On the front row in the back green: Star makes sure the show must go on...in his garden

all the people watching theatre. The back green basically becomes the stage.”

Such artistic adaptability has become the hallmark of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Scenes for Sur vival project, with dozens of actors recording pieces in their homes to be shown on BBC Scotland and online.

It’s the institution’s response to the closure of theatres and the obliteration of shared creative experiences, accompanied by a survival fund to help sustain those who work in the arts whose work has disappeared overnight as venues closed around the world.

Douglas and Morven’s piece was written by Douglas’s playwright wife, Tena Stivicic. Entitled Wednesday, it is a comedy about a creative pair and their reaction to lockdown.

“I wanted to subvert that coronaplatitude, ‘at least I get to spend a lot of time with the family’,” said Tena. “It’s also about how creative couples, actors and writers cope in lockdown, with their massive egos and vanities.”

Douglas added: “They’re trying to work together but it ends up being an argument about who is taking the bins out and doing the shopping. It’s really a story about two people stuck together too long and one of them starts fantasising about the other one dying.”

Comedy aside, the piece points to one inescapable fact – that theatre and the arts in general are in trouble.

“National Theatre of Scotland wants to create a feeling that theatre is still there, still being made,” said Douglas. “Theatre is so important. My old man was a commission- only salesman. He and I were the typical west of Scotland father and son, and that wasn’t always the easiest thing in the world.

“I remember reading Death Of A Salesman and thinking, ‘there are other people in the world who are like me’. I recognised myself in that play, and it made me understand my father better.