Tony Bell

Tony Bell has made a career out of playing The Fool as a founding member of Propeller Shakespeare Ensemble. He’s launching a new role as a writer and performer of his own solo show - which recently received glowing reviews in London. On this episode we talk about projecting and protecting our voices, reinventing yourself, and moving forward.

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Tony Bell was a founder member of Propeller Shakespeare ensemble which toured globally for 17 years between 1997 and 2012. The company won many awards including in both the UK and New York. Several productions toured to BAM in Brooklyn between 2003 and 2012. Tony played many of the famous fools specialising in ad-libbing with the audience as Bottom in Midsummer Nights Dream, Feste in Twelfth Night, and Autolyclus in The Winters Tale. During this time he also played The Common Man in A Man for All Seasons which won him a UK Whatsonstage award as Best Supporting Actor. Other notable theatre roles included a Tokyo Theatre’s Best New Play award for Hideki Noda’s The Bee, and West End performances in Shakespeare in Love, 39 Steps, Treasure Island and The English Game by Richard Bean. Tony has appeared on film in The Crown, Prisoners Wives, Holby City, Eastenders, and Coronation Street. He was a member of the BBC Radio drama repertory company between 2010 and 2012 playing in over 100 audio dramas including Aston in The Caretaker by Harold Pinter. In 2014 when Propeller ensemble ended and Edward Hall left the UK to work abroad (Hall is currently Director of Chicago Shakespeare Theatre) Bell focused on directing and teaching acting students at RADA and other UK conservatoires helping to launch the careers of several successful young actors in theatre and film. This year Tony returned to the stage in his own solo show about an actor’s life and his parents’ mental health issues. The show, Man In The Rain, has just been shortlisted for Best Solo Performance in the Offies (Off West End awards) and marks a triumphant return to the British stage. Tony plays folk fiddle, sings baritone, plays soccer and lives with his cat Shortbread, and his partner, the actress Caroline Faber, in London. 

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Produced and Edited by Arts and Craft.
Theme Music: Sound Gallery by Dmitry Taras.

Transcript

This is the key is to be open and to go into the world that you're in but to trip through it in the way we do as people trip through it quite lightly and with a sense of survival and a sense of nobility in in kind of finding the The Joy despite the pain he's the quintessential clown he's a founding member of propeller Shakespeare Ensemble he's marching into a new act as a writer and performer of his own solo show Tony Bell joins us from across the pond on today's episode my name is Nancy Magarill I'm a singer songwriter composer performer graphic and web designer and I'm Peter Michael Marino and I'm a writer producer Creator performer and educator we are new york-based artists you may or may not have heard of and we are here to introduce you to other artists you may or may not have heard of just before you came on Pete and I were talking and he had to do outdoor performing in the middle of a hill and his voice is kind of a little craggly today and I actually thought it would be interesting to talk to you because you've performed probably in a ton of venues and you've been through the ages where we all learned how to project without using microphones and now with microphones I'm curious to know if if you've learned any tricks of the trade and things that you do to help yourself when you're in those situations where you have to work without a microphone and it was outside outside I mean it's weird is it all that nowadays every everyone uses a mic at the National Theater everyone's miked uh either really explicitly where you can see the mic boxes and everything or or generically with the sort of um overhead mics and stuff and but we never we never miked ourselves even when we were playing like in Greece in the the amphitheater there is it epid epidavros we played there Outdoors we also in Verona we played a big open Opera area and we never miked ourselves but I think um I don't know if I could give you any hints because really I just developed a sort of very hardened voice I mean I just developed through using my lungs I mean Ed used to say that I had a huge lung capacity and I do remember when we used to do um you know Sports PE monitoring of our our capacity as athletes because I used to play a lot of sport uh and I got I got breath alized you know to find out what my lung capacity was and it was very very large so I think I've just had really big lungs from from playing a lot of sport from doing running CrossCountry running Rugby Football and um and then from there going into acting and I think I just naturally had a big voice but I I did sometimes over overdo it and um and I would black out sometimes that I I would would um use so much adrenaline and energy that I would sort of give make myself dizzy yes I felt I have felt that as well yeah it's something about I feel like even if I know that the amphitheater in Greece is built for sound that I still feel the need to push but also that applies to me as a performer in general like so the fear of not being heard is so deep I mean on it's so on so many levels it is and I think this pushing this idea of like having to fill a big space and kind of pushing yourself outwards this is it also applies to relating to an audience and how how an audience perceives you you as a performer I mean gski I've just read a quote that was on Facebook saying gski said that the play is IR reant it's just the interaction between the