Interview: Alex Hill on WHY I STUCK A FLARE UP MY ARSE FOR ENGLAND

After runs in the UK and Australia and over fifty five-star reviews, Alex Hill is bringing Why I Stuck A Flare Up My Arse for England across the pond to New York City! The one-man play, directed by Sean Turner, follows Billy Kinley, a football fan who went viral during the 2020 Euros for sticking a flare up his bum, and explores themes like identity, loyalty, and belonging.

Recently, we had the chance to speak with Hill about making his off-Broadway debut. We discussed his creative process for the show, what it has been like performing it for the past three years, and even what he hopes audiences will take away from it.

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How did you first get started in the world of theatre?

As a kid, I got taken to see musicals. One of the first movies I ever saw was Sound of Music, and I used to love that film quite a lot! I remember seeing musicals like Oliver! and Mary Poppins on the West End. I'm the youngest of four, so my oldest brother loved it [theatre], and was part of a youth Drama Society that I went along to. He was playing the lead roles a lot of the time, and I was seven or eight, and playing background characters! Strangely, I was very introverted, and I really didn't like those kinds of experiences. I felt really exposed when I was on stage, so I never knew if I was gonna end up trying to do it as a career. But when I got a bit older, I had this drama teacher who did my GCSEs, and she introduced me to a world away from just musical theatre - straight plays and drama and stuff - and I persuaded myself to go to drama school and give it a try.

And for Americans who might be confused by the title of the play, can you tell us a bit about it and what it is?

Yeah, of course! Totally get that it's quite confusing, and it's not just an American thing. We've had all sorts of people from all different walks of life be baffled by it! But it's about a football fan who put a flare up his bum. Now, that is a real image that happened in Euros in 2021 when England got to their first major tournament final since 1966. It was this massive day of celebration, and there's this image of this guy just putting a lit flare between his bum. I saw it and I created a story, but it's not really about a flare going up a bum - it's more about football fandom, and what it is to belong to fandom in general. The things we do for our sports teams, and the rituals that we go through. And it's about friendship!

Can you tell us a bit about your creative process for the show?

It all started with that image. I was at drama school in my second year, and I was celebrating on Wembley Way on the day of the final. Then I took the train back out of London to go and watch the game at a friend's house, and I saw this image, and I just banged it in my head, and thought, “Maybe, one day, that could make a fun Edinburgh Fringe style one-man play.” When I graduated, I'd never written a play before, but I just wanted to start writing something about a character first and foremost. So [I] just really focused on the character, took my drama school training to work out who the character was before anything else, and then worked back and tried to actually answer the question of, "If that was me putting a flare up my bum, why would I do it?” You do it to try and fit in, or to impress people in that moment, and then likening that to a lot of my own experiences when I've tried to impress my mates at the pub. I started to get this mixing bowl of all these different things - of my football going experiences, people that I've seen going to football games, but also just my mates in general - just young men. I'm not sure if it's the same in America, but there was a time where stories about young men declined a little bit, because historically they've been a lot of stories about young men, so it just felt like a nice time to put a young character on stage. And that's mainly the process!

And what has it been like working with the director, Sean Turner?

He's great! He came in basically on a whim, because I was really close to not having a director and having to go up to Edinburgh and mount a show without one, which would have been crazy. And then a drama school tutor of mine put me in touch with him, and thankfully, he had a gap in schedule. He was great, and he's so keen about the idea of play and what it can do and achieve for actors. So he took the script and made incredible stagecraft of it and helped me through all that. But also, we've done like 200 shows, and we've barely ever gone back into rehearsals. Only one time really is when we did our first big London transfer. We had three rehearsals just to make it a bit bigger. But he's just let the play evolve and offered suggestions here and there, so it feels very much like the original, but 200 shows on, it also doesn't feel very much like the original, and that's just credit to his openness.

That actually leads perfectly into my next question! What has it been like performing the show over the past three years, and have you noticed it change much?

