A London sightseeing bus becomes a moving theatre in The Fun Tour, a production conceived by Bardo Muñoz.

His distinctive directorial language integrates scripted comedy, physical theatre, audience participation and the changing geography of London into a coherent theatrical structure. The bus is not simply a venue: its movement, confined interior and proximity to the city shape the performance itself.

The orange bus follows a route past some of the capital’s best-known landmarks. Inside, a comedian guides passengers through a programme that draws on Shakespeare, Harry Potter, Mary Poppins, James Bond and British pop music. The artistic challenge is to turn these familiar references into a coherent performance on a stage that moves through real traffic.

A background in comedy and live production

Bardo trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. He had various theatre management roles at UBC and took home the Ogopogo Comedy Challenge in Canada. He was also involved in producing events for Gran Festa in Mexico between 2016 and 2023. He started work on the project in 2023 with the public launch occurring in September 2025.

Bardo’s background in performance and event production is very much reflected in the structure of The Fun Tour. The performers have to be in tune with the comic timing as they react to the traffic, the shifting views of the audience and the varying levels of audience involvement. What would otherwise be seen as logistical problems become part of the show’s theatrical language.

Writing a show around London’s landmarks

The project credits Bardo with the idea and with all the work on the script, the characters, the casting, the rehearsals and the audience experience. Bardo developed the concept and led the writing, character development, casting, rehearsals and creative direction, placing his authorship at the centre of the production.

The script is a mix of London stories, quizzes, songs and appearances by well-known cultural icons. Shakespeare is on the show with Freddie Mercury and Mr Bean and there’s a Live Aid tribute which forms a proper musical feature. The well known characters can sometimes mean the humour is reliant on recognition. Bardo uses them as a common theatrical language for an international audience though. The characters from literature, film and music provide a familiar entry point into a show which is constantly shifting between comic styles.

The route provides the episodes with a dramatic structure. A feature in the window can be used to launch a story or alter the mood. A musical number can even briefly take over the bus. Of course the London traffic can’t be choreographed. Bardo has built in a degree of flexibility so that variations in timing don’t damage the performance. The changing city becomes part of the dramaturgy rather than an intrusion upon it.

Directing in a space without a backstage

The bus has the rather unusual arrangement of people sitting face to face across the aisle. Bardo was instrumental in getting that configuration approved and it has very obvious theatrical implications. The audience see each other and the performers are all performing to a common space rather than a traditional front of house arrangement with people all facing the stage. The audience are literally seeing themselves.

The space is virtually devoid of distance between performer and spectator. A physical gesture or facial expression is incredibly potent and a passenger’s laugh or interruption can easily become the basis of the next exchange. Bardo’s direction is a mixture of pre-rehearsed material and room for improvisation, maintaining the integrity of the piece and the pace of the show whilst allowing the individual audience member to have an impact.

The Freddie Mercury tribute is a case in point. It’s a Live Aid in miniature, complete with music and audience emotion in the bus. You could well have pedestrians on the street looking through the windows and reacting to it. That’s the appeal of Bardo’s format. For a few minutes you’re actually reaching people who haven’t bought a ticket. Their reaction, of course, can’t be rehearsed.

The Freddie Mercury sequence is a case in point as to how the format can go well beyond the ticketed audience. The passer-by may see the spectacle through the window and react. Those encounters can’t be scripted but they do fit with the idea of the city as a permeable theatrical space. Bardo provides the performer with a structure in which such unscripted reactions can actually add to the event.

Theatre shaped by a moving city

The Fun Tour is more in the nature of a travelling variety show than a traditional historical tour. That’s a deliberate artistic choice. The landmarks provide the context and the transitions, the music, the parodies and the audience participation provide the drama. You don’t just get the city explained to you, you get the city in the show.

Immersive and site specific theatre have long played with the notion of the relationship between the audience and public space. Bardo’s contribution is not the invention of audience participation per se but rather a very considered adaptation of that concept to the context of a moving sightseeing bus (with a fixed route, changing external conditions and an extremely intimate relationship between the performers and the passengers).

The face to face seating is particularly telling in that rather than just staring blankly out of the window people are looking at each other, reacting to the comedian and at times actually joining in with a song. Along with the scripted content and the passing streetscape this creates a very distinct directorial ‘language’ for the piece.

A theatrical language with room to travel

The Fun Tour had its first public performance on 17th September 2025. As per the project’s own figures it has since gone on to present 160 shows for around 3,000 passengers, having tested the format out repeatedly with paying audiences.

Bardo has spoken of Paris, Dubai and the US as potential destinations for expansion. Each of those would require more than just a new route. The whole relationship between the local landmarks, the cultural references, the performers and the audience would have to be rethought. It’s therefore a London production which is the directorial model rather than a set of transportable sketches.

The Fun Tour establishes Bardo as a theatre-maker of a very particular stripe. His achievement is to take scripted comedy, physical performance, audience participation and the very real geography of London and somehow meld them into a coherent theatrical experience. He turns the constraints of space into a strength, builds his dramaturgy on the actuality of the city and gives to the familiar forms of entertainment a real sense of theatricality. That’s a significant body of work and that’s what sets him as a theatre author and director in his own right, rather than just a clever trick with a moving stage.

written by Alexa Wang