artist and the audience it doesn't matter what they're doing it's all about how they connect to an audience oh I love that quote I do too the materialist vehicle yeah that's the thing is this the show it's a family show and it's extremely interactive so I think that's exactly what it is is that I am 1,00% it's all about connecting with the audience like the content of what I'm saying is the back seat so um hm I wonder how to fix that maybe not do any shows Outdoors anymore it's an interesting thing to think about when you're performing your approach to it as well because if you're thinking about yourself and your role but forgetting about the audience that sort of eliminates them from that that adventure and doesn't pull them in and I think that finding that balance is really interesting I've never thought about it in that way yeah I mean I think well obviously for me it was key because obviously my role in propeller so so my kind of it's interesting I've just listened to you Pete asking a question did you seek Fame on one of podcasts and last we had this big party and what is the first time I've seen most of the propeller which was our big moment of Fame I suppose Mo the first time I've seen everybody for about 10 years and they were all at this 50th birthday and you know they were this guy younger guy came up and said Tony do you still want to be famous you always wanted to be to be famous and I said no I think not I mean the thing about in the old days is that I kind of craved audience Fame and craved the audience's responses and my role was the fool so I was the connection between for the company I kind of always represented the connection with the audience and the director Edward Hall who's now at Chicago uh Shakespeare Theater actually he always said Tony you can do what you like I'll leave I let Tony do what he wants because he is the key to our our connection with the audience so in a way I almost overplayed that role uh so I would be more interested in how I was relating to the audience than how I was relating to the other people on the stage which meant that sometimes I would lose the connection with everybody else but but in terms of how you connect with the audience the first thing is you kind of make sure your lighting designer understands that you have to see the whites of their eyes because you and this whole kind of uh actory sty this old school I mean it's interesting you talk now it's completely changed and I kind of straddle both I think because I was old school in terms of technique but new school in terms of a kind of radical approach to dealing with an audience that you throw the script wherever it needs to go and you play in the moment very much like a singer song like like a professional musician I think in their connection with the audience there's no fourth wall for the fool so they are literally talking to the audience in that moment and I think that um I always needed to see their faces I needed to speak to individuals I need to try and you know that kind of thing where you you go it's almost instinctive that you you kind of understand who they are and how they may respond you have to predict that they're going to that some people are going to enjoy being provoked and bullied and and and and prodded and some people are going to be frightened of that so you're a bit sh you're a bit gentler with the ones that look timid and you're a bit Bolder with the ones that look a bit more dare I say it Ma Macho and testosterone but then there are others that that look a little like they're dressed quite conservatively you're just a bit gentle and you tease it out of them so you have to see them so I used to say to the LX guys I say you've got to show me the whes of their eyes it's no use you shining all those lights on the stage so that I see a black hole cuz that ain't going to work yeah it sounds like you come from uh clowning did you did you study clown uhoh uh oh you're shaking your head did I did I hit a nerve the thing is the key I think the key to me me uh as a person as a performer is that that I don't really fit anywhere uh and the thing is that when I when I join propeller yeah well I mean that's the key to a lot of artists isn't it and I'm writing this I'm performing this one person show or rehearsing it uh and I'm rewriting it today actually and it's about this man in the rain yeah I've written it on an MA script writing course and they all said oh come on you need to write for yourself because we've seen you in propeller we want you to relaunch yourself so WR it for myself but I didn't know what I was writing but I think it's about the Neurosis of of of a performer and whether we perform to heal ourselves or to heal the audience and oh we talk about this all the time yeah yeah the thing is it's also to do with entertaining because is is do they separate themselves is it is it therapy or is it entertainment no it's a kind of shared it's a shared healing through entertainment and and healing is joyful as well as painful but I think it's about it's about bringing a vulnerable self to a performance space and sharing that vulnerability with an audience so that they're able to open their vulnerabilities and there's a kind of coming together of a sort of opening up of our of our protectors and becoming uh for that moment sort of Letting Go and sort of crying laughing and living in a way that sometimes we we hold back from because we have to present a public face so what we're doing is stripping us ourselves to to a private so it's public it's Meisner used to say this all the time it's being private in public and that's what what I'm trying to do now and I'd say the difference between me as a performer with propeller when there was more Fame and more sort of