Elliot Cowan: An Actor's Actor

As Marylebone Theatre prepares to open a seminal revival of Arthur Miller's The Price, Elliot Cowan sat down with us to talk about taking on the role of Victor Franz, a man grappling with the physical and emotional debris of a family estate. As a veteran of the stage, he's become known for his ability to inhabit characters defined by internal conflict. Indeed his career has seen him move seamlessly between the physical demands of the stage and the precise requirements of screen acting. The new production at Marylebone reunites him with director Jonathan Munby and serves as a testament to Elliot's versatility, placing him at the heart of a timely exploration of sacrifice, duty, and the American Dream within an intimate performance space.

In this brand new interview, Elliot Cowan opens up about the changing environment for actors and the psychological toll of the actor’s craft. We talked about his role as Victor Franz very much mirrors his own life right now as he approaches 50 and how he himself feels has paid "the price" for longevity in this industry. Our conversation also addressed contemporary challenges facing actors in 2026 as demands on actors continue to shift and evolve. We also reflected on his role as the title character in Macbeth, starring opposite Laura Rogers and how he learned to play to a theatre like The Globe. Indeed, we also delved into his early training as he notes both Laura and John Hopkins who he stars alongside in The Price all trained at RADA around the same time. We learn what has stayed with him since those early years and how he continues to cross paths with peers decades into his career.

The Price runs at Marylebone Theatre from 17th April - 7 June.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Welcome to Up Close with Carl Oxide. Celebrating art, entertainment, and the human spirit. Elliot Cowan, thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Yeah, so um, we're seeing a massive Arthur Miller wave in London right now with Broken Glass at the Young Vic, and all my sons recently wrapped at the Wyndhams. Um why do you think we're so hungry for his style of writing in 2026?

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Yes, I suppose these in the I haven't seen them all, what's on at the moment. I saw all my sons. We were meant to see Broken Glass last week as a company, but for some reason the show we were going to was cancelled. And even though that was treated as Ivo often treats things as a sort of stylized Greek style universal drama or sort of classic tragedy drama feel to it, like you know, sort of had an expressionistic set, and you know, there were big uh theatrical coups in it. The playing style was still very, I don't know, um, I don't want to say conventional or was still aligned with uh Miller's, I think, style of writing. There wasn't anything particularly stylized. There occasionally was, but what I'm trying to say is from what my perception of that play and this play's sort of writing and style is compared to the latter works, than even the price, is that they're bedded in naturalism and sort of very highly tuned structures that work and have worked for thousands of years, actually, in the sort of dramatic storytelling that we have needed to tell ourselves for millennia. And they press the buttons that I think the reason why they work is sort of uh pseudo-Greek tragedies in the way, in the eyes of Evo Van Hover, is like they press the buttons through Greek tragedies and other ancient stories that we've told ourselves have always pressed. And in a world where things are perhaps more, I mean, talking artistically, I suppose there's such a cacophony of both realism and absurdism and invention and technology. I mean, there's just a huge array of distractions and styles and noise. And quite apart from the political scenario or the global landscape that is also fairly chaotic and destabilizing, I think stylistically there's something very solid and trustworthy and affecting and direct about his writing style, but also the subject matters largely focused on families going through crisis with a backdrop of something that is politically or globally distressing and worrying, and there's a sort of warning behind. I think you know, he never writes a family just for family's sake, because that would be enough, actually. A lot of writers do do that, and that is absolutely fine. We just see brothers and sisters, mums and dads banging into each other, people in love with the wrong person, you know. But the best playwrights bed that in a culture that is also in some flux and some strain, and there is some implicit warning behind what is occurring or what has occurred, and what that has done to this family, directly or indirectly. So I think we like that combination right now. I think it feels very trustworthy and affecting, and there is something culturally, I don't want to say educational, but sort of like I say, a warning or a portent, but without it being rammed down your throat with disaster. So I don't know, I think that's perhaps a cycle he goes through sometimes. That seems outdated and old-fashioned for a period. Like, well, why are we in these stuffy conventional sort of 20th century language, you know, syntaxes? Why are we looking at these characters from neighborhoods in America that we know nothing about or don't really have to relate to? This is all very passe, and then suddenly it all comes back into focus again.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Yeah, it definitely feels very timely. Um, I'd be very curious to see you know how Arthur Miller would be writing about today as well, with with everything going on.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Yeah, I know. Um I think he would do it elegantly and skillfully. He would probably find, as he did with the crucible, maybe an allegory or sort of um uh an analogous time or place that would remind us very keenly of what we are going through without putting too fine a point on it. He might even go even further back into history than Salem. He might go back to something foundational in the Middle East or something. Something I imagine he would write about Israel in some way or other and you know the Gaza uh situation. You know, I think he didn't always overtly write about his Jewishness, but I think I imagine right now there would be a lot to say for him, a lot to think about. And he might be a person that we would turn to for a little balance and sense. I mean, he would perhaps try and remove it from the signifiers of today, the realistic placement of people and and problems, and he would put it in another context, but I think we would know what he was talking about. And I think that's where his his skill is, you know. Uh it's he's sort of missed in these times, I suppose. And no doubt there are others who are filling his space, but um, I haven't quite well, they I guess they haven't quite been written. If they are about here and now, we haven't actually seen them delivered or borne out yet.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Yeah. Um, I wanted to ask about your character, Victor, because um he seems to be like a man who sacrificed everything for duty whilst his brother chased the American dream. Um, do you find yourself, you know, sort of siding with him, or do you sort of see him as being quite a flawed character as well?

