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The Disability And…Podcast gets right to the heart of some of the most pressing issues in arts, culture and beyond with a series of bold, provocative and insightful interviews with disabled artists, key industry figures and the odd legend. The Disability and…Podcast is currently monthly.
44 Disability and…Making a Career in Performance with Rob Ewens
INTRO
Welcome to this month's Disability and… podcast, bringing together thoughtful discussion and debate. This month, Mind the Gaps Associate Producer Paul Wilshaw, chats with theatre and TV freelance actor Rob Ewens about some of his successes on screen and stage.
Paul Wilshaw
Hello and welcome to Disability and… podcast. Today our guest is Rob Ewens. Will you introduce yourself?
Robert Ewens
Yeah. Hi, my name is Rob and I'm an actor and I've been very lucky to have quite a lot of different roles played.
Paul Wilshaw
So, as I say it's great to have you. How did your career get started?
Robert Ewens
So, acting was kind of a hobby for me for a while. I used to go to a theatre club near me and I used to do that until I got offered an audition for a place at Mind the Gap called Staging Changes, which was like a little guide to go into different drama schools. So you would go one week to one drama school, do something like a Midsummer Night's Dream, and you'd be taught all the roles and skills that you needed for that, and you would do a performance. And then next month you'd do a different show or learn new skills from a completely different drama school, something like Greek theatre, so it's completely different. And yeah, it was wonderful. And yeah, it just snowballed from there really. I ended up getting my first acting job through Mind the Gap called The Mothership.
Paul Wilshaw
So, you said about it being your hobby, did you join any drama groups before you joined Mind the Gap?
Robert Ewens
Yes, there was one near me, Zinc Hearts is what it's called now, but at the time, we were doing workshops, we were doing like, learning drama there, music, lots of different things so it was kind of a mixed bag. And yeah, one of my friends went to do the Staging Changing course and I filled in for them and then they went, oh, you should do this course as well afterwards and I was like, okay then.
Paul Wilshaw
And why do you think it's so important that when you’re young to actually do drama skills and was there any values that they would put in your way?
Robert Ewens
I was very lucky that it was a drama club that was for disabled and non-disabled as well. So it was nice. It got people to mingle and make friends. That's a very important thing, to socialise because then you learn to work well with each other. And I made some good friends there, like some lifelong friends there. The drama is important, but if you learn to really connect with people and make good friendships, then you learn off each other.
Paul Wilshaw
Yeah, certainly, I think that is so important of when you’re starting out and being young is that you do mingle and that integration. So, you said that you came up to Mind the Gap, can you tell us a bit about your first show that you done at Mind the Gap?
Robert Ewens
So, we did Boo which was To Kill a Mockingbird and it was great because we had quite a lot of R&D moments of finding characters and building up these scenes, and we had the writer Mike Kenny there, which is great.
Paul Wilshaw
For people that don't know what R&D is, that is research and development. And Mike Kenny is a brilliant scriptwriter and has done about four scripts for Mind the Gap in the past. So, call out to Mike Kenny on that. What character do you play in Boo?
Robert Ewens
So I played Boy, we weren't able to get the name, but we were allowed to use the story. So it was more to focus on the characters more than anything. But it was nice because I got to play a person without disability as well and it was bizarre because everyone had a
disability, but there was only one person solely playing a person with a disability. And that was so much fun because you went on tour.
Paul Wilshaw
And that is really unusual as well, that you said that a disabled person was playing a non-disabled character and there was only one disabled character in the script, which is really unusual. The first time you and me met was when you done Of Mice and Men, and you played the character of Lenny. I really like Of Mice and Men, I really feel for Lenny’s character but he is a bit manipulative at the same time.
Robert Ewens
Yeah, he's a cheeky rascal is the nice way of putting it. He was such a big character to play. I enjoyed every minute of it, but for a while I was terrified of playing it. Not because I didn’t want to, it’s that he’s such a well-known, well-loved character and having to fill those boots is a big responsibility. And I hope I did justice but I love that. It’s one of my favourite things I’ve done, definitely.
Paul Wilshaw
Is there any stories of anything that happened during that?