bigger audiences and more at stake was that I was kind of trying to perform my way to fame and now what I'd say is I want to let go of the performance and sort of open myself out to the possibilities of finding a new way of Performing but sometimes Fame is the thing that allows an artist to go in that direction yeah that's what you say you said you you want it gives you opportunity I think yeah I mean of course it does and and my plays also about jealousy and about other actors that I've acted with doing better than me and how much it tortured me and how you've got to let go of that and just be you uh but I I think that you opportunity it's diminished over here and I think with you in in America that the opportunity for theater actors is is shrinking massively because PE post pandemic people aren't going to the theater it's costing a lot more money and so I'm I live on a reputation rather than work now what I want is the opportunity to create and uh and I can do that more if people want me to create more if people know who I am but I would say that for me um it's sa it's safer for me to be less well known now because it means I can go in directions they don't expect me to go in so when I first put this play on all the propeller guys and the people that had seen me in propeller were going it's not like you Tony what are you doing you're you're not you're not performative anymore uh it almost felt like it was a a different person so I just think that it allows you to when you become obscure it does allow you to re vent yourself and not be put into the box people expect I I've heard of Michael Sheen and I mean to name drop but Michael Sheen and other actors saying in rehearsals that I've been in and my friends have been in don't give me any notes please because I'll only ask for them because I do what I do but I don't want you to throw me off that I want to do what is expected of me and what I expect of myself therefore I'm not going to reinvent myself because there's too much at stake is is the subtext to that so what I'd say Pete is I think that um I want a lot of people to come to my play and I want it to generate uh you know a buzz that allows me to take it on a tour around UK and then around the world but aside from that I'd rather that people saw it as a play by someone they'd never seen or heard of before so you're debuting with at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe I'm assuming it's not at Edinburgh it's yeah yeah very funny I mean the thing about Edinburgh I mean I've played their post propeller and uh it has a there's an edge about it isn't there there's an edge about Edinburough about um making sure you get the audiences the competition of it is intense um but I'm doing it in the local theater that is starting to get a name for itself but I know enough people so by just using my WhatsApp 2000 actor friends if I just do I mean it takes about four days and a sore thumb but if I send individual little notice I'm on they'll come and um so I I'm I'm starting small in order to go a bit [Music]

bigger we were like the the company of Misfits we were all people that had just failed to get into failed to become TV stars or film stars when we were in our 20s and we were all we'd all got to about 30 and he went around all these Fringe venues and plucked these odd balls and brought them into one company and then we had a kind of Second Chance a second coming and then we were hyped by it all uh and it created great work but we also developed a sense that we wanted it forever and we you know thato we wanted to hold on to this GL and uh and then the company was all male so it was the wrong climate that we it was a sexist misogynist uh setup which you know I don't I don't have a particular strong View you about I thought it was the work not that we were one gender and um and then what happened eventually is uh we were out of favor we dropped away and everyone went their separate ways and we lost the sheen of that company so we had to fall back on the fact that we were no longer propeller and um you know people now only the oldest remember us have you thought about putting another company together that would be not obviously not all male but another Shakespeare company together well I think that's what Ed's trying to do in Chicago now yeah but not him you guys no I know well we have various members of us have tried to but we have found it difficult to do that um because the moment it becomes there's a whiff of it being a propeller remake there's all sorts of uh people saying no you can't do that because I still want propeller to have the possibility of re reuniting be like you know the Rolling Stones wanted to stay so weird I think uh jonath um spottiswood Jonathan Spotswood is that his name yeah Spotswood yeah so he was talking about being a a boat in dry a Dry Harbor you know waiting to produce again and I think that some people to do with the old propeller are still thinking we'll get back together one day but we in the meantime I I I have thought about Reinventing myself artistically and I've done that in colleges at universities because it's easier for me because people are employ me to work with students students so I've done it that way but my it's just know just a very beginning now I'm doing it on my own because it's uh it's cheaper and then when I finished doing this oneperson play I've got a two-hander play that I'm going to direct not be in but in terms of the climate for a big company uh it would have to be mixed it would have to be diverse it would um it would have to have a kind of USP of of our time and it and theater is not and it's in TV where we get these ensembles in long form it's film where the money is and the theater's very strapped at the moment