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Oh well, I mean, I side with flawed characters all the time, don't we? All I mean, that's what they're there for, and that's who we are. So you don't, you uh, you know, as an actor, you don't judge your character, but I think as an audience, it would be foolish and hubristic to think that we're not flawed and therefore can't align ourselves with our heroes or our heroines in the story, tragic or comedic or otherwise. I have to say, when I read this play, Victor just went straight through to me, straight into my context, my cortex. Um, because he's wrestling with the stuff I'm wrestling with right now. It just spoke to me immediately. And because it's naturalism and because the language is great, the structure of the story is great, and even though it's set in 68 in Brooklyn, and he's a New York cop, you know, a fair old stretch for me in terms of life experience, somehow he and I have had a very similar life experience, you know. And I don't count myself as somebody who's sacrificed much for duty, like he has. And fortunately, I haven't been through quite the upheavals he and his family have. But in terms of the malaise of a man in his late 40s and trying to make sense of the next stage of his life, in a world where perhaps he's undervalued or things have gone not the way he thought they would, that he has some deep-seated and buried resentments, or I mean, it's it doesn't even have to be resentful because actually I'm not too resentful about anything. But he says at some point that the big decisions are the ones we don't know we're making until the results start coming in, and then we're stuck with them. And I think anyone who's at my age rather than your age stage in life, he might already be wiser than me. But you know, certainly I'm pushing 15 this July, and so is uh Victor. He talks about that all the time. And you you think that these uh milestones don't really have a sort of numerical value or importance, you want to brush them off and sail through. But there is definitely always a balance in one's life that uh is being struck by these things, and I think Miller was going through that as he was writing this play. Victor is as his uh avatar, and I am as his realizer. It's just very human to feel it. And in this particular way, quite male. It's tied to fatherhood, it's tied to being a partner, you know, it's tied to being a brother and a son, all of which I am. So, in one way, it's not very hard for me to imagine any of what Victor's going through, and then the rest of it I have to sort of learn as craft and technique and bring myself to him in that respect. But he's very much inside me already, I feel.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Yeah. I mean, what has it been like um working with Jonathan Munby? And how challenging has it been to find you know the light and humor in what is on paper a pretty devastating family drama?

