In this episode, John Cussans speaks with Simon O’Sullivan, philosopher, artist, writer, and member of the performance group Plastique Fantastique, about his 2024 fiction The Ancient Device, published by Triarchy Press.

The conversation explores how fiction, ritual, performance, landscape, and therapeutic practice come together in Simon’s work. They discuss the book’s journey through English ceremonial landscapes, mummers’ plays, rave and traveller culture, wounded characters, internal worlds, and the possibility of using fiction as a kind of device or prop for transformation.

Simon reflects on the relationship between The Ancient Device and Plastique Fantastique, the influence of folk culture, adolescent landscapes, village greens, village halls, performance, masks, and the deep mythic charge of places that stay with us across a lifetime.

The episode also moves into group work, trauma, addiction, anxiety, intentional communities, therapeutic performance, and the relationship between external landscapes and internal psychic landscapes.

This is a conversation about how stories, rituals, props, masks, performances, and places can help us encounter what has been hidden, wounded, or unresolved, and how fiction might become a living method for repair, recognition, and re-enchantment.

Links:

Simon O’Sullivan: www.simonosullivan.net

Plastique Fantastique: www.plastiquefantastique.org

The Ancient Device: available from Triarchy Press

Therapeutic Landscapes: www.therapeutic-landscapes.org