Robert Ewens
There was one. So, my very first scene as Lenny and there's so, just to give you the idea of the set for people that don't know the show, it was very different. It was done, from
the story of after everything that has happened and George has gone back to a bar and he's gone in to see someone and it's from a bed. So they're on a bed, like the whole thing is projected down. So scenes change from it being like you could have like grass everywhere and then it would change to corn. What happened is that they had water by
the side of the bed, for like washing and I came running in and I got told by the Director Tim to splash Jez as much as I could because I had to run in like it was a lake, and try and get so much water. And Jez for the whole of the tour did not know that I was trying to soak him and I got him a lot, like I would say around about 90% of the time I soaked him.
Paul Wilshaw
So yeah, in Of Mice and Men you have three people. So it was you as Lenny, Jez Colborne
as George and a few other characters if I remember correctly.
Robert Ewens
He played like seven.
Paul Wilshaw
And then it was Jess, who played Curley’s wife, if I remember correctly, and other characters as well.
Robert Ewens
I think she played round about six or seven as well. It was mad and I was so lucky because I just played Lenny. I was like, phew. There is a story actually with Curly's wife. There’s a bit where a character gets killed by Lenny and I did the scene. Poor Jess was attached to my dungarees by her hair and yeah, it was, it was horrible because I was trying to move and I realised her head was going along while pulling, and, I had clocked what happened, and I had to improvise the scene of like, wake up, wake up, please wake up. And then I had to while doing that just yank the hair out of the dungarees button and she's like a trooper, she did not flinch or move and yet just carried on the scene afterwards. But you’d would think that would be the end of it. It happened twice in another show.
Paul Wilshaw
You don’t have luck do you mate.
Robert Ewens
No, it was more Jess bless her.
Paul Wilshaw
Ok, you have done other shows with Mind the Gap.
Robert Ewens
Yeah, it's been great, absolute fun. But yeah, I've done other little things as well with you guys.
Paul Wilshaw
But let's now go on to your other work in theatre. So you most recently have been in a show called Private Peaceful, and you talked about how many roles that Jess and Jez
had to play in Of Mice and Men, but in this one you also had to play different characters.
Robert Ewens
Yeah, I was Big Joe in it and he's the eldest brother of the three peaceful brothers. So the story of Private Peaceful is the two younger brothers go to war and one lies about their age so they can support their brother. It’s how someone’s dealing with the trauma of war.
They're trying to live in their memories to try and collect themselves during the horrible situation of the First World War. So in the first act, I was in quite a lot of it as Big Joe jumping back and forth. In the second part, I was the orderly, some postman…
Paul Wilshaw
You were a lot of characters.
Robert Ewens
I was, I was, yes. But it was great because I was playing soldiers as well. It was intense because it was around about nearly 2 hours, but it was so compact. I describe the show as a house of cards on a roller coaster because it had to stay perfect or if one thing it would just fall apart.
Paul Wilshaw
And can you tell us who the company was who done this?
Robert Ewens
So this is with Nottingham Playhouse. I was very nervous, but they were very welcoming as well and just made it feel effortlessly like fun and exciting.
Paul Wilshaw
I mean, I loved the piece. It was done by the same person that done Warhorse.
Robert Ewens
Oh Michael Morpurgo yes.
Paul Wilshaw
Yeah, so I really enjoyed it. I came down and saw it at the Nottingham Playhouse. And
yeah, brilliant theatre and brilliant show. What other theatre shows have you done outside of Mind the Gap?
Robert Ewens
I did a very bizarre one. I ended up doing an opera. I didn't sing because no one would go see it. I was acting in it, but I was up there with the singers which was bizarre. But it was Cavalleria Rusticana I think, but we call it Cav and Pag. But I played Turiddu’s brother. It
was great. So much fun because it was at the ENO, and the theatre’s beautiful, the atmosphere is amazing and it was kind of a pinch yourself moment because you had the full orchestra down at the bottom and you could hear it and you could him them tuning and getting ready. And yeah, it was kind of amazing.
Paul Wilshaw
Yeah I can imagine and like, that was the English National Opera.
Robert Ewens
Yeah and the Mothership was my very first one, which was about someone who was able bodied and then they drown and they get brain damage. And, it's seeing the character's development and change, but I think I ended up playing four different versions of the same character. I ended up playing the person, an 8 year old who didn’t have a disability, then there was the drowning and then a 16 year old with the vulnerability of all that trauma and then I had to play the 16 year old that was like, his eyes have been opened, he'd changed and it was very bizarre. It was very jumping back and forth like flashbacks as well.