100%! It's also to do with the amount of times I've done it. The play requires a lot of precision to get the show right each night, but because it feels quite stand-upy, it doesn't necessarily have to be dead serious all the time - which is, when I first started, exactly how I was playing it. Mainly because I wasn't confident or was struggling for lines, or just generally overwhelmed by the whole situation of doing my first show. But the more you do it, the more confident you get with things like latecomers and general audience members being audience members reacting in weird, wonderful ways. That's been an amazing thing for me as an actor as well, just to be able to develop this skill of improvisation. When I wrote the show, I was really scared about audience interaction. As an audience member, it's my worst fear to be picked on, or be part of the show in some way. And I've shot myself in the foot, because I wrote a whole thing about Les Mis where he goes into the audience! So I knew that it was going to have to be something that I confronted, but over time, I've gotten more and more confident with how I've dealt with those things.

What was it like bringing the show to the West End last month?

It was completely ridiculous! It was like 700 people, and it was the most incredible experience, just a real celebration. There were pockets of people throughout the theatre, my friends and stuff, who were definitely just helping the audience move the atmosphere up, but it was a real celebration of the three years, of everyone that's been involved and all that hard work. It was really nice to be able to send invites out to all the creative team, and just really give it one last hurrah in the UK, but also just ridiculous. When I started writing, I didn't think of a West End theatre - it was mad! And it's so funny, because last night, we had quite a small audience, like thirty people in. Which doesn't matter, by the way! It's more to say the play works on that scale, but it also works how it did last night, and both versions are so much fun to form, and such a challenge for different reasons. I got to a point where I wasn't nervous doing the show anymore, which is always a bit of a worry, because you don't know whether that means you don't care, and you're like, “Am I just like over it?” But the West End thing was like, “Whoa!” So there was these latecomers, and I was like, “If I don't pick on them, then I'm not doing the show that I usually do, so I have to do that. Even though there's like loads of eyeballs in here, I have to just go for it.” And once I'd done that - it was quite early on the show - I relaxed a bit, and it was really good fun,

And what has it been like bringing the show across the ocean?

It's terrifying! It really is. We always wanted to bring it here - we were just trying to find the right time. And what better time than when the World Cup is on, right? But yeah, it's been walking around the streets of New York, doing little admin bits of the show like trying to print off some posters and stuff, and having all these massive skyscrapers around . . . It's the same as the West End. It's as big as that for me, as I can't believe we're doing it off-Broadway. I just really hope the audiences come along. We had an American guy in last night who was just in the UK, and he was like, “I bought three bags of Wine Gums back with me, and I'm never going to be able to eat one in the same way again!”

And how does it feel to be bringing this three year journey to a close?

Yeah, it's really nice. We're going to finish on 200 shows exactly, which is awesome. I'm really ready to get into the next thing now. You try not to allow too much of like, “Oh, that was a really cool thing that we did,” because I want to go on to the next thing and get that right, and be able to have similar journeys with shows - even though we're incredibly lucky with this one. It's been really eye-opening how much fun it is to tell stories. You get into a bit of a hole at your school, where you forget the point of it all. I'll probably always remember being really serious about something, so that you can be really unserious about it, and I think that's what most of this industry is. So it's been really nice to tell it in a really relaxed way, but also, it's not relaxed, because it's an hour of just nuts energy, and I’m knackered every time! But it's been nice to just remind myself, “This gonna be all right.”

What do you hope audiences take away from Why I Stuck a Flare Up My Arse for England?

I always find that like a really hard one, because I never really know! The obvious answer is just hope that they like it, but then I know that it's not for everyone. When trying to write the next thing, starting with the idea of, “What would the audience take away from it? What's the message?” I think it's like a really bad place to start as a creative, because you try to immediately wrong foot the audience or trick them, rather than just entertain them and let them take what they will from it. Some of the most lovely feedback we've had is when people have come in and been surprised, or  learned something about football fans, and maybe understood, why young men act the way they do, and think, “Oh, maybe I should reach out to that guy,” or, “Maybe I should go check in on my mates.” That's always a really lovely thing.

And finally, how would you describe Why I Stuck a Flare Up My Arse for England in one word?

Bonkers!

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