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Well, yes, I was surprised. I'll talk about Jonathan in a minute, but I'm I'm surprised by how I said to him yesterday, isn't it funny? Like, this is I think it's technically a comedy. I say that because I think the play is all about, in essence, that when you boil it down to its element, it's about whether two people can remain married after 28 years of marriage. It seems to be about selling furniture, it seems to be about a father and son relationship, brother, a fraternal relationship, it seems to be about all sorts of things like that. But actually, the storyline is can these two people, as he reaches 50 and is contemplating retiring from the police force, and their son has left home to go to MIT on a full scholarship, can they remain married? What happens now to their love, their life, their shared, you know, partnership? And because ultimately this is a better ending play than some of Miller's plays, I think the structure is technically a comedic structure because we see essentially, without giving spoilers, by the way, but um they kind of remain married, which is a full is a form of marriage, is a form of comedic structure, but they have to really go through the ringer to get there. They have to really get tested and they have to let go of a lot of um expectation and disappointment and regret and resentment between them, but also towards other people. And only by so doing can they remain married. If this play didn't happen, that wouldn't be possible. And meanwhile, what Miller does brilliantly is puncture the anxiety, the conflict, the crisis that they're in with this amazing dramatic figure that is Solomon, Gregory Solomon. He is, you know, this is why the shows are always built around him, is because he is a startling dramatic creation. And writing right from Miller's kind of childhood experiences of men like that, of his father's generation, who migrated to America at the end of the uh 19th century into the 20th century and made their lives there, you know, hook by crook, or making millions like his dad did, or thousands like his dad did, and they're losing all in the crash. He knows these types of men really, really well. And so the vernacular that he writes Solomon in is crazy good and crazy sort of detailed and is comedically brilliant. I mean, Miller, I didn't realize, started his career as a 16, 15-year-old writer when he wrote a comedy sketch for the radio that got him called in to the uh radio station by some producer, the equivalent of writing for Mock the Week or I don't know, sort of the Now Show or something. And he was having like meetings, exciting meetings with this producer who thought he had a good ear for comedy, this little sort of absurd scene that he wrote, then told Miller, actually, no, thanks very much, we're not going to use it, you can go home. And then Miller, six weeks later, hearing it on the radio and not having got paid. So his first bit of published writing was comedy. And we know him as a tragedy, tragedian, really, don't we? Like for the common man. But uh he's got such a good ear for comedy and timing. And I think that's surprised me because I looked at it through the lens of Victor, who's not a funny guy and is going through a funny situation, but it's a straight man to Solomon and Walter most of the time, who are the funny guys in this one way or another. So it is amusing, and I think what we have is much like you know, Shakespeare did with the Porter or something like that. You have these relay switches flicking between high-level tension and conflict, and it's about to be a revelation, or there's about to be a conclusion of a resolution of some kind, and then in comes Solomon, bang, and blows it up into a bit of a comedic situation again. And he's not all comedy, he's not just a clown, as he says, I am no fool. He's got a lot going on, his intentions are very good, and he does convert it all wonderfully into something for the brothers. But um, yeah, it's it's really funny, and I hope that uh reaches an audience. Um, and about John and me, or Jonathan, he and I worked together 20 years ago on a play, uh Henry V, where I played Henry and he was my director. And at that time we were both turning 30, and that was a big step for both of us up at Manchester Royal Exchange to try that out. It was a great experience. I love working with him. I've always stayed in touch. We've done workshops and you know, bumped into each other from time to time. So when this came up 20 years later, as an almost 50-year-old man and him now just turned 50, I think it's sort of echoing that experience well. And because I had such fond memories of working with him the first time, there is no problem in taking this on, and it's proving to be the case because he's very detailed, he's very supportive, he holds the room brilliantly, and he understands text and people really well and can communicates really clearly. So, yeah, I feel really well held in this, and um, I think we're all having a good time, despite the fact that it sometimes gets a little bit emotional.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Of course. I mean, there's a lot of heavy emotions in this play, and I suppose you know, rehearsals are normally seen as being a bit of a safe space, but you know, you're dealing with you know not so safe themes. Um what's the vibe like interviewing when you're digging into emotions like resentments?

