WATCH: Moray actor Lewie Watson nominated for Scots Language Award
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ACTOR Lewie Watson is hoping a Scots Language Awards nomination can help him make the break through on stage and film.
Lewie (27), a former Elgin High School pupil, has moved back to the town from London where he studied at the Italia Conti Academy for three years, graduating in 2019 with a first class honours degree in acting.
He has been nominated for Performer of the Year in the HandsUpForTrad-organised awards, with the winners being revealed in Dundee on September 25.
Among his acting credits is touring England with the Young Shakespeare Company in the lead role with Macbeth.
In his third year at drama school he played the male lead – John in Ena Lamont Smith’s ‘Men Should Weep’ – which is written in Scots.
“It was amazing to perform in a semi native dialect in my first graduate show in London.
During lockdown he started sharing some of his Doric work online and published his poem “Tae The Sesh’.
Most recently he wrote and performed in ‘The Blandscape’ - filmed at the Red Lion Theatre in Islington, which helped raise funds for the mental health charity Tiny Changes.
Lewie desribes it as an “epilogue to lockdown, a reminiscence of the past year, a monument to a mourned for normal”.
The last 18 months have been hard for actors, with live theatre and performances only now starting to return.
He is currently writing a play for the Boxless Theatre Company that consists of spoken word and Doric.
It was a love of panto which first got Lewie interested in acting and he worked with the National Theatre of Scotland during third year at school.
“I used to go through to the Eden Court panto as a young boy. I was amazed by it,” he said.
He returned to Elgin during lockdown to support his mum Fiona, a shielder, and his dad Bryan who is a paramedic in the NHS. Lewie worked as a porter at Dr Gray’s Hospital to supplement the acting jobs he was still able to pick up doing some audio work during the pandemic. He recently featured in an online video advert for the NHS.
He briefly returned to London before deciding that he had done his time in the city and has come back to Scotland permanently and is living with his parents while he attempts to find theatre work in Glasgow and Edinburgh. He is working at local pizza restaurant Scribbles in the meantime, where he has worked on and off for the last 10 years.
You can vote for Lewie here