so it'll have to be a massive risk and there'd have to be a lot of us to do it I think Tony we talk a lot on this uh podcast about collaboration I'm curious if you are collaborating with someone at this stage of the game in your solo show yeah I mean I mean I'm uh my the director is my partner Caroline how did you find that I mean we we nearly um it was really funny because there were moments when we would Carol would say I'm leaving I'm not doing it anymore Tony I'm off if you're going to talk to me like that that's it and um you don't know if it's the project or the relationship right there were many times when I thought oh no I've lost my director uh and and then when I get home I might have lost my partner I think that um but other times it works quite well I mean she's doing quite well as an actress on TV uh and on voiceovers um and she's probably in a better position now as an actor than I am now if you like in terms of profile but she's seen seen me for a many years and so her she's very complimentary about me so I think she believes in me and it's great because you've got someone that knows you ws and all and believes in your ability as an actor and you're used to being you're used to being vulnerable with your partner and that's what you're do in this and the play is all about my life so uh it's about a generation trauma through families and um and and so she knows all about that in her own family in mine as well so she's she's sort of encouraging me to be more and more vulnerable and go deeper and deeper and deeper oh that's wonderful yeah it's good it's good so the difficulty is is marrying the connection with the you see this is where I disagree with grovy him saying that the play is just a vehicle it's not really the play is everything so that the song is Everything the the the content of what I've written is everything the content of what Shakespeare's written is everything it's what you you are a conjur because there's a lack of self-consciousness when you give yourself up to the world of the play or the world of the song it it's a conduit for you to be you so what I suppose what I'm saying is that in order to connect with the subject matter of my play that's what I have to be kind of inside but the same time I've got to be mindful of how the audience connects with that so there's got to be a kind of joy and release it it can't be one horrible Dark Night of the Soul it can't be a complete self-indulgent therapy session exactly so so it has to be something where they go oh God that's that reminds me of us that reminds me of my child that reminds me of my father so that means that I have to tread lightly and trippingly and sort of honestly uh but I mustn't avoid the difficulty of doing that and so one of my old propeller mates saw the first show and said Tony when you used to tell us these stories you were laughing your head off you know it was the most hor horrific drama but you were you you were we were in stitches we were finding it hilarious and he said when when you were doing some of those moments in the play you were kind of telling me what to think good note you were telling me what to think rather than allowing me to enjoy it on my own terms so this is the this is the key is to be open and to go into the world that you're in but to trip through it in the way we do as people trip through it quite lightly and with a sense of survival in a sense of nobility in in kind of finding the The Joy despite the pain absolutely you know I had a voice lesson about a month ago and we were working on a song and he stopped me and he said I just want you the whole time you're singing this to just nod your head yes and the entire time I did it it just brought out the yes in everything and I realized at that moment I was like wow I'm just take I'm doing this inside out and I think this is why I flipped over you when I saw you do um with propeller where everything was a yes you know it was so engaging even the most complex moments and I think that that is what makes it is able to bring in an audience more while you're digging in and and going through these truths doesn't mean you don't get real but I do think that really helps an audience come to terms with what they're dealing with in those moments as well it also reminds me of when I was uh strangely enough writing a oneperson show about my experience um writing a West End Musical that was not well received and um you know Tony might have seen it tell them the name of it Desperately Seeking Susan yeah yeah um and and how um the first draft of it was just very sad and angry and um upsetting to hear me tell this story of you know all the hopes and dreams that we had especially me and then you know how it all went wrong and um I I knew something wasn't right about it as a solo show which I planned to debut in Edinburgh I brought it to my comedy Guru Steve Kaplan in Los Angeles who took a look at it and said yeah the problem is you're writing this from the point of view of who you are now you're not writing it from the person you were then who was optimistic clueless you know I mean that's the clown right the clown is completely unable to achieve something they don't have the skills to achieve what they want to achieve that's who I was then so I went back and rewrote this whole darn thing and turned it into an Absolute ritis Comedy when you talk about how you how the people in your company are like when you told this story you were laughing it also reminds me about how once the show was coming together how the director John Clancy who had lots of great successes in Edinburgh would say you got to talk like you're telling somebody at a pub you can't say it you can't deliver it like you're talking to a hundred strangers in a dark