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Yeah, I'm pretty bold when it comes to letting myself look vulnerable, if that's not a paradox. I'm just fine with letting my guts hang out. Um, I enjoy it, and perhaps sometimes I have to put them back in a little bit more than I have an instinct to. And compared to some teams, the play, this play doesn't exhibit as dark and as malevolent and as worrying. And also, I'm I'm technically yeah, I'm technically the good guy, I suppose. And so I'm not having to face down some dark emotions, I'm just having to let myself be vulnerable to the emotions I'm talking about in one's sort of midlife, but also ones of grief and um and anger that he feels towards members of his family, and that inevitably, no, in the read-through, I just got carried by the play. You always are told by a wise director, okay, guys, we're just doing this to hear it. And everyone sits around the table and starts drinking too much coffee, and then the play takes over, and even if you started mumbling into your handkerchief, by the end, everyone's you know, riding the wave, and that's happening in this play. It's about modulating and finding where to place that properly, not just use it as a sort of you know, a series of triggers that excuse emotional uh indulgence. So uh once I've uh painted with some broad brush strokes and I've identified the colours of the emotions running through him and what he really really ultimately wants to expunge, um, it's about calibrating that. And Jonathan and I are talking about that right now, about how to bring that into focus, time it moment, you know, time it properly, work out where the layers are being pulled back, and you get really to the kind of vulnerable, like molliscous kind of fleshy bit that makes this a form of well, makes it a drama, you know, makes it apathetic, makes it moving and striking. Um we get, I think we get pulled into the relationship between the brothers and what is unsaid and undone between them for 16 years or more. And irrespective of it's starting with something quite mundane like selling furniture, it turns into that kind of fracca that can happen between brothers and and family members over really big, dark stuff or really simple familial stuff. It can get kicked off by the washing up, but it's possibly about how mum loved you more than me or something. And that's what Miller's got an eye for, and that's what we're we're wrestling with now, I think.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of um memory um in the play, and yeah, memory is sort of you know notoriously unreliable. Um, how do you sort of play with the idea that everyone's version of the past is different?

SPEAKER_00 17:58

That's a really good question. We we hit that yesterday about parents, actually. We were talking about how you can have the same family but two different sets of parents, even if you've got the same mum and dad. That's right. We said you can have the same mum and dad, but you can have different parents. And because uh the two brothers are a few years apart and certain things happen to them at different times in their childhood, like the Wall Street crash, say, and when they lost all their money, but it could be like a divorce, or it could be like when somebody remarries or have another child. Depending on where you are on your timeline, you'll have a different experience of that than your older brother, say. And you know, from that you'll detect different allegiances and relationships from your mum and dad. And if they die and disappear like these ones have, then that intersects with your progress, your evolution differently. And so it's easier to build when you know that, when you decide that that's possible because it is with everyone, then you can start to pull away the fabrics, you know, the threads of memories that seem contradictory and align them in parallel to one another around the same event. And this play is about stripping back memory and information that was delivered or held back at certain times between basically the two brothers and the dad. And what's good about what where Miller set the play is that it's in a room full of furniture from their lives. So it's like a brain full of memories that have these little sort of filing cabinets of furniture, basically, that you can handle or look at or see or sit on. And that will tie into a person or a time or an occurrence that takes you into a story, into a mindset that pushes the story on through some kind of revelation. Um, and so he's given us that wonderful toy box to play with and to unpack. And uh it's a matter of doing that well and skillfully, and believing that you can think two things at the same time because you've got the subconscious and the conscious, and you can you can, I think, because of when this play was written and the acting styles and the ideas of psychology at the time, it's very easy to understand that yeah, we can play this one belief that is my dad didn't have any money, and therefore I couldn't go to college, but know in our subconscious that there's a lie there somewhere, and when that lie is brought, when another person brings in the light of their memory and shines it on that particular lie, it's suddenly illuminated, and you realize, of course, that's why I have always felt this way about that. Um, yeah, so that's just a brilliant. I think it's a life device that happens in life, but it's a dramatic device too, and I think it's powerful. And it makes both men in this story, as he says in the author's notes at the end, it makes them both viable as humans and not just villain and hero. They've got to be both empathetic and frustrating and annoying and lovable, and that duality of truth allows for that.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Yeah, definitely. Um, you mentioned um earlier about how this place is sort of about the price we pay for our choices. When you look at your own career, um, do you feel like there's a price that you've had to pay to stay in this profession as well?

