Can you tell me why you wanted to take on the role of Grace?

Well, I, um, like Rebecca, am a, a big fan of Kane's work, and, um, all her plays have really spoken to me, and it's such a kind of rare opportunity to be in them.

Uh, I, I f- I think the extraordinary thing about Cleansed is that it holds so many possibilities, and there's a...

I felt before reading it, I wasn't sure whether I would have a kind of personal attachment to Grace in my memory of reading it years and years ago.

And then when I read it, when we were thinking about doing it, I then realized that I did understand what it was like to love someone so much that you wanted to be them.

And in the play, that takes a very extreme version.

Mm.

But I think what it does is, um, it is different, and it is important to have different types of work that people can come to.

Um, what do you think has changed in society since then, and why do you think this piece is speaking to audiences today differently?

Um, well, I don't think any of her work was well received particularly, and I don't think that is, like...

You know, S- I think Stuart said the other day, he said that someone said watching Cleansed, you'll either engage with it or you'll reject it, but you'll learn a lot.

And I don't think we live in a culture or a climate where that is given to us, you know? One, that you can go to the theater and have a real kind of adverse effect, but for it to stay with you.

I also think...

I think I find it interesting for now because I suppose as an actor, one of the, I guess, about 99, 98% of the scripts that I get given, but also probably 98% of the things that I consume, live in a very, very naturalistic world, and I'm not sure personally that I live in that world 98% of the time.

Internal life is far more abstract and strange and poetic and violent and odd, and it seems strange to me that, uh, that there's so little work that gets to explore that when I'm pretty sure that is the experience for lots of people.

Um, I was wondering, you know, do you worry about, you know, the theater becoming less accessible and more of a playground for elites?