Nicky Cooper talks to SARAH SINGLETON about the Globe, the Scullions and their Swindon Fringe play Autobahn

Having played Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, Henry V and Iago by the tender age of 23, young actor Nicky Cooper’s budding career seems precocious to say the least.

Then again, Nicky has been performing on stage for 20 years already – his first roles were in productions put on by the Shrivenham Amateur Dramatic Society, aged just three or four.

Now Nicky has set up a professional theatre company – The Scullions - which puts on productions of Shakespeare’s plays, while a second branch of the company – the Scullions Neoterics – keeps a focus on contemporary writing for the stage.

“I love performing,” he says. “It gives you a sort of experience like nothing else. When you build a theatre company, you create a real family atmosphere, a close relationship. And performing builds your confidence.”

Nicky, who still lives in Shrivenham, looks up to classic stars of Shakespearean acting such as Ian McKellen, Kenneth Branagh and Judy Dench as his performing inspiration.

“They are still so relevant now,” he says. “They are stilling working in film and theatre – I would love to be as good as them.”

He went to Faringdon College, before attending Bath Spa University to do drama studies and film studies.

“It was amazing. Bath is close to home, and the campus is beautiful – out in the countryside,” he recalls. “After my course, I did a master’s in Shakespeare. There were three on the course, so we had a lot of one to one training and got really close. Part of our assessment involved creating a company.”

His fellow students on the course were Tom Dello and Sam Robertson – and during the year they had a two-week residency at the Globe Theatre in London.

“We performed in As You Like It on the main stage, and we were trained by the Globe’s actors and director. I was Rosalind – the leading lady,” Nicky explains. “There is something about the Globe – you don’t have to push your voice. It is such an incredible space.”

They set up the theatre company in 2016. He took the name from one of Shakespeare’s texts.

“It’s an old Shakespearean insult – it means the lowest of the low, a servant given the worst tasks,” he says.

They performed Hal and Falstaff – using elements of Henry IV parts one and two. Next came Henry V, which was his thesis performance for the Master’s degree, in which Nicky played Henry, and their first production post university was Othello – in which he played the villain of the piece, Iago.

He said Othello was his favourite of Shakespeare’s plays: “I love the way the situation slowly gets more and more chaotic, with Iago pulling all the strings.”

The Scullions have performed all their plays at Swindon’s Shoebox Theatre.

“We were the first company outside of Shoebox to perform there.”

The young actors took a step in a new direction with their latest production, jumping forward several centuries from Shakespeare to Neil LaBute, and his play of modern American alienation, Autobahn. This was performed by the Scullion Neoterics and co-directed by Nicky and Sam Rudman.

“We thought the script was fantastic – so sharp, no lines wasted. It was fun to play with. It was extremely American, and we wanted to set it in Britain, so we made some changes – from Walmart to Tesco’s, for example.”

Authobahn was originally performed as a series of very short plays, while the Scullions Neoterics chose to interweave the stories. They held open auditions for their cast six months ago.

“We had a lot of people audition, but it was hard to find the right people. In the end, everyone in the cast showed us the character in a way we had not seen them before,” he says.

The set for the play includes three car fronts, which the company members salvaged from a wrecking yard. A soundscape was created by technical director Alex Latham, another Bath Spa alumnus. Several actors were sitting amongst the audience, and added an immersive element to the performance by addressing the person sitting next to them, compelling them to be part of the play whether they responded or not.

“We performed Autobahn for two nights at the Shoebox. It went really well. You can never predict what the audience will do in these situations, when you open the dialogue,” he says.

Autobahn will be performed at the Alma Tavern in Bristol next, then the Rondo in Bath, before returning to Swindon on April 15 as part of the Swindon Fringe Festival, with a performance at the Town Hall Theatre. Next up on the Scullions’ schedule is another Shakespeare play. Nicky fancies a go at the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.

The Neoterics, in the meantime, will be looking for new writing and perhaps building a theatre writing group. Nicky’s ambition is to keep growing their audience, and one day having the Scullions and the Scullions Neoterics in repertory, performing both Shakespeare and contemporary plays in a cycle.

At some point soon, Nicky hopes to give up the day job – working at Game in Swindon – and to focus entirely on the theatre. Since he has achieved so much so soon, that ambition seems entirely possible.