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Oh, yes, for sure. Yeah, I think you've hit upon something there that is resonating with me massively at 50, and you know, a father of two, and and the the sustaining one feels is necessary. You can't ever know the arrogance of youth and the passion of of following a dream, and you know, being turned on as you are as a teenager by all sorts of things, like being on stage, being laughed at, clapped at, being dressed. Stop, you know, working with exciting young people and older people and getting to see the country as I did being a member of the NYMT and then going off to university to do a drama degree, then coming down to London to do my acting course. It was also exciting and changeable and like so thrusting. And you don't think about, despite the warnings from parents and other older people, you don't ever think about the real things involved in the long term. You just think if I do if you work hard, you train hard, you learn what you need to learn, you remain open, you push yourself forward, you do all the things that you're supposed to do. And that's not hard when you're feeling that activated. Yeah, it will kind of work out. And I didn't really have any expectations more than I just wanted to sort of be on stage a lot and perhaps be at the RSE for a few years or something. I didn't think about making a living. But then bit by bit you think about making a living. And then you have to because you've got family, and you know, there's a kind of sweeping up of things that life asks you to attend to, like sort of buying a house or having a house, or a home at least, and um going on holidays suddenly, or whatever. You know, suddenly things that other people expect uh should happen. And that will seem fine for a while, but you can't also legislate for macro things that operate outside your agency that you have no control over, and they alter everything. I mean, not to sound dramatic because it's not on the same level, but you know, the Wall Street Crash is the feature in this play that that blew apart that family and thousands, hundreds of thousands of others. And we've had our fair share of moments of disaster across this globe, too, in my lifetime. All things that just change technologically, as you know, uh features in, say, All My Sons, where there's a sort of mechanical issue, uh, an industrial issue that breaks up a family and causes grief. You know, you can't control those big powers outside your control. And they're almost like gods in life, you know, they would be what the Greeks looked around at the seasons being or a plague being, things that we are meant to be able to control. But outside all of that, then there's the machine of war or the machine of economics or of our own plague or virus, and of course, and the the evolution of technology. And one does wonder after 25 years of being an actor, what am I going to be for the rest of my life? Because it seems to be the world is changing what an actor is going to be. The definitions of what human form telling stories on screen with voice and in sort of filmic form, that's no longer going to be the same. There's going to be a whole other version of that, very, very soon, already is, but it's going to dominate and infiltrate very quickly. So, what is an actor now say? And I suppose, whilst Victor is a cop and that's always going to be a cop, we're going to still need cops, even with Robocop or whatever. He knows that there's another part of his life now that he doesn't know what he's going to be in. So I think, yeah, this is very resonant to me. And I'm asking myself a lot of these questions all the time and trying to work it out. And if young actors are asked starting with all that verve I've just talked about, if they're listening and thinking, yeah, I know all that energy you're talking about now, Elliot. I'm living that moment. I don't want to sound like a sort of old Teresius here, but ask yourself, what is an actor going to be? And how am I going to be a part of that? Because when I started, I didn't have that question. I didn't have to ask that question. You know, we were either on stage or on screen or in a microphone, simple stuff. And, you know, that grew and exploded in various ways through the internet. And we lived a good time, a golden age of television that gave everyone lots more work than is now available. But quite apart from that changing, the actual appearance of actors and what we're used as is going to be different. So try and work that out for yourself and be a part of it.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Definitely. Um, I feel like there's also um a lot of talk about the middle classification of the arts. Do you worry that the stories we're telling, you know, like Arthur Miller's are becoming harder for new diverse audiences to access as well?

