp is an audacious alien invasion story written and performed by Alicia Queen.
“Meet Blip Blarp—galactic overachiever and full-time romantic disaster. She lands on Earth with one goal: conquer the planet and produce 1,000 offspring. There’s just one problem—dating humans.
Thrown into the chaos of modern romance—thirst traps, mixed signals, and situationships—Blip learns that seduction is far harder than invasion. Planetary domination? Easy. Getting a text back? Impossible.
Blending sharp comedy, burlesque flair, and sci-fi absurdity, this bold spectacle skewers swipe culture and the universal ache to be chosen.
Sexy, brainy, and delightfully unhinged, it’s proof that whether you have tentacles or Tinder, longing is universal.”
Alicia stops by to tell us more.
Your show Blip Blarp: An Alien Love Story is taking place at Voila this year. What can you tell us about it and about the team behind it?
Blip Blarp: An Alien Love Story follows an alien who arrives on Earth with a mission to produce 1,000 offspring and conquer the planet.
She’s confident she understands attraction and seduction, but quickly discovers that navigating modern human dating is a lot more complicated than she anticipated.
The show combines physical theatre, clowning, comedy, audience interaction, music and multimedia to explore the absurdity of dating, with a surprisingly human story underneath all the intergalactic chaos.
The core team consists of me, my sound designer Andres Hernandez, and my colleague Ellie Whittaker, who voices my robotic companion, Aurora. We all met through our Lecoq training and have worked together before.
Last year, my previous production, Betty, which I wrote, directed and produced with a five-person cast, was nominated for a Virtuoso Award at Stockholm Fringe.
I really enjoyed working with them on that project (they also happen to be close friends), so I was keen to bring them back on board for this one.
Another voice in the show belongs to Dallas Akins, who is also part of our Lecoq circle. It’s lovely to keep collaborating with people who understand this kind of  playful world building.
Your venue is the Etcetera Theatre. What appeals about that space and how has it informed the development of the show for this festival?
I like that there’s a pub downstairs. It gives the whole experience a relaxed, slightly mischievous atmosphere before people even enter the theatre. Blip Blarp is a sexy, weird, fun little show, so that kind of environment feels right for it.
The theatre itself is intimate, which is particularly useful because audience interaction is a big part of the performance.
I move through the audience, mingle with people, and draw them into Blip’s mission, so having everyone close together makes the experience feel more immediate.
The audience isn’t just watching an alien try to understand humans; they become part of her experiment. A smaller space makes that connection much easier to build.
Can you sell the show to a potential audience in one sentence?
An alien arrives on Earth to conquer the planet and produce 1,000 offspring, only to discover that modern dating is the most baffling thing in the universe.
Do you think modern dating protocols are good for romance and seduction?
No! I think we’ve managed to make an already challenging situation considerably more complicated.
Between dating apps, blind dates with people you’ve barely spoken to, ghosting, paywalls, and all the panopticon-like insecurities social media has created around sexuality and communication, we’ve built an extraordinary number of obstacles between ourselves and genuine connection.
That’s one of the central themes of the show: finding love despite how difficult we’ve made dating. Blip arrives thinking attraction is something she can master through confidence and technique, but human beings don’t exactly make it easy for her. We can be contradictory, guarded, insecure and sometimes downright confusing.
But I do believe in love. There’s a silver lining in the show because, beneath all the absurdity and frustration, people are still looking for connection. I find that both ridiculous and rather lovely.
And what’s next for the show?
My plan for 2027 is to take Blip Blarp to English-speaking theatres in the United States and across the UK and Europe, and potentially develop a French-language version as well.
I’ve also been experimenting with adapting sections of the show into shorter pieces for cabaret-style venues in Paris, which opens up some exciting possibilities for performing it in different contexts.
Blip is a very character-driven creation, so I’m interested in exploring her further beyond the existing show. I’ve already started building a world around her home planet, Planet Zoron, and I’d love to develop that universe, its inhabitants and its strange logic.
There’s plenty more to discover about Blip, and I suspect her understanding of humans will remain a work in progress for quite some time.