LEO SIMPE-ASANTE: THE NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD UPDATING BECKETT

LSH: I saw Godot’s To-Do List last week and it’s still sitting with me. You captured our modern condition so perfectly… the endless optimization, our routines, tracking steps, and downtime; trying to complete the never-ending to-do list. When I was a student, as you currently [are], [Samuel] Beckett was the playwright I revered but would never have dared challenge in this way. I’m so glad you did. What was your relationship to his work and how did this come about?

LSA: The Beckett play that I’m most familiar with is Waiting for Godot. I tried to read it once when I was like 12 or 13 and pretended to understand it, but I didn’t. Then I was in a drama class at my current school and we were analyzing Waiting for Godot. I was reading one of the scenes for a student that was sick, and from that moment I was like, “Wherever this Godot guy is, he’s evidently very busy and is being kept back from meeting his friends.” I wondered who this mystery busy Godot man [was].

LSH: There was a laugh-out-loud moment when Godot was like, “My friends are waiting for me.”

LSA: And it’s like they are! Forever waiting!

LSH: So you are still at school?

LSA: Yes.

LSH: And now your play is being performed as a curtain raiser for Gary Oldman, which must be completely surreal. How has this been for you?

LSA: It’s been crazy. It’s been the best journey ever. I’m studying musical theater at Royal Central, which is like very “performancy,” and I’ve been writing plays for a while. But I hadn’t really considered it as a professional career until I won the Young Playwrights award, which is how I got into all of this.

LSH: The Royal Court one, right?

LSA: Yeah. In 2025, I submitted Godot’s To-Do List into the Young Playwrights award for the 16 to 18-year-old category and it won. It then had a mini production, and then I found out that it got picked up for what it currently is. So yeah, it’s been so wild. I say to people that I feel like Spider-Man in that I’ve literally got like a double life.

LSH: Or Hannah Montana?

LSA: Hannah Montana, that’s much better! I had a big musical project that I’ve been working on at school and the showcase was on Thursday the 7th, and then Godot opened on Friday the 8th.

LSH: Mad! I wanted to ask you about your existentialism, to start things off lightly! Do you find that existentialism is a growing feeling in your generation? Because I feel it in mine; this looming sense of dread.

LSA: Yeah, definitely. My year group, my cohort, were all really, really influenced by COVID. I was in the COVID lockdown from when I was 13 to when I was 14.

LSH: Oh yeah, of course.

LSA: So in my prime teenage years, I was just sat at home twiddling my thumbs. I’ve come to peace with it; I think it was necessary character development. But that definitely made me think about my place in the world and other people’s ways of interpreting the world and our purpose in it. I have a big interest in philosophy as well. I did philosophy A-level, which definitely influenced my interest in existentialism because it’s just everywhere.

LSH: In what way? What were you reading?

LSA: I love thought experiments and supposed hypotheticals. Sartre [and] Sisyphus—that was my favorite and really, really resonated with me.

LSH: You’re a musician as well and a composer; I mean, you’re clearly an extremely artistically developed person! Which came first for you?

LSA: I’ve never not known that I wanted to be an actor. My parents always said that’s the first career I ever expressed wanting to have, except maybe a paleontologist, which is a bit left field. Then I started writing poetry, which I credit a lot for the way that I write. My plays are very rhythm-based and I try to focus on figuring out how the audience feels in their body and where they’re at intuitively.

LSH: I for sure felt that!

LSA: I think poetry writing, and especially comedic poetry, was a really big influence for me when I was younger. I have old drafts of plays that I wrote when I was nine; I think that was the age I properly started writing plays. And then when I was 12, I fell in love with musical theater.

LSH: Epic. Tell me more.

LSA: Yeah, my main focus is musicals. I’ve written like five or six shows since I was like 13.

LSH: You’re kidding! What do you love about them?

LSA: I think I love performing them, and [also] because there are so many different avenues within musical theater to convey the story. When you’re writing a straight play, the main way that you convey the story is through the writing, through the text, which is great, and I think there are lots of really clever and interesting ways that you can do that outside of the norm of “this is this line and that’s what this means.” But then with musical theater, you’ve got the text, you’ve got the music, and then you’ve also got lyrics. And you’ve also got choreography! Musical theater lets me convey whatever feeling I want the audience to have in the most precise way possible because there are so many different ways to pinpoint it.

LSH: So when you’re writing, are you composing the music and writing the lyrics? What does that process look like?

LSA: Yeah. It depends if I’m in a writing mood, because writer’s block gets me and it gets me hard. But I normally try to write the story first. That’s my main focus all the time; figuring out where the audience is, where the characters are, and what’s motivating them—what’s bringing them through the story. I’ve never been formally trained in how to write music or a play or anything. I’m going off my intuition from years of obsessing over musicals, and [I] will be like, “Cool, I feel like there should be a song there.”

LSH: Which musicals did you obsess over?

LSA: I think my first musical obsession was with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

LSH: Yes! I don’t hear that one often. A classic. 