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Well, I suppose the middle class has become the dominant population, you know. I mean, not to say that that it's the most important one, it's not. And I think I've heard the act the counter too that you know the middle class actor or middle class experience um in different walks of life is being squished. It's the most problematic of situations to have when there's a domination of the top. Well, actually, that's not right. Um I'm I don't quite know what I'm saying here. I'm middle class, I've always been middle class, so I'm going to see everything a little bit from that perspective and not necessarily see the edges. I've had to remind myself throughout my career, and you know, I've had to educate myself as a privileged person, where you know, I might be a lie uh right next to somebody who's not so privileged, who's worked a lot harder to get to where they are than I am, uh, than I did, even though I I count myself as someone who's worked hard. I did it from a position of privilege. And I have related, you know, to stories which have shown people like me on there and uh on the stage or in the story. But then, you know, I I'm not, it's not like I'm not moved or I can't relate to other milieurs. Um but I I don't know. I think it's not occurred to me before because perhaps I see it, like I say, from this rather cosseted point of view. I think I've heard people say lately that the middle class actor is at is in threat. That to flip it slightly your question that the experience of making a life for yourself as a performer, as a writer in this world that could lead to some degree of middle class lifestyle, like I've said, you know, uh a property in which you have some stake, holidays or education and trips for your children, music lessons for your kids, those kind of middle class totems, which I had the privilege of experiencing and wanted to give to my kids, despite the fact I chose a rocky road, my dad was a doctor, a lot more secure. That's uh under threat. So whilst I might consider myself middle class, I don't think that that's necessarily going to be easy to claim all the way. My income is going to change because of the things we're talking about, it already has. And therefore, there's a different regard I would have for the working person, whomever they are, because I think there's a massive destabilization going on amongst all industries. And what we might have assumed to be a middle class lifestyle as an accountant, as an actor, as a teacher, as a as a doctor, as a business person, that's even as a cab driver, that's going to be changing. The middle class will be changing hugely, and we're most under threat in a sense. Certainly in the numbers that are just going to be altered for the first time uh since God knows when industrialization. So I don't know. I think if people are going to write about that, then we might have a very relevant seam of uh drama to look at. But I'm sure other people will feel frustrated at that point of view, and I I would like, you know, I'm open to being corrected.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Yeah, it's uh it's very it's a very interesting debate, um, for sure. Uh I I remember interviewing Laura Rogers a few years back, and I read that you did and Macbeth together at Shakespeare's Globe. Um, I was wondering prior to that, did you ever cross paths at Rada and what was it like working together on that project too?