room and that's when I started saying all right I need the lights to be up in the house so I can see people and it changed everything about me as a writer and as a performer where you're always kind of finding that optimism despite you know the the hardships that come along the way I think so many solo shows are just a list of hardships yep and we don't see the optimism so what's the point of me seeing your show if it's not going to fill me with some kind of Hope yeah I mean it like everything in arts and crosss is uh the Opposites coexist don't they so the moment we say that we know that you know the moment we're going we've got to be fun we've got to be T we also know that we've got to not be flipping and the moment we're we're sort of scragged in our Dark Night of being older and feeling a failure that we've got to remember you know there's a second coming second childishness around the corner the thing is that um yeah this is what my plays about this basically so basically I after pandemic there was a funeral for a director who'd passed away uh just after the pandemic and they asked me if I as a propeller sort of a member of propeller to uh to to do a Shakespeare speech at the funeral or the memorial and I did all the world's EST stage that's what they asked me to do and as I got through to the sort of uh last scene of all is second childishness and mere Oblivion I I I sort of looked at his picture and I sort of started I I couldn't carry on and I was sort of crying and and and sort of overly emotional and unable to get to the end I did get to the end but I was thinking why was why did that happen because if I'm totally honest I I did two shows with this director I hardly knew I hardly knew it and you know and they weren't the most pleasant experience and so I was like what is that about and then I realized it was sort of about the death of my own mother and and also in a way about the the feeling of of no longer having propeller like the death of the company and I thought this is interesting so so the play is set at my father's Memorial and I'm about to deliver uh all the worlds of stage and I start with the infant muing and puking in my mother's arms and I can't carry on and so my mother enters my spirit and and uh tells me to start at the beginning and I I start with myself being cradled by my own mother as a baby and then it becomes really about seeking the approval of your parents as an as an actor as a person and an actor and then having to come to terms with why do I do it now so uh the the sort of whole full circle is that at the end of this whole evening is that he's able to deliver the whole speech this time kind of for for for the good of having understood what the speech is but I think what's interesting is that the the danger with mine is that it's a catalog of trauma uh but because as a performer I'm quite naturally funny like you're talking about the Clown in I'm a I've been asked to be a clown in a lot of situations as as a performer and so it means that sometimes it's funny just in spite of itself and so it's just Tri tripping that line but the the interesting thing is that I got after propeller even while propeller was going on I got Clowny people would ask me to be in their Clowny shows of course and so but hidin NOA in Tokyo would say come on be in my clown show or go to Tokyo and say now I want you to walk across the stage you know using this theater technique and I and I just couldn't do any of the Clowny things that I was supposed to be doing and I had to say I don't really know what clowning is I just I am me and he said just be you so so I think the thing is that I and and Gooler when I I work with Gooler he said you're too serious you're too intense you're doing it like Robert dairo who's goer Philip Gooler from laco he's a French clown who's famous across Europe for being the father of clowning and um and when I worked with him I I couldn't get on with him because he wanted me to be sillier and he wanted me to be less intense and less Robert dairo but the thing is I always think I'm being Robert dairo and people laugh so I think that's fine I think it's it's all fine but I think we have to as clowns and as performers we have to say yes all the time but we also have to say yes I have to give of the true authentic me absolutely I've reached an a point in my play where I do this Wakim Phoenix sort of panto Dame I played the panto Dame after my mother died you know it's the it's the um you know it's the rup Paul man dressed as a drag yes drag and um I played it and I was everyone said oh you'd be a great Dame and I I did it in Doncaster I absolutely hated it I got arrested uh for um punching a uh a train guard um which I didn't do and then in the sort of the the court report it said um he had false eyelashes and uh nail varnish and uh and died you're threat you know and that was because I'd just come off the stage but uh the thing is that I hated the whole experience I was what is my point here that um I suppose my point is that yeah in the play I've recreated that and I end up raging at the audience and then I'm going it never works that bit it never works and it's because I'm being too angry and I and I'm being too no and like I hate you I hate you in fact the last sign is I hate him I hate him and it's not really about hating my father at that point it's about about kind of loving him so I've had to rewrite it this afternoon and it's about what is the what is more authentic than this kind of oh Macho you know I'm a I'm a troubled clown I'm a whackin phoenix it's not that it's got to be something more honest and going look I have to tell you the truth I feel that I've lost my way you know uh this is this is me like two or three years ago I feel that