Critically acclaimed theatre-maker Alexis Gregory has just returned to the stage with SMOKE. Following a sold-out run in 2024, the show is heading out on tour in partnership with LGBTQ+ non-profit You Are Loved to create a two-part experience for audiences, with a post-show panel that opens up vital, local conversations around the show’s themes and the challenging issues raised in the play currently facing the queer community.
We spoke to Alexis Gregory, writer and performer, about his new production as he prepares to the tour the country.
Can you tell us what SMOKE is about?
“SMOKE is about Alex, played by myself, who one day wakes to a new message on Instagram from his boyfriend Ben. But Ben died two years ago. Alex becomes obsessed with tracking down this supposed hacker, and as he does so, his life starts to unravel in ways he, and I hope the audience, could never imagine. SMOKE is a contemporary queer urban thriller meets savage comedy.”
What inspired you to tell such a personal story on stage?
“Only very singular, though instrumental, aspects of Alex’s story are really my own. However almost everything on stage is based on fact and what I have spent the last few years observing, particularly through social media. SMOKE heavily explores this hidden phenomenon; the numerous posts about gay men unexpectedly dying, seeing people I knew going live on social media with drug induced psychosis, and how we, in 2026, deal with grief online. SMOKE is a blending of a specific queer experience, placed within our wider post truth conspiracy theory laden current landscape and the wider struggle to survive.”
How important is authentic LGBTQ+ representation on stage?
“All of my work trades in honesty. My plays may be stylised and theatrical at times, though SMOKE isn’t – SMOKE is naturalistic and staged in a stripped back exposed way to enhance the lived reality of the story. I have dealt with many challenging themes in my plays, either as the main storyline, as subtext, or part of wider multi-themed writing. There is rarely any push back on these sensitive themes because audiences sense that the drive behind all of these stories is truth-telling. That is still, even in this day and age, quite hard to deny. You can’t fool a theatre audience.”
When did you discover that making theatre was what you wanted to do as a career?
“I started off as actor, working professionally from my teens. I was basically a child actor. For years I mostly did guest roles on TV and commercials and some film work. In the very early 2000’s I decided I wanted to explore working in theatre more. I fell into London’s independent theatre scene. It wasn’t until 2012 that I wrote my first play Slap, and it took off from there. Theatre is my favourite medium to work in. I like how I can have an idea, and a lot of hard work down the line later, I am able to share it with an audience.”
As touring theatre becomes increasingly costly and difficult, how important is it to continue bringing theatre to the regions?
“I am a theatre nerd, so I love travelling the country, working in all these great theatres, and meeting audiences. It isn’t easy though. There are often funding issues for us independent artists. I believe my work to be of a high quality and offering audiences something unique – definitely within the scope of ‘queer theatre’. I do indeed think this should be available to audiences across the country. I have to say, the regional theatres were very open to the SMOKE tour, and the post show You Are Loved panel. To be honest, I felt that more doors opened to me out of London, as an independent theatre artist, than in London with this tour. SMOKE is a challenging piece of work, but the regional theatres took the risk with it and with us.”
You are touring with You Are Loved. Can you tell us a bit more about the organisation and what it does?
“You Are Loved (YAL) supports LGBTQ+ people through mental health issues, drug misuse, and works to highlight LGBTQ+ unexpected deaths, which in terms of the queer male experience my be suicide or drugs related. A recent ONS survey showed gay men are more than twice as likely to due from suicide than straight men. Lots of YAL’s work crosses over with SMOKE’s themes, and so we paired up to offer audiences a unique two part touring experience, a 60 minute performance of SMOKE, and a 45 minute You Are Loved panel made up of panel guests from each town and city we visit on the tour. We’re currently mid-way through the tour and the panels are really landing with people. Audiences are saying that they feel like a meaningful extension of the play, and vice versa.”
What do you hope audiences will take away from the production?
“I want them just to feel something. I don’t like art that is flat is provokes zero response from the audience or viewer. Of course taste is subjective, but I am unmoved by a lot, while people around me are crying or on their feet. Why? I think we are often conditioned or told what to feel and what to like. I want the audience response to SMOKE to be real and truthful from people. Even if they think it’s too raw or confrontational. That is still a truthful response after all, isn’t it. Audiences have been really moved and grabbed by what we are doing, and we have had people come back for consecutive nights. I can’t ask for much more can I.”
SMOKE, written and performed by Alexis Gregory and directed by Campbell X, alongside script consultant Rikki Beadle-Blair is currently on tour. The production will visit ARK in Margate, The Lowry in Salford Quays, Hull Truck Theatre, Lighthouse Poole and Nottingham Playhouse, where it will end its on tour on 20th June 2026. Tickets for all venues are on sale now.