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Well, yes, uh Laura was actually in the same year as John Hopkins, who's playing my brother in this show. And we were always down the pub together, you know. Like I didn't count myself necessarily as one of the in-crowd, but if I was ever in, it was, you know, it was down at the Marlborough Arms around the corner from Rada. But I yeah, and I knew them well. We never uh we never performed together until we got out of school, and then you just become part of the bag of people from their sort of turn of the century in our in our group, which sounds completely archaic. But we were those Gen X, you know, actors graduating in 2000 for them and 2001 for me. And it was, we were we were talking about it the other day, John and I. We were at Arada when it was being fully uphauled and updated, overhauled and updated. Um, and so they were in the third year when they were jumping about different theatres in London doing their third-year performances. And I was the year after. Um, and I was the first year, our year was the first year to perform in those new theatres on um Mallet Street and Gower Street that were reopened to great fanfare called the GBS, the George Bernard Shaw, the Vanberh, and the um one of the Gilgart, yes. And um, yeah, so we performed in front of the Queen and things like that. She popped into our classes and she asked me if my sword was heavy and things like that. So there was a little bit of a surreal edge to my year, and John and Laura had a bit of that. They were less well off, I think. We had a good chance at being seen because of these um particular privileges. But um, yeah, I've always loved it. You know, you know where you are with these guys. We have the same teachers. So coming to text, it was always personal, we always change it some to some degree. But we can talk about John Beschitzer, D. Cannon, Jenny Buckman, Ellen Newman, Nick Barter. We can talk about the sources of our education, of our technique, and they're short phrases, they're shorthand for oh yeah, this is what we're doing. This is this is how we're breaking this down, or this is what I'm thinking, or this is why I'm you know, we it's funny, you don't talk about process so much when you're working together in the profession. I mean, I did the other day on the steps with John because I I felt I made a real boo-boo and making a bit of a tit of myself. And I said, Yeah, it's just because, you know, back at drama school I read that David Mammoth show, that that book True and False, and he said. And John was like, Yeah, but he also said, and I was like, Oh, yeah, you're right. So, you know, there are things that you might rely on from your your uh training that seem very important that somebody else you think is gonna get, but they're still thinking you're a bit of a knob for doing it. So, anyway, moving on.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Yeah, um, I was curious about um performing in Shakespeare's Globe as well. You know, you're when you're dealing with you know 1,500 people in front of you and half of them standing at your feet. Um, how do you keep moments like the tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow is a liloquy, you know, an internal private moment when you're basically you know in the spare pit.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

It's great though. I mean, of course, those I mean maybe Macbeth was written for a darker space that they had at their disposal, but um, it would have been performed in such a space and written in the style of plays that use the um use the curtain as their as the brain of the character and the faces of the audience as these sounding boards and the cells which with which you sort of uh the articulate your thinking. So they were great, it was good. I mean, because they're all there. And in our the case of our production, all the heads of the groundlings were emerging out of big black cloth that the designer had shrouded them with. So all I could see were those were their heads when they decided not to disappear under the cloth and get off with each other, as some of the students were doing, I think. Um but yeah, you're your your your challenge, but your opportunity is to make eye contact with everyone and not to do it all for yourself here, but to be asking them, you, me, what am I going to do with this madness I'm feeling? Um, and it's distracting sometimes when they sort of aren't paying attention, but that's where you become resilient. I mean, the biggest screw up on that show is me falling through the trapdoor because it was opened five lines too early by somebody who, I don't know, was waiting for a carrier pigeon to fly off to give them their cue or something, whatever the globe was doing at the time. It wasn't as archaic as that, but I think they had green lights, but they got it wrong. And mid-soliloquy, when I was making the eye contact with the audience, it was a latter soliloquy when the English are on their way. And talking about Alexander the Great, I can't quite remember the line because I've probably removed it through to due to PTSD. But midway through um an iambic, I fell through the trapdoor, fell fell through the stage and landed badly on one leg, having disappeared. And what was weird about that is in the moment as it happened, I thought the audience would go fall with laughter, thinking, what a prat. He's just fallen through the hole in the stage. But no one did, because I think they thought it was part of the performance. And hopefully they were engaged enough in what I was saying not to feel like they needed to laugh. But it was, yeah, that I guess I guess it's indicative of where you are putting all your energy in that space. And it's hard because we combated it by extending the thrust a bit, but the way that that particular theatre is designed, or misdesigned, I think slightly, is because of the pillars that are at the end of the thrust, there isn't a good spot where you can see everyone. So you have to cheat it by building out a bit, but then you're missing people around the back of you. And if you go too far back on or upstage, the pillars are in the way of a bunch of other people. So you don't ever hold them all in one place, but there are really good hotspots, and you need to find them and use them. But it's bloody hard work. It's a hard, I would much rather do a comedy there, I think, than a tragedy, having only done one there. But I would like to try, you know, comedy of errors there or something, because that would be more exhilarating.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

Yeah. Um, when you come to a theater like Marlowe Theatre with the price, do you think that that sort of space is easier to connect with audiences, or are you still pushing in a different way?