propeller died and I died with it and now Johnny Flynn and Andy Circus are all stars and where am I so the thing is I've got to find the kind of the humor in and the sort of the the the sweetness in the performer that is kind of going it's just me now I've got to start again I don't know how to but it's as long as I as long as I stay open it's still going to be fun yeah let's go back because you started talking about being swaddled by your mom what happened after that like you know you went to school and you kind of stumbled into the Arts like how did you wind up yeah how did you wind up I don't know realizing that you were good at Shakespeare or theater or anything how did it start I think well I tried to escape my uh parents uh because there it was such a it was such a strong uh idea that life is one or lost in Academia they'd both been working class and had got SC they in England there was this kind of social Mobility experiment where you passed the 11 plus and you you got into grammar school and you and the grammar school pushed all these workingclass kids towards University and they were like they got exhibitions to go to Cambridge they got paid to go to Cambridge as the 1950s social Mobility experiment so they for them going to Cambridge and doing well at school was the answer to everything but obviously that was just too oppressive for me because I wasn't academic I was a bit dyslexic I was really out I was really v i was hyperactive so I had this kind of anxiety that only really relaxed itself when I was really exhausted so I was hugely energized so I had to be I had to do things so I did football I was a really good footballer and then I went from sport into by accident stumbled into playing in musical theater at school because I was a treble because I I went to Qui I did everything I could to get away from home it was stifling so I went to church choir and then I ended up being a beautiful treble and so I ended up playing the leads in school musicals then my voice broke and and that's in the play that kind of my singing voice that was that was that finished but I suppose I was trying to run away from the idea of the head the idea that everything is about anal analysis you can solve everything by uh arguing intellectually and I couldn't solve anything doing that so I had to um I had to find the visceral way through life so I stumbled into the visceral way of forming that's why theater was where I began and why inia I got all confused because it was about holding your mark and and making sure the camera was here so don't go what are you doing Tony you've moved out out of shots sorry sorry I I had a kind of neurodiversity about about um being told what to do so everything I do is kind of idiot Sant is it what's the is it called that it's just it's just something that happens to me and I can't control it that's my performing that's what I do so when did you actually start studying uh I went so you know I I kind of I I got into sports college and then um and then at the last minute I was in Coco in the Mardo by Gilbert and Sullivan and I loved it so much I decided I didn't want to do uh football I wanted to be an actor so I at the last minute I I got into University to do geography and as soon as I got there I was in the musical and I swapped my degree to theater studies I finished that and then I got into Dr Su school I went um I was at University with Andy Circus funny left and we were best best friends so we had this dream that we were going to make our way as actors together and we did for a while and then Andy was became stratospheric anyway then I joined propell so I suppose I went to drama school I fiddled about uh Ed Hall saw me play a tiny part in a in a small theater and gave me a role in propella and that took that took off amazing yeah but you never really wanted to do a lot of film and television or did you I mean now yes probably I mean I'm a different person I could so see you in television I mean then then like you know a lot of a lot of young actors here in New York are you know I'm going to do a couple off Bradway shows and then I'll get discovered and I'll be able to do what I really want to do which is be a Hollywood actor I've never had that desire did you have any of that desire or did you just really felt best on stage because your audience is alive I mean I suppose I joined propella propella was Shakespeare there's a thing about the Shakespeare I was able to do so I was able to act this archaic language in a way that it sounded of today so I think it is a kind of neurodiversity I've always had a kind of attachment to poetry in a way as if it's happening right now you couldn't say that I speak fairly rationally so I think what it what what I'm trying to say really is is that I found a place as a performer as an eccentric Oddball performer and then I got discovered by a huge agent who then through me into the most amazing TV jobs even in America I had an American manager I got put up for God knows how many amazing TV series and I just didn't get any of them and the thing is that I did do tiny bits but I wasn't equipped to do TV auditions because I'd only ever known one director one and you know I'd known a way of creating whereas you throw yourself into a tiny room and with mu with musical instruments singing and all kinds of crazy guys and you just create and and that just isn't The Way of the World of a TV job and um and so I never got anywhere and he dropped me uh but now I then I had therapy for many years you know left acting before it left me after propeller and and I've gone through this therapy and I've sort of come out the other side and I think I'd be great on telly now yeah I agree you look really good on this computer screen right now that's