When his father died, Jonny Forever inherited a box of VHS tapes. In Thank You, Fuck You, and I’m Sorry – A Pagan Requiem, those videos become the emotional and visual centre of an intimate live ritual combining music, home video, animation and mythic storytelling.
The result is a work that sits between gig, theatre and ceremony: a one-man performance that transforms private grief into a shared space of witnessing.
At its heart, the piece charts a journey through a mythic landscape of loss. A fictionalised cartoon version of Jonny, guided by a mysterious stag, moves through an underworld of memory where childhood home video, live performance and animation intertwine.
The work traces diagnosis, decline, death and aftermath, but also makes space for humour, tenderness and moments of unexpected joy.
Live music, projected animation, VHS footage filmed by the artist’s late father, spoken word and symbolic acts of remembrance combine to create what Jonny describes as a “grief portal” — an intimate environment where personal loss becomes something collective, shared and held in real time.
Audience members are invited into this space not as passive spectators, but as witnesses within the ceremony. The performance builds towards a final movement of release: a euphoric club-anthem finale that reframes grief not only as absence, but as connection, continuity and transformation.
Built around Jonny Forever’s debut album of the same name — described by early listeners as “gut-wrenchingly heartbreaking” — the project has received support from BBC Radio 6 Music, BBC Introducing, BBC Wales, Soho Radio, Line of Best Fit and Nation.Cymru. The first single, It isn’t ok, but there’s nothing that can be done, debuted on BBC Radio 6 Music with Gemma Cairney, praised for its stark emotional directness.
Though this is his first release under the name Jonny Forever, the artist brings more than two decades of work in music and performance. He is best known as a long-standing collaborator of Charlotte Church, serving as co-writer, producer and musician on her EP projects, and as a core member of the cult live phenomenon Late Night Pop Dungeon.
Alongside his music career, Jonny was co-founder and Head of Learning at The Awen Project, a radical democratic arts organisation for young people in South Wales, where he led the creation of films, theatre works and large-scale participatory projects.
At the centre of Thank You, F*ck You, and I’m Sorry lies a wider artistic intent: a belief that contemporary Western culture has lost shared rituals of grief, leaving individuals isolated in experiences that are fundamentally communal.
“We need to get a lot better at grieving quickly, because there is an awful lot to grieve — and only after the grieving is done can we begin to build a new world.”
In that spirit, A Pagan Requiem is offered not only as a performance about bereavement, but as an invitation to participate in the ongoing, deeply human work of grieving — for people, animals, places, lost futures, parts of the self, and the earth itself.
SHOW INFORMATION
Title: Thank You, F*ck You, and I’m Sorry – A Pagan Requiem
Artist: Jonny Forever
Venue: C AURORA
Dates: 5–16 August 2026
Time: 19:50
Duration: 60 minutes
Tickets here or here