SPEAKER_00 36:38

I'll have to see. I mean, it's a cross stage, and we are trying to build out in front of them a bit. There is a severance because I think it wasn't built for professional performance. It was perhaps more of a lecture lecture or amateur space, or you know, it had many functions at the Rueldolf-Steiner Center that we're in. I don't think it had quite the same relationship to the theatre, uh, the auditorium as even a matchum theatre, which, despite being a process, has a very good focus and a good often have good acoustics and um uh I don't know. I think this might feel uh like we have to do more work than we think for the size of space. I mean, you you always do a lot of work, you can't get away with not, even in the Dommar, you know, even on mics, people shit on mics. I've just had a spat with somebody on Instagram who says they won't come and see the price because they use microphones here. I was like, dude, everyone's using microphones, and you're also misinterpreting what that does for us. He was a director at a drama school, I think, and he's being quite purist about it. But I was, and I was when I started, and when they started coming in, because I did 10 years without them, and then they started coming in. I was like, Holy, no, no, thank you. I was trained with Rada, you know. Um, but you know, that's that's unnecessary arrogance, and you're not seeing the the actual problem or opportunity, and you still have to work very well on voice with articulation all the time. Uh it just gives everyone more of a democratic experience. If you're in the Gilgirds and you're under the apron, you can't hear well under the dress circle behind a pillar. You've paid£110 to be there and you're not hearing everything, you should. And this is our technological way of meeting that need when composers are writing landscapes, soundscapes that bed everything in atmosphere. So let's move forward with the times, people, and you still have to be technical.

SPEAKER_01 38:36

Yeah, absolutely. I was just about to ask you about mics, actually. Um, but yeah, I guess just as a last question, and what do you hope audiences take away with them when they come and see the place?

SPEAKER_00 38:46

Well, I hope it helps the theatre. I hope the theatre is founded or found by people because of it, you know, um Arthur Millis a draw, I hope, and um, you might go out of your way to see Henry, whom you should see in this part. It is the show stopping part, but it doesn't get done very much. I think once every 10 years, and there's a certain type of actor that needs to do it, and there aren't many of them, particularly in a world today where I think the person would have to be Jewish these days to do this part. And well over 70, or he's meant to be 89, so he could be anything from 70 to 90, I should imagine. But there aren't many of those that fit the bill and can do it as well as Henry is doing it. So come and see him. He's going to be spectacular. And then, of course, there's the play. The play, I think, is a revelation. I think it's um a latter-day last of his true sort of naturalistic plays before he started mucking around more with form. And um, I think it's really autobiographical. You'll get to know uh probably more about Miller's life watching this play than you have any other play, even though there's autobiography in all of them. And I think this one is closest to his life experience. So if you don't want to read Time Bends because it's 1400 pages long, then come and watch the play and get some of the good bits. And I think it will just be something that resonates with everyone who has got a mum, dad, brother, sister, or has gone through some kind of grief. I mean, it's basically hugely universal, despite its specificity of time and place. And it's funny. You might not have had many laughs at all my sons or broken glass, I don't know. Um, or even Death of a Salesman, but you uh will get laughs here, and that will be perhaps refreshing, as well as hopefully something that will kick you in the solar plexus, too. But um, yeah, I think that's good reason enough. And I might bring my or allow my 13-year-old son to come and see it because it's relatively short, just an hour each way, and it's not too heavy going by way of its you know, deaths or anything. And um, there's only one shit. So, you know, you could bring your kids.

SPEAKER_01 41:02

Uh, Elliot Cowan, thank you so much for talking to us today.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

It's my pleasure, Carlos. Thanks for the time.