that's somebody but I also just think with your chops and your I there's so many things I actually when I was thinking of questions I wanted to ask you I jokingly was asking like could you be on Game of Thrones or Harry Potter like I could so see you on all of that with your everything that you do and everything I've seen you do I just can't imagine why you haven't been cast in that but I understand it through this conversation but I feel like that's something you would be a natural for but it's it's not so natural I think that's what we're learning natural to know how to audition for that stuff absolutely because it's only like the past 15 years that universities are offering courses in how to audition you know that's the first step right yeah Peter Hall used to say you need a talent for having a talent and I always thought I didn't have that talent for having the talent and I think I'm learning it and I think you're never too old to learn these tricks my partner when we do the like yesterday we had a rehearsal and she she sort of went to why aren't you doing it Tony why aren't you doing it and um and I think I think I will I mean this is my you know this is I think I'm there's a second coming coming around the corner and and it's oh now I could do it but the thing is that all actors and all I'm sure it's the same for music as well the the horrendous idea of being rejected and I know that every every brilliant musician has been rejected 20 times but it's not it's not great for the soul it's and the thing is that I I avoided the rejection I thought I'm going to leave acting before it leaves me and uh and then of course I then put all my energy into students who then became stratospheric which is great but then I'm thinking no now I need to put the energy back in myself and um and now I think I've just got to be stronger and the thing is the older you get the more philosophical you get and the more you think I've got maybe 10 years come on 10 more years and I think that feel yeah but I think that you feel come on you could this could be a new beginning when propeller finished I thought oh God I hope that every artist doesn't have one moment in their life you know this idea I was in Harry Potter and now look at me I was a child star now look at me I was radio head now look at me I mean I'm not saying they're not radio head anymore but the thing is that um I don't want it to be just propeller yeah and I'm hoping that that there'll be a a journey towards TV and film and probably playing the sort of odd interesting all kinds of stuff I can do that kind of um the stuff that's otherworldly uh in fact that I've just S I sent you a story I read but the woman that got told me to read said most people can't do this this thing where you go into another world that's kind of either of the imagination or that it's Gothic or it's uh or it's you know the Game of Thrones or it's it's a world that an imaginary landscape that is um full of eccentricity and and um minute sort of uh uh Humanity I also think that just going back to coming out after propeller and then we had the pandemic and also being 62 like being older I think it's and and also the landscape right now with what's going on around the world that social media is changing everything so fast there's so much going on so fast I think as we age and we've been sort of holding on to the things that we've done in the past I think just being open to whatever it is out there can be challenging but also can be really exciting I think it's all like even just the fact that Pete and I are doing a podcast like it's not anything that I ever thought of and I think actually it was because of the pandemic because I listen to so many podcasts during the pandemic all of a sudden I'm like do a podcast and I think that you just don't know what's around the corner and when you have the talent that you do I mean I I said this to Pete earlier there are three actors that I have seen in my lifetime that have just stopped me dead in my tracks mark ryance on Broadway he was a couple of things he did colisa did I say that right and you I remember seeing you in propeller at BAM when um I went with Daniel and I just was riveted and it takes a certain kind of actor for me to stay completely engaged the entire time and every time you were on that stage I just couldn't take my eyes off of you and that is a talent that is rare and I think that you know I think that is something that is really hard and it can get very weighty on us right knowing that you have that Talent it it it is has to be there it's just it's crazy but also a likeability like you just have you I mean I just met you an hour ago right but you have like an openness and I dare say vulnerability that I normally would not expect from a Brit that is so refreshing I remember when I first we first played bman I went wow America people can be who they want to be I mean I know that there's Trump and what have you but in the kind of New York east coast uh artistic Community it felt that it was cool to be different totally and in Britain it wasn't at that time it wasn't so I I was really refreshed by that but the the interesting about Mike Rylance is he he came to see propeller and he sent me a massively long letter about about my performance in propella and and was like really really forensic about it and uh and because of that sort of kept bringing me to the globe to try and be in the globe and he kept presenting me oh I love that he kept presenting me to all the other directors and none of them cast me not yet what was interesting about him is his the the way he talked about acting and the way he talked about my performance I thought you know I get it where he's coming from it was all about this sort of the