Paul Wilshaw
And that was your first show?
Robert Ewens
That was my first, no pressure. But yeah.
Paul Wilshaw
You've also been on television. So you were in Father Brown, then Doctors and then The Stranger. So can you tell us a bit about Father Brown and what character and any funny stories.
Robert Ewens
So I'd been trying to get TV work for ages and because they'd seen me do lots of theatre they thought that’s all I wanted to do. But no, I’d wanted to do TV for ages and I was just
so lucky that I got a Father Brown role because it's such a nice show to ease into like a different style of media. The people were just so, what's the word? It didn't feel like there was pressure. It was like, effortlessly, like, easy to just settle in, like you felt like you belonged there.
Paul Wilshaw
You really liked Father Brown don’t you, the actor who plays Father Brown.
Robert Ewens
Oh, Mark Williams yes. I was a big fan of The Fast show, I loved him in Harry Potter as Arthur Weasley and ended up talking to him about, going to show my age, the Young Ones and Rick Mal and stuff like that.
Paul Wilshaw
That does show your age.
Robert Ewens
I know, but he, Rick, was amazing. No, that was nice. When we finished we ended up having a nice long chat before I went and got a photo so that was really nice.
Paul Wilshaw
That's cool.
Robert Ewens
There was a bizarre moment where we were waiting to start filming for something and literally it was like the TV had come to life because I was sitting with the whole cast and I was like, this is weird, just chatting like it's normal.
Paul Wilshaw
And now Doctors so…
Robert Ewens
Yeah, again, it’s so much fun to do TV because it has that safety net of you make a mistake, that's fine, we’ll just edit it and change it and stuff like that, which is why I like doing both because with theatre there is no safety net, you have the power of improvisation and luck when it comes to that. There is no safety net. And again, what I liked about that is that, I'm always nervous when I'm doing a new project because it's just something new. You don't know how it's going to be. And yeah, just like no it’s all good, and luckily some people from Father Brown were actually the crew of the doctors.
Paul Wilshaw
So you already knew the crew and everything, that’s great.
Robert Ewens
There was a lovely thing that happened, so during the ease of lockdown, I'm guessing quite a lot of actors thought oh I'm never going to work again. This lockdown, we're going to be in this horrible rut. And Doctors came back to me and asked me to audition for another episode, which is kind of bizarre because quite a lot of them don't do that so quickly. They give you like, two, three, maybe four years so than they’re not like wait a minute, you’ve seen them from the other episode. I was very lucky to do a covid episode. I was really pleased to do it because it brought the normality back like oh, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and for once it's not a train. That was really nice.
Paul Wilshaw
And now to The Strangers, the Netflix phenomena.
Robert Ewens
Yeah that was bizarre. That was really weird because I did not expect that. I got asked if I wanted to audition and I, I think yes! But no, I literally did it. I didn't think I was going to get it at all because I'm like that. I did it to just say, you know what, I've auditioned for Netflix kind of thing, like the smugness of me, but I ended up getting it and I still can't believe it, it’s another pinch yourself moment of, okay… it was crazy. It was like number one spot for nine weeks. What! Okay.
Paul Wilshaw
Is there anything that happened on the set that you could tell us about?
Robert Ewens
So there's not one for the set, but there is one for the audition and I'm not sure if you know this story, so I went for my first audition already nervous, “Oh no, oh gosh, have I
got my lines right? I'm not going to remember it all.” So I did the belt up and ping. What was that? What? My belt buckle had flown off and I was like, oh no! Literally a few seconds before the audition. I had to literally hold my jeans up the whole audition. And I think that might have helped with the audition. But yeah, that was crazy because I literally had to say during the audition, yeah the belt buckle broke, I'm not doing this for character. This is just me not trying to get arrested. And got a second call and I was like, really! Okay.
Paul Wilshaw
So belt buckles breaking works on auditions. I’ll remember that.
Robert Ewens
It may, or you might get a restraining order.
Paul Wilshaw
One of the two. One way it’s going to be memorable. What was your favourite scene in The Strangers?
Robert Ewens
For me, I think getting to work with Richard Armitage was really nice. And it was a fun scene as well. So it was just, it was cool because it was seeing my character in his cheeky mode of just taking advantage, of nicking money off him, and going that will do thank you very much. But, I'm going to be that guy where it was like I enjoyed all of it because it was so different working for Netflix, which is just so surreal. And it was yeah, it was just the whole experience was great, I'm going to be that guy. But I did really enjoy working with Richard.
