Scott trained as an actor at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) and has performed Surreally Good at the Edinburgh Fringe, earning rave reviews. Here, he talks about his own story and the stage show, which heads to The Cluntergate Centre, in Horbury, West Yorkshire, on Saturday, June 27th June at 7pm. 

What can you tell us about Surreally Good?

I do a lot of work with overhead projectors. I do live illustrations and create stories out of this. I’ve built up quite a few of these comedy sketches over the years and Surreally Good is like a greatest hits of all my favourite movies and sketches put inside a narrative frame with me as the Tees Valley Projector Club president, presenting an ‘edutainment’ programme. It’s like a 1970s classroom comedy with me welcoming the audience to this faux seminar and as the show goes on everything starts to unravel. There’s lots of silly, surreal comedy thrown in there.

Where does your passion for storytelling and performing come from?

I was a big fan of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer. I remember as a kid watching TV with my big brother back in the 90s and on a Friday night Channel 4 used to have all this cool, alternative comedy on, and I remember we’d watch Vic and Bob and the pair of us would be crying with laughter. It brought us closer together because there was a bit of an age gap between us, and the idea of making him laugh was something I was always trying to do. Later, when I was a student, I remember watching The Mighty Boosh with my flatmate thinking ‘what is this?’ I think stumbling on these shows changed my life.

Can you tell us a little bit about your own story?

I grew up in Stockton on Tees and trained as an actor in Liverpool. The idea of going to university wasn’t really a thing for me but I auditioned to get in at LIPA. One of the things you had to do was direct a show, but I thought I’d write a show instead. I listened to an old CD called Shine 97 and wrote a play based on the track listing and the first track was Hope Street by the Levellers and that’s what the play was called. When I got to Liverpool I found out one of their buildings was on Hope Street and I thought it was just meant to be, and sure enough a couple of days after the audition I was offered a place to train there.

Why did you start creating your own work?

I went on to work for a theatre company called Greyscale and that’s where I did some comedy drawings using an overhead projector for a scratch night. It was interesting because as an actor you’re relying on someone else’s words, you can hide behind bad writing and directing, but when it’s your show there’s nowhere to hide. And I just found it so exhilarating to perform my own material and I’ve been chasing that rush ever since. 

What have been your career highlights so far?

In 2025, I won Tees Valley Artist of the Year. The local council supported five artists from the Tees Valley, each from different disciplines, to create new work and help boost their careers – and I was one of the artists chosen. It was fantastic because as an artist you rely so much on funding, so to have this support was a real boost. 

What do you hope audiences take away from Surreally Good?

Life is short, like the play. It doesn’t always make perfect sense, like the play, and it never works out the way you intend, like the play. Sometimes you just need someone to hold your hand in a dark space for an hour and soothe you with hand-made animations and absurd storytelling!

There’s certainly an element of escapism in the work. It’s a lot of fun but there’s an emotional resonance too. The Scotsman did a review saying, ‘there’s nothing quite like it at the festival’ and that made me feel like I must be doing something right.

Is theatre & live performance still important today, in our entertainment-saturated world, & if so, why?

We’ve got access to so much entertainment from the comfort of our own homes, but there’s nothing quite like going out and experiencing the magic of the fourth dimension. The face-to-face connections between people is what gives meaning to our lives, and sharing a live performance is the most heightened example of this.

Book tickets here: Surreally Good, The Cluntergate Centre, Horbury, Saturday, June 27, 7pm.