LSA: I just love it. I was in a nursery production and would sing it all the time. The next big obsession, when I was like eight, was with Matilda. And I still love Matilda; it is such a good musical. Tim Minchin’s lyricism and his detail in music is something I really, really aspire to have. I want my writing to have the same sort of thing, where you can watch it over and over again and pick up something new every time. I love that layer of detail; it sort of feels like a puzzle that you have to unpick as you’re going through.

LSH: That’s kind of the wondrous thing about musicals—that some of them can run forever and you can return to them countless times. It feels like you have creativity sort of just pouring out of you! How do you channel it?

LSA: I’ve been learning how to deal with this very quickly over the last couple of months because I’ve been pulled in a lot of different directions and have had to balance it. Being on my course, which is not writing-based—like, I’m in the middle of a stage combat intensive right now. After this, I’m going back to dagger, rapier, and sword fighting.

LSH: No way.

LSA: But having my course, which is completely separate from all of my creative endeavors, I think is really, really useful because it means that I can treat my course like a 9-to-5 workday. I did the same thing while I was at school; my academics were my workday and then my creatives were my fun way to relax afterwards. I really enjoy doing them and don’t know what else I would do with my time other than sit on my thumbs.

LSH: It’s so interesting you say that, because I do think that writing requires quite a lot of discipline for most people. But you got into this rhythm of writing at such a young age!

LSA: I think I’m lucky. I hope I keep this for the rest of my career; I don’t know what else I would do. I’m just a big nerd. If I’m working on a project that I really like, I find it so hard to focus on anything else!

LSH: That’s when you know you’re a true artist. I feel as a non-artist I can say that. You’re writing a musical about [Homer’s] Penelope, right?

LSA: Yes!

LSH: Another kind of untouchable text in a way! What is drawing you to these ‘classic’ stories that makes you want to dismantle or challenge them?

LSA: It’s always come from a place of detail. By taking a story that people are familiar with, it gives me more leeway. I don’t have to familiarize the audience from the get-go; 20% of the work is done in getting the story in people’s heads, which then means that I can add a deeper level of detail. Like the Godot reference of “I’m late for meeting my friends.” Because if people are aware of the original source material, then that has a different meaning. I also love the idea of “what if”—like, what could have happened? I find that really interesting. A little bit of a cheeky “this could have been happening but we don’t know.” That’s the way that I’ve done Penelope, of “this could have happened in the Odyssey.”

LSH: So what about the audience members who have come to the Court and haven’t read Godot? What do they make of it?

LSA: I’m happy that it can also read as its own separate work if you’re not familiar with Waiting for Godot. I’ve had a lot of people say that they found it fun and relatable, telling me, “Oh, you really nailed modern productivity culture and stuff like that.” I’m glad that it resonates regardless. The last thing I ever want is an audience to feel bored. That is my worst nightmare ever. So I make sure that it’s either funny or dramatic enough that no one can lock out of it and they stay engaged!

LSH: Dare I ask how it’s been to be in the same room as the great Mr. Oldman?

LSA: He’s been so lovely and really supportive. I remember when I had the meeting in David Byrne’s office, who’s the artistic director, and he told me, “Oh, yeah, we sent your play to Gary and his team and they’ve read the play,” and I was like, “Gary?!” We had a lovely chat on the first preview, like the first technical opening.

LSH: It must be fun for him to riff off your piece. I think it sheds a whole new lens on Beckett’s work for a new audience. It was a bit of a genius pairing by the Court!

LSA: Yeah, it’s been really, really fun; placing the little similarities between them. And because we rehearsed separately, when [the plays] came together in the last week of tech, seeing the little ways that the plays reference each other—like subconsciously or consciously—[was great].

LSH: I’m totally in awe. So, how many years have you got left at Central?

LSA: One. I’m coming to the end of my second year.

LSH: So, when can we next see a work by you and what’s it going to be?

LSA: The next thing I’m focusing on is my musical, Penelope. I’ve been writing it for two years now, which is crazy. I think two years pretty much to the day, because I started it during my A-levels. I really want to do it justice.

LSH: Who is your dream person to send your first draft to?

LSA: I’m going to dream—[my] dream person is the late, great Stephen Sondheim.

LSH: Did you see that Lin-Manuel Miranda posted the emails that he sent Sondheim with his Hamilton drafts?

LSA: Oh yeah. There’s this line that starts with Rodgers and Hammerstein, goes to Sondheim and Jonathan Larson, and ends with Lin-Manuel Miranda. I’m aspirationally trying to get on the end of that line.

LSH: You absolutely must.

LSA: I’m a big fan of Miranda as well; Hamilton is a massive inspiration too. I can listen to it over and over and over again and there are always new details in every single bit of it.

LSH: So many Easter eggs.

LSA: Exactly.

LSH: I’m going to let you get back to your combat class. Make the most of this wild and free creative time!

LSA: Thank you! Lovely chatting with you.