Alex Grech has spent the better part of two decades chasing the answer to a question he first put on paper as a teenager. The Australian actor, playwright, director, and stunt coordinator built his name playing Tommaso in Juliet & Romeo alongside Rebel Wilson, Jason Isaacs, and Rupert Everett, training hard enough with the film’s stunt and horse teams to become Romeo’s own double. Last month, the piece he began writing at seventeen, Awaiting Evaluation, made its European debut at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. We caught up with Alex about the eleven months of backpacking that changed him, the two-month stunt bootcamp that built him, and the play that’s been growing alongside him for the better part of a decade.
Chasing the World, Then Coming Back
Grech’s relationship with performance started at six, on stage with the Victorian Youth Theatre in Melbourne. But it was what came after high school, a stretch as a paralegal, a labourer, a bartender, and then eleven months backpacking through India, Switzerland, Prague, and Budapest, that reshaped how he thought about his craft.
“I learned less about acting specifically and more about the eclecticism I found out in the world — not just in the vast variety of cultures, but in the astounding range of people, lives, and stories that exist in every minute of every day, in every place imaginable.”
That hunger for the wider world followed him to New York in 2020, where he enrolled at NYU Tisch‘s Experimental Theatre Wing walking in, by his own admission, feeling like “the novelty Australian who showed up in New York to shoot their shot.” The programme gave him more than technique.
“The Experimental Theatre Wing was the perfect place for me to spend my first two years of study,” he says. “It offered me the opportunity to not only develop my toolbox of skills as an actor but also as a playwright and dramaturg.” In 2023 he joined the Lee Strasberg Institute for further training, a period that, he says, pushed him “to further develop myself as a multi-hyphenate artist,” cementing his identity as actor, writer, and director all at once.
Learning Where Discomfort Ends and Danger Begins
Grech’s breakout role came as Tommaso in Juliet & Romeo, an original character created for the film who idolises his adopted cousin, Mercutio, played by Nicholas Podany. Shot on location in 13th- and 14th-century Italian castles, with production design by Dante Ferretti, the film gave Grech a masterclass in longevity.
“Being a younger brother myself, it always seemed natural that Tommaso would look up to and want to emulate the bravery, loyalty, and charm of their cousin,” he reflects. “Watching Mercutio struggle with the pressures of carrying the family name with honour drew me closer to this sense of responsibility that Tommaso felt.”
Off screen, that instinct to prove himself physically led somewhere unexpected two months of pre-production training with the horse stunt teams each morning and the stunt teams each afternoon, which eventually earned him the job of stunt double for Romeo himself.
“Being given the opportunity to bring the more physical moments of Jamie Ward’s Romeo to life, to me, validated the years of training and work I’d put into becoming the physical performer I am today.”
That physicality didn’t come from nowhere. Grech competed at state level and above in soccer, water polo, and rugby union, and was a gymnast through childhood and adolescence a foundation he’s since built on with Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and Krav Maga. Asked how consciously he draws on it, his answer lands closer to instinct than method.
“There are certain techniques that provide a safety net for physical performance, how to fall safely, how to handle weapons safely, how to throw a punch safely. These aren’t conscious as much as they are ingrained techniques that ensure your safety as a performer,” he says. “Discomfort is expected, danger is unacceptable. With my varied physical background, I feel I’ve gained a more than comprehensive knowledge of where that line exists for myself.”
Awaiting Evaluation
Awaiting Evaluation began, almost accidentally, in a Year 11 IB Theatre class in 2017, when Grech and a close friend fell into Samuel Beckett‘s Waiting for Godot and started building their own adaptation in stolen moments, extra time in a black box, editing scripts under textbooks during chemistry.
“Now we’re an international team, a whole family behind the project. It’s crazy to me how far Awaiting Evaluation has come, and how far it may still go.”
Nearly a decade of travelling, training, and living have folded into the piece since. The play follows Sid and Ali, caught in a perpetual limbo, waiting for a principal who never arrives a premise Grech traces back to conversations with that same high school friend, asking each other “what’s next?” and questioning why chasing a dream required so many hoops to jump through.
“This play isn’t about me working through my personal questions of identity, purpose, and affection,” he clarifies. “Rather, it is about encouraging audiences to reflect on these questions for themselves, regardless of the stage of life they may be in.”
Grech plays Ali himself, opposite Carson S. Davis as Sid. A dynamic he credits with making the balancing act of co-star and director considerably easier. The Fringe run also brought together Henry Alper, Michael Jenkins, Will Windle, and Frances Bisaillon, an ensemble Grech describes as sharing one core mentality.
“Discomfort is expected, danger is unacceptable. By understanding various perspectives, I’ve learned how to negotiate compromise and deliver results that satisfy cast, crew, and audiences alike.”
The play’s tone slapstick comedy shot through with heartfelt realisation traces back to Grech’s childhood diet of Rowan Atkinson and Monty Python, filtered through Peter Brooks‘ Enigmas of Identity, one of his favourite books, and its guiding line, “everything is as it seems, and something else entirely.” It’s a line, he says, that “helps unlock deeper meaning and significance to even the most absurd moments.”
Bringing the play to Edinburgh for its European debut followed a run at the New York Theatre Festival, which Grech describes as months of workshopping finally paying off. Ahead of the run, he’d been told Fringe is “a real trial by fire”, but he framed the challenge as part of the experience.
“I believe Awaiting Evaluation offers audiences a chance to see we all grapple with more or less the same existential questions,” he says. “It’s my hope that in watching Sid & Ali, audiences will see something of themselves and something else entirely and leave the theatre willing to show a stranger the same kind of patience and curiosity they would hope to receive themselves.”
What the Platform Is For
Outside acting and writing, Grech is outspoken on wilderness and wildlife preservation, and volunteers with marginalised, community-run theatres in New York that use the stage to confront social and political injustice.
“Without a respect for the natural world and all the varieties of people who share it, what future are we really building? Even if all I do is help give someone the confidence to take that next daunting step to pursue their own ambition, then I’d say we’re certainly heading in the right direction.”
He’s also candid about advocacy closer to home campaigning for greater research into cancers and neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, which have touched his own family, and speaking openly about his own experience with mental health.
“My own ongoing battles with my mental health are not what defines my life or myself,” he says. “Research and culturally specific awareness are the foundation of changing the lives of those who grapple with these conditions, both ripe with misinformation and stigma in the public sphere.”
Quickfire
QThree words that describe your creative process?
Patience, ambition, and dedication.
QA place from your travels you still think about often?
Nepal, specifically the summit of Mount Langtang, looking out over the rolling mountains from 6,000 metres up.
QA perfect day off?
“If I could cram surfing, climbing, hiking, reading, playing with my dog, and eating my nonna’s homemade gnocchi all into one day, then I think that might just be perfection.”
QWhat’s next, after Awaiting Evaluation at the Fringe?
At the time of our conversation, Grech and producing partner Jo Berenson were focused on bringing the best show possible to the Fringe, but he’s clear the story doesn’t end there. “You can certainly expect more eclectic stories exploring our seemingly innate drive to form and imbue identity,” he says. “What I can reveal is that Sid & Ali’s story does not end with the final bow.”
“As with everything in Awaiting Evaluation, everything is both what it is and something else entirely… and with a whole second act and epilogue, who’s to say what Sid & Ali’s past and future might hold?”
Connect with Alex Grech
Awaiting Evaluation ran August 7–29 at the Thistle Theatre, Greenside @ Riddles Court, as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
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