Counter Culture

David Bowie didn’t just bend culture; he detonated it and then calmly walked through the smoke wearing something nobody had seen before. The Bowie Story promises to trace that volatility — the reinventions, the provocations, the sheer audacity of a man who treated identity as raw material. At the centre of Night Owl’s world‑premiere production is Peter Marchant, whose performance has already been described as “electric”.

In conversation, Marchant is thoughtful, curious, and disarmingly funny — but onstage he steps into Bowie’s slipstream, chasing the imagination that made him a lodestar for misfits, futurists, and anyone who ever felt the world might be bigger than the version they were handed.

This interview digs into the mythology, the music, the queerness, the chaos, and the craft behind The Bowie Story — and why Marchant believes Bowie’s relevance isn’t historical, but ongoing.

When you step onstage for The Bowie Story, are you channelling Bowie the icon, Bowie the innovator, or Bowie the cultural disruptor — and which of those feels most dangerous to inhabit.

A bit of all three I’d say, though if I had to pick one I’d say the cultural disruptor. I’m fascinated by what’s next in popular culture and Bowie wasn’t just interested in what was coming next, he created it. That’s a big focus in the story we tell.

Night Owl Shows thrive on narrative‑driven music experiences. What story about Bowie did you feel compelled to tell that other tributes always seem to miss.

I think the first few years of his career (before he was calling himself Bowie) was a topic I found quite interesting to research and I open up the show talking about this period. He tried various bands and pseudonyms during his teens but didn’t really achieve any success for years, which is crazy when you look at how legendary and influential he became.

Your performance is described as “electric” — what’s the current behind that charge: the music, the mythology, or the responsibility of carrying someone who reshaped the cultural landscape.

Again, probably a bit of all three. Above all it’s the passion for the artist. When the artist holds such a big place in my heart the energy I feel singing their songs comes from somewhere ‘not of this world’.

Bowie reinvented himself so often he almost made authenticity irrelevant. When you perform these songs, which version of him do you think audiences are really searching for.

The unshakable qualities of the man himself were always present in every one of Bowie’s different personas, that’s what I’m reaching for. The man behind the mask whose imagination and vision gave life to his characters.

Space Oddity, Life on Mars, Heroes, Let’s Dance — these tracks are cultural artefacts now. How do you stop them becoming museum pieces and make them feel volatile again.

So long as artists continue to talk about these songs and apply their messages to the world we live in today, they’ll stay relevant. Bowie perfectly predicted the future when talking about the Internet in his interview with Paxman in 1999 and I think that ability to predict the future helped him write songs that would hold eternal relevance.

Bowie blurred the line between persona and performance. Do you ever feel that same tension when leading an all‑star band through his catalogue.

The ways in which Bowie presented his different personas on each album was not just in how he dressed but was also in how he moved and even how he pronounced words — he puts on a bit of a New York twang in Rebel Rebel for example. That’s something I like to try and reflect when portraying his different personas and our band do a great job of showing how his use of sound and production techniques evolved over the years.

The show promises audiences a rediscovery of their favourite songs. What’s the one Bowie track that surprised you most once you started digging into its origins.

I was quite surprised when I found out that Young Americans was released less than a year after the Diamond Dogs album, where Bowie was still putting out a glam‑rock kind of persona. To go from that to his ‘plastic soul’ in such a short space of time is a pretty drastic and rapid transformation.

Bowie shaped pop culture by refusing to play by its rules. What’s the most rebellious choice you’ve made in crafting this show.

Refusing to wear boring trousers.

Night Owl Shows impose narrative clarity — but Bowie thrived on chaos. How do you create a coherent story around someone who resisted being pinned down.

It definitely wasn’t an easy task. Although within each phase of his career there was a lot of consistency — organised chaos you might say. I think when you go year by year and look at the context behind his creative decisions (i.e. his move from LA to Berlin to escape drug addiction and working with Eno and Visconti) the drastic changes he went through seem to make more sense.

Bowie was a trailblazer for sexual freedom, queerness, and self‑invention. When you embody his work, how consciously do you engage with that legacy — and what does it mean to perform songs that once helped people feel seen for the first time.

I speak about this a little bit when talking about his Ziggy years, making the character androgynous and gender‑fluid. But I think much of how I embody that comes from how I dress and move on stage (I do a lot of ass shaking on stage in my glittery trousers and sequin lightning bolt jacket). Hearing lyrics like “you got your mother in a whirl, she can’t tell if you’re a boy or a girl, hey babe your hair’s alright, hey babe let’s go out tonight” must have been very liberating and validating for queer people to hear for the first time.

See our review of The Bowie Story

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