“The outcome doesn’t matter. F*ck the outcome. You’re doing it. You have a clarity of purpose.” For years, Sam Beeson drifted through an aimless stupor, pouring cement by day and drinking whiskey by night. Then the theatre kid stepped into a sweat-soaked mixed martial arts gym, and everything changed.
“The Eight Faces of Ellie Morrison” is a play written by Beeson about an MMA fighter who retired from the sport and finds himself living peacefully but is unfulfilled. The show is set to play at the Edinburgh Fringe with tickets selling fast. To play Luke, the main character, Beeson began practising combat sports and won two fights along the way, the most recent by TKO finish. He wanted the fighting and character to be as real as possible, as faithful to fighting as one can be.
Purpose
With empty bottles lining his shelf, Beeson knew he needed to change. The playwright had fallen into a depressive fog during the COVID-19 pandemic and struggled to find his footing again. A theatre kid entering the world of combat sports, he arrived without an ego or anything to prove; only a willingness to learn. By accident, that decision changed his life.
“No one’s going to save you but you,” Beeson explained. “Then I found fighting, and I remember being told to work on the heavy bag for five minutes. I didn’t even hear the bell. I was still going. I turned around and half the class had left. You zone out, tune in, and find a frequency. It became a healthy outlet.” The pounding sound of the heavy bag rang like a zen gong.
The practise of combat sports became a meditation for the young actor and helped him recover from depression and alcoholism. “There’s a clarity of purpose when you’re in there. You get this tunnel vision: you only have to focus on one thing. You might not win, but you’re in there, that’s the goal. It’s the same on stage. You know what you’re supposed to do, you know what you have to handle, you’ve done all the prep, and then you just have to get in there.”
“I love Rocky, it’s phenomenal, but it’s very much about going the distance and how hard you can push. I wanted to focus on the drilling, the monotony, the reps, and how much time is spent on one single thing.”
Beeson wanted the play to focus on the Sisyphean task of the repetition, and finding peace along the way. “It’s a hard life, but it’s a fascinating life. Fighting teaches you a lot, but it isn’t everything. If you can apply those lessons to the monotony of life, the work, the logistics, that’s the real beauty of it.”
The 21st century has been hard on young people who often feel aimless and isolated in a world of AI and performative personalities on social media. In 1873, Friedrich Nietzsche posited that a goal in life is to push oneself into a purpose: “I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible. The secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is to live dangerously.”
But the key is simply finding purpose, not necessarily success. It’s the attempt that matters. This is the core of Beeson’s “The Eight Faces of Ellie Morrison.”
“There are a couple of lines that my coach in the show says: ‘It doesn’t matter. The outcome? F*ck the outcome.’” Beeson explained, “If you do the thing you were scared about, it’s not fear at that point. As soon as you face it, it changes into something else. All you need to do is take the step. If it doesn’t work out, it’s fine. But you tried it. If you have an ability to do something and you really like it, what’s stopping you?”
The message of the play resonated and hit hard. Siblings of Beeson felt the weight of it. “Getting that call from my sibling, hearing they’d quit their job and wanted to find something different, was better than getting a knockout. It was a call to action. That’s the whole purpose of the show.”
Winning and losing matter less than the journey itself, and Beeson speaks from experience as he was able to capture a couple of combat sports victories along the way. “Winning wasn’t joyous. It wasn’t elation. It was more like, ‘Okay, good. I can do this.’ It felt almost like permission, or relief. I was still the theatre kid in the gym, the guy doing stand-up at weekends, the entertainer, the one messing around in class. Then, after winning, it was like: ‘Oh, sh*t, I can do it.’”
MMA Training
Making the play as faithful to real MMA was a key part of the journey, which is why Beeson trained across multiple gyms and competed in real fights. “Having that validation from my trainer felt better than the victory itself, having them trust me to tell something about the life they make. We could say, ‘This guy went out, trained and got a knockout, and now he has this play.’ It gave the show a little more reality. We do this for real; it’s not just acting.”
“It was validating, because I did work really hard for it, and I wanted to take it seriously,” He continued. “I’ve seen plays and movies about things I know a lot about, and there’ll be one detail that isn’t right; it pulls you out of it immediately. I find that super disrespectful. The trainers at Atlas Muay Thai based in Alexandria, Virginia had been nothing but good to me, and I wanted to do right by it.”
By day, Beeson’s hands were wrapped for the gym; by night, they were on the page. But eventually, the research began to compete with the writing itself. “I’d been training and writing the whole time. By then, it was more like: ‘I’m ready. I’m prepared. This is the next thing to do.’ Then I got a second-round knockout. The coach came up and said, ‘You want fight number three?’ And I was like, ‘Dude, I’m writing a play about this. I’ve got to go focus.’”
That balance between lived experience and performance remains at the heart of The Eight Faces of Ellie Morrison. The drills, commentary and coaching language all come from Beeson’s time in MMA gyms. The fight choreography comes directly from real bouts. “It’s all real. It’s pieced together from different fights. It has those moments where the audience gasps”
Training and competing while writing the show took a physical toll. Beeson’s wins gave him first-hand experience of MMA, while an ACL tear showed the cost of committing to it for real. “I’ve done so much physio, I’ve had massages, and I’m rubbing lacrosse balls into my shoulder every morning to dig everything out. It’s hard, and it hurts. But it’s worth it at the end of the day.”
The Eight Faces of Ellie Morrison at the Edinburgh Fringe
Real fighting and real injuries to communicate a real struggle. Plus, the show features local fighters and trainers from Edinburgh itself. The Edinburgh Combat Project Gym will feature its athletes and trainers in the play as referees. Additionally, the actors spent some time training at the gym alongside their Muay Thai champions. Pawel Zakrzewski is the CO-founder of ECP. Emma Davison, his fiancé, is the national bantamweight Muay Thai champion in the UK.
It is a raw story that hits the mark. “After the New York previews, all the pieces fell into the right place. We had the crowd interactions we wanted, the chants, the jeers, the boos, the cheers. That was everything I wanted it to be, because I wanted that involvement.”
“We wanted people to come in, enjoy the moment, be off their phones and just watch theatre. We’re not chasing clips. There’s something real about it. That’s why we thought the show would be great at the Fringe”
That is what makes Edinburgh Fringe the ideal setting for The Eight Faces of Ellie Morrison. Beeson has spent years turning a personal search for direction into a physical piece of theatre, one shaped by real training, real fights and a real connection with the MMA community. Now, in a city that embraces both combat sports and ambitious performance, he will put that work in front of a new audience. He is asking them to do more than simply watch a fight, but to consider what they are willing to fight for in their own lives.
Free Previews: Friday, Saturday & Sunday 7–9 August
2 for 1 Tickets: Monday & Tuesday, 10 & 11 August
Regular Tickets: 12–29 August (no Sundays)
Greenside Venues