vulnerability and don't get this moment was was perfect but this moment you you you were stuck in an Old Shell of what what I'd seen you do before and it was all about don't ever feel comfortable uh he was sort of say always be always be uh in the moment and when you feel scared and uh uncomfortable and what am I going to do next that's the right moment that's the right way to be so he was saying you know we all have these yin and Yan I think don't we and I think for me it's that that my default is to sometimes so overwhelming that to be an artist this is I mean so overwhelming that I can't do it anymore and and I lock down and and so then I'll just do okay I can get through this I'll do it on technique but it doesn't really work for me because it I'm just not one of those actors that can do that so um so it has to be I have to live through it I'm not saying that Mark Ryland says that all the time but he has a kind of uniqueness um I agree that about Mar and also his connection with the audience is incredible and I noticed about him that that it's he's quite quiet when he's is most connected to the audience it's quite um he brings them to him you were talking about you're talking about pushing you know this idea of pushing and I and and if we're going to talk about uh generalizations about UK and and America that I think a tendency for some of the American Theater actors is to push a bit hard is to be too is to is to show off too much or to be 100% to be too brazenly Macho or to be too brazenly sexy you know it's too it's too in your face and we're and we're the opposite we're too we're too shy and I'm going you're on the [ __ ] St sorry swearing you're on the stage you you're there because the others can't be there CU they so don't be shy just take it with with all the the joy that that can you know you're there for them you've got you don't you mustn't be repressed you mustn't be self-conscious you really nailed the main problem with the musical comedy that I wrote that was being done for the first time ever by a British cast oh wow I mean that's it you know right I I write like Neil Simon right I write very broadly people say very broad things I mean you'd think I was Jewish the way I write but I guess cuz I grew up in Queens Long Island that would make makes sense and I was constantly questioning the director yeah with like why is this moment not bigger why it's a musical comedy everything has to be bigger weirdly I was just telling Nancy I'm going to see the hills of California next week because lean best yeah yeah whose name has come up on this podcast before actually she um was the last person we cast it was for the Lori metf role who was um you know she was on Roseanne um she's a Chicago actor and she had play this nagging Jewish sister-in-law who was in everybody's face and everybody we cast just did not do it she this scaa came in with this amazing accent all the brashness which I guess is also part of her her background as well now I'm going to see her in her first Broadway show yeah I mean she is that kind of actor but also that I mean it's the nuances of UK that if you're from Liverpool then you're brassy you know and you and then you're not shy because you kind of it's you're out there everyone Spade is a spade you know and I you know I live life to the full whatever I have uh and then you come down to you know to the sort of suburbs of London or the or uh and everyone's going no no no I'm you know I'm no after you and it's kind fake a fake politeness but I think that and then in the our British theater is has been beset with a kind of repression that and then American Theater has been beset with a kind of uh an O overly presented approach so I think it's getting the getting the middle and I think that um the actress you've just described is one that can do that it's also interesting how like American stories especially in musical theater do so much better over there than they do here I mean Mean Girls yeah that lasted like no time at all here and it's being revived a hundred times on the West End N9 to5 you know big brassy brashy musical here flopped there they can't get enough of it it's just um it's it's amazing how that how how the British culture accepts the over-the-topness of American characters and I guess it's because maybe there's a starvation for being able to do that themselves did I just figure something out or was that a generalization what did I just do there no no we can't do that so look here's a bit here's an interesting one Tammy Fay has gone to Broadway and the AUD response is terrible at the moment okay so they're every day they're changing it tamy started over there it started over here thereare I say it I'm not surprised it's struggling over there we yes we we don't we don't do um we don't do musical comedy very well and we don't do um being fearlessly unafraid to to be um to show off you know so we that's the problem isn't it is is an issue um you do storytelling better than we do I really think so I think dram on stage in the world of theater your direct directors and actors and designers come from a a place of let's serve the story more than I hate to say American actors and directors and designers which I think come from more of a place of like how can my expression be seen yeah of course and that's yeah but you've had the film industry for years haven't you and that's the that's the way a way in for your guys and and for us it used to be that we we needed to be employed by the National Theater and the RSC and and what have you well thank you so much thank you so much Tony hey thanks for checking us out links to today's guests can be found in the show notes don't forget to subscribe like us rate US and tell all your friends about arts and craft