Paul Wilshaw
Yeah, that's absolutely fine. What's your opinion on representation in theatre and television with actors with disabilities?
Robert Ewens
So, for me, I see it like a cog, like a wheel moving. I feel like it's moving kind of slowly, but it is moving. There's a show called Perfect, and it's now got, I think the main leads are all people with disabilities and 20 years ago we would not have had that. We would have had people portraying people with disabilities. And I feel like that is a big step forward, but I still feel like there's a taboo. I still feel like that that there should be some sort of tweaks. I remember saying at a Danc conference that…
Paul Wilshaw
So just so listeners know, Danc is the disability artist network community run by Cherylee Houston, Melissa Johns and the TripleC team, which I plug and I love with all my heart.
Robert Ewens
Yeah, they’re fantastic.
Paul Wilshaw
So yeah, carry on.
Robert Ewens
So I said about representation and I said we're not just our disability, so I'm going to speak from me as a guy. I’m a brother, I’m an uncle, I’m a partner. We’re more than just our disability. Like for me, I would love to see a role where someone is just playing someone's sibling, not sibling with disability. I think the only one I can think of that's done that is Russell T Davis in his writing for Years and Years where Ruth played the sister of someone, and for the first scene she’s sitting on the sofa and they’re having a conversation and you're learning the character and seeing what kind of person she is. And then in the second scene that you see her, she's in the wheelchair. And I didn't know of Ruth at the time, so I didn't know she was in a wheelchair. And I was like, wow, that's fantastic. I was like, that's how it should be done, where you focus on the character first, then you see that kind of thing. So I thought that was kind of ground breaking for us.
Paul Wilshaw
Yeah definitely. And that was Ruth Madeley wasn’t it from Years and Years. I think the help of Netflix and casting directors and producers understanding that we can play these complex characters a lot more, and organisations like Danc and there's so many that are putting our names out there more, so just keep on the great work you’re doing is a thing that I always say. So we’re nearly coming to the end of this, but I want to know what's next for you? What is your next theatre project you want to do or create? And then I'll go ask the same question about television.
Robert Ewens
Okay. I would love to try and write something, but I think I might need like a ghost writer kind of support thing. I have these ideas and I feel like it would be fun to try and create something. I would probably want to be in it as well because I’m an actor and I'm going to be like that. But I would love to try and create something, even if it's theatre or a short film or something. I would love to do something like that.
Paul Wilshaw
And what about television?
Robert Ewens
I would really like to play someone with an invisible disability. I feel like there's not a lot of invisible disabilities that are represented but I'm also going to jump on the bandwagon, Doctor Who as well. That would be fun. But no, to be honest I'm kind of, whatever I’m given I usually enjoy and have fun.
Paul Wilshaw
Excel at as well, you usually excel at it as well.
Robert Ewens
Oh thank you.
Paul Wilshaw
So what’s any advice that you were given from school or job, anything like that.
Robert Ewens
It’s to not give up really. Lucky I'm a bit stubborn, so I remember at school once I got asked what I wanted to do career wise, and I’d said I wanted to be an actor and I literally got shot down with, no, you need a real job. What do you want to do career wise? And I was just… I don’t know. The upside of being stubborn is I ended up doing, like, the college courses and getting to work with Mind the Gap and other great things so I feel like, I think I got a proper job.
Paul Wilshaw
I love how yours and my career around that is so much alike because it’s exactly what I had. It’s not a real job. That was from the Job Centre, and the thing they suggested to me was being a gardener. Now I've got cerebral palsy, my clumsiness also means most likely I’ll put a fork in my foot, so…
Robert Ewens
I'm the same.
Paul Wilshaw
So I have no idea where the person got that idea from. But yeah. So I just want to say a big thank you to you Rob for being here today, and good luck in your next shows. I can’t
wait to see them.
Robert Ewens
And thank you for having me. It's been great fun.
Outro
This brings us to the end of this month's podcast. We do hope you enjoyed listening. In next month's podcast, Artistic Director of Little Cog Theatre and Artist Vicki Wreford-Sinnott and Creative Practitioner Steph Robson talk about disability and regional voices in the North East of England.