Artists
Giles Thomas
What shows or projects have you done with ETT?
Othello, Streetcar Named Desire, Equus, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
Finish the sentence: Touring is important because…
It makes a great body of work accessible to the largest audience bases.
Where is home for you?
Haslemere
Where is your home away from home?
London
How did you bring home with you on tour?
Usually a small synth
Which city was your favourite to visit on tour with ETT?
Keswick
What gem did you discover on tour with ETT (could be a landmark/park/cafe/pub etc)?
Catbells
What are your touring essentials?
4-Way Power Extension, Chocolate
What’s your go-to recipe whilst on tour?
Break Up Pasta (Cheese, Onion, Garlic & Pasta)
I learnt most of my craft touring and making touring shows, it gives a wider range of problems to solve and leaves you with a good set of skills and know how.
I always get to where I’m going by walking away from where I have been.
Which artist(s) do you most admire and why?
Daphne Oram & Delia Derbyshire, they were truly trying to do something innovative
What music inspires you?
Shostakovich & Rachmaninoff
What image or video inspires you?
I really seem to like geometric images at the moment.
What piece of writing or quote inspires you?
I always get to where I’m going by walking away from where I have been.
What, for you, makes a good piece of art?
Anything with real craft.
What have been your career highlights so far?
So difficult to say, everything has its own challenges! Maybe Equus because it was a great team.
If you were cast away on a desert island, which 5 plays would you take with you and why?
Translations By Brian Friel,
Contractions By Mike Bartlett,
Talkshow By Alistair McDowall,
Anthony & Cleopatra By William Shakespeare (Its Long)
and any of the Royal Court Primetime collection… they’re brilliant!
Please can you tell us what you would say to emerging artists to encourage them to take their work on the road or join an ETT tour?
I learnt most of my craft touring and making touring shows it gives a wider range of problems to solve and leaves you with a good set of skills and know how.
Window or aisle seat?
Window
Favourite way to travel?
Train
If you could have any superpower, which would you choose?
Rewind Time to try things again haha
Giles Thomas’s biog:
For English Touring Theatre: Composer and Sound Design for Equus (in a co-production with Theatre Royal Stratford East); Othello (in a co-production with Tobacco Factory and Oxford Playhouse); Sound Design for A Streetcar Named Desire (in a coproduction with Nuffield Southampton Theatres and Clwyd Theatr Cymru).
Composer & Sound Design includes: Cock (Chichester Festival Theatre); Henry V (Tobacco Factory, Bristol); Buggy Baby (Yard Theatre); The Importance of Being Earnest (UK Tour 2018); Wait Until Dark (UK Tour); Handbagged (Theatre by the Lake); Death of a Salesman (Royal and Derngate); How my Light is Spent (Royal Exchange); Wish List, Yen (Royal Exchange & Royal Court); Contractions (Sheffield Theatres); Pomona (National Theatre, Royal Exchange Theatre & Orange Tree Theatre); Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against The Eunuchs (Southwark Playhouse); Outside Mullingar (Theatre Royal Bath); Back Down (Birmingham Rep); I See You, Wolf from the Door, Primetime, Mint, Pigeons, Death Tax, The President Has Come to See You (Royal Court); Lie With Me (Talawa); The Sound of Yellow (Young Vic); Take a Deep Breath and Breathe, The Street (Oval House Theatre).
Sound Design includes: The Almighty Sometimes (Royal Exchange); Hijabi Monologues (Bush Theatre); Disco Pigs (Trafalgar Studios & Irish Rep Theatre NY); The Ugly One, A Dark Night in Dalston (Park Theatre); They Drink it in The Congo (Almeida); The Sugar-Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie (Arcola, HighTide Festival); The Snow Queen (Southampton Nuffield & Northampton Royal & Derngate); Orson’s Shadow (Southwark Playhouse); Defect (Arts Ed); Betrayal (I Fagiolini, UK Tour); A Harlem Dream (Young Vic); Khandan (Birmingham Rep, Royal Court); Superior Donuts (Southwark Playhouse); Three Men In A Boat (Original Theatre Company, UK Tour); King John (Union Theatre); It’s about Time (Nabokov Theatre Company, Hampstead Theatre); Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat (Royal Court, Gate Theatre, Out of Joint, Paines Plough, National Theatre); House of Agnes (Paines Plough).