THE WEIGHT OF WAITING

'What We Carry Before The Answers Come'
Exclusive Interview with Alex Grech
Featured in 'Innerviews'
Hosted by Allié McGuire

​Awaiting Evaluation explores the uncertainty of waiting for answers and the questions that surface in the silence. Written by Alex Grech in 2017, the play now offers a window into the artist he has become: a multidisciplinary storyteller shaped by creativity, resilience, and purpose.

ALLIÉ: Alex, your play, Awaiting Evaluation, places Sid and Ali in a kind of administrative limbo where they know little more than the rules, the routine, and each other. What was the first emotional truth you wanted to explore in that waiting space?

ALEX: That’s a fantastic question. The first emotional truth within that sort of limbo is a little bit two-pronged. The first is an emotional theme that is very common to absurdism. It is central to Waiting for Godot, which was an inspiration for Awaiting Evaluation. It is this idea of existential monotony, the concept that we go over and over again, repeating the same patterns and striving for some faraway ideal, some permission for happiness or permission to grant ourselves relief.

​The evolution that Awaiting Evaluation really hones in on is the concept that it isn’t actually about the waiting. It isn’t necessarily about the hope or the dread. It is about the people you choose to go on that journey with. They are the people who make you happy to wake up every day and repeat the routine because you get to do it with your companion. As crazy, absurd, wacky, and individual as they may be, they are the ones who put hope, brightness, and colour back into the world. That is the first emotional truth. It is a bit two-pronged.

ALLIÉ: I love that, especially the idea that it is about the beings who are with you through all of these doings. It is like asking what makes a home. Is it the place or the people? It is the people who make it.

You wrote this play in 2017, before so much of your own life unfolded: global travel, New York, NYU, film, stunts, and now this new chapter of your career. When you look back at the version of yourself who wrote Awaiting Evaluation, what do you understand differently now about uncertainty?

ALEX: A lot is the short answer.

When I wrote the first version of Awaiting Evaluation, I did so with my best friend in high school. We were studying IB Theatre and had just been introduced to Samuel Beckett, the world of absurdism, and Waiting for Godot. I remember watching Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart perform Waiting for Godot, and it moved both me and my friend.

Through our conversations and our years at a regional boarding school in Australia, we realised there were many universal feelings running beneath the surface of our peer group. There was this idea of being on the precipice of the rest of your life and just needing to get through that final hurdle, without ever quite realising there is always another one. You finish school, and then it is time to go to university or get a job, start a family, and so on. The chain of expectation can be endless. That was where the play started. It focused on the angst of finishing high school and jumping into an unknown world that seemed so exciting.

After leaving high school, I spent a year working in multiple professions and travelling around the world. I then entered the performing arts programme at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where I studied for four years. I moved to New York and have now been here for around six years.

A lot has changed. As I have grown and been exposed to different literary sources, teachers, and practitioners who have inspired me, all of that has filtered into what has now become Awaiting Evaluation.

It has become a deeply textured and rich text that I believe is still very true to its roots. It continues to explore questions like, “What exists beyond this big, wide world?” and “What can the world offer me?” It holds all the excitement we feel when we look out into the world and see opportunity, but it also explores the crushing realisation that other pressures and institutionalised systems can clamp down on us and narrow our vision. That is where the notion of the companion comes in. It is the person who motivates you to keep going and to keep hoping for the dream that is waiting outside the window.

ALLIÉ: There is something powerful about two young people trying to figure out who they are while they wait for answers from a system they do not fully understand, and perhaps none of us really do. How do you see that reflected in the lives of young people today, especially when it comes to mental health, pressure, and belonging?

ALEX: There are a lot of elements to that. Honestly, we could write a book trying to explore all the nuances.

The simplest way I can put it is that we live in a world where it is very easy to judge. It is very easy to have an opinion and find another group or collective that supports that opinion.

Part of what I hope people take from Awaiting Evaluation is that the beauty of companionship, and of the people with whom we share the world, lies in their uniqueness and strangeness. It is in the absurdity of our interactions that we can find really special, soulful moments that bind us beyond an opinion.

I love an idea I heard in Ted Lasso, although I am sure it originated somewhere else. It is the notion of leading with curiosity rather than judgement. That is the simple message I hope people carry with them when they walk out of the theatre.

ALLIÉ: Curiosity is where it’s at. Your work lives in both the mind and the body, from writing and directing to acting, stunt coordination, martial arts, horseback riding, and athletic training. How has that physical discipline shaped the way you think about resilience?

ALEX: I have an approach that applies to all of my work. I began performing onstage when I was six years old with the Victorian Youth Theatre in Australia, and I have continued performing throughout my life.

The best sentiment I have cultivated for myself is that you should expect discomfort in this line of work, but you should be unwilling to accept danger.

Discomfort is expected. Danger is unacceptable.

That guides my stunt work, physical regimes, and mental health practices. It is okay to struggle with something. It is okay to push really hard and experience the discomfort that comes from pushing yourself.

As an actor, you need to be willing to engage with uncomfortable emotional spaces, psychological realms, scenarios, and scenes. As a stunt performer, I can tell you personally that doing a scorpion landing, where you land on your face and your feet curl back towards your head, is a very uncomfortable position. There is no way to perform that movement pleasantly.

You go into it knowing your limits. You might tell the lead stunt coordinator, “I have five or six takes of this in me. I can give you those five or six, but after that I risk hurting my back, and I cannot do that because I need to be able to keep going.”

That is where you draw the line. Discomfort should be something you are willing to engage with, but you should be unwilling to accept danger. You need to know where that line exists for you. I would like to think that throughout my life, I have done a good job of cultivating that awareness and knowing it for myself.

​ALLIÉ: You have done a fabulous job of describing the difference between discomfort and danger. It is on us to draw those lines and give ourselves the agency to do so. We do not have to go farther than is safe, but we also have to understand that sometimes we must be uncomfortable.

Outside of your creative work, you advocate for mental health initiatives, support young artists, care deeply about the environment, and believe in more research for cancers and neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Both of those have affected me personally, and I believe they have affected you as well. When you think about the platform you are building, what do you hope your art and advocacy can help people fight for?

ALEX: As I touched on earlier, I think it comes back to the unique differences and specific qualities of each person. What may be perceived as someone’s weirdness can be their most beautiful quality. It may be the rare way they make you or their loved ones laugh.

As we develop and as our brains and minds change over time, that does not mean there is a loss or lack within a person. It is simply growth and change.

A lot of it is about bringing awareness to these conditions, not as things that remove or degrade the individual, but as things that need to be addressed with comfort and support so people can find their way through them with some degree of peace.

The struggle they are experiencing internally is already enough. They should not also be ostracised from a particular group, especially from their closest family and friends. Those are the people they truly need in those moments to offer patience, understanding, and the curiosity to ask the question. ∎

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Find & follow Alex & Awaiting Evaluation on Instagram: @alexgrech22 & @awaitingevaluation