2.4 Holding Space

With Olivia Satchell

In this episode Olivia Satchell and Bronte Charlotte chat about developing work from the ground up, arts fundraising,community development, the impact of theatre, aligning your values with your collaborators, and honouring the different skills that people bring to a space. We delve into the Grief Trilogy, a trio of shows exploring vertical time, the relationships between women, and how these women can be changed from a single encounter in a public space. Liv explains her work in community development and her interest in finding pathways for artists to become less reliant upon such a miniature pool of government funding, and how as this subsidy pool becomes smaller people are going to need to start wrestling with alternative funding streams.

During this episode we discuss:

• [01:38] The loneliness of a global pandemic, how it changes your outlook on relationships and the quality time that you spend with people you love

• [07:04] A different way to apply for grants, using applications to fine tune your ideas and to truly reflect on what it is you are creating.

• [10:50] Livs experience working in arts development (fundraising) and the need for a new understanding of funding if the arts in Australia is to continue to grow

• [14:07] The origin story of Small & Loud, creating a safe space for facilitation, feedback, community and growth, and aligning your values with your collaborators before you begin a project

• [21:30] Creating a feedback loop for artists to build an understanding of how their work is being received at its very beginning stages, and the power of articulating your thoughts

• [26:53] Dinner and a Show, the ritual of sharing food and how it impacts a creative space, and the connection between those sharing in that experience

• [32:42] Livs journey into the theatre world, moving from performing to directing to developing and writing her first show

• [43:43] The beginnings of The Grief Trilogy, Toni Morrison’s impact on Liv’s work, and embracing vertical time

• [50:10] Integrity in the rehearsal process, and creating a space of respect and appreciation for each other's work

• [54:04] Writing from place, knowing the actors you're writing for, and Livs step-by-step rehearsal process for My Sister Feather.

• [59:24] Knowing when it's time to move on to the next project and the relationship between the very small and very epic

• [1:05:25] Honouring what people are bringing to the process and to the room, the bird & the worm, the pleasure of writing, and how important it is to be with those you love.

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Bronte:
Welcome back to the Chats with Creative's Podcast. I'm your host, Bronte Charlotte, and this episode is Holding Space with Olivia Satchell. This is one incredible chat. I'm so, so, so, so excited for you to listen to Liv delve into her work with community development, her passions for funding and helping artists build new work, and her own discovery of her love and passion for building work from the ground up. She is just such an incredible, incredible artist. She is a performer turned director turned writer, and she is in the process of finishing a trilogy of the work, the first and second of which have had several nominations for different awards; the second in the trilogy My Sister Feather was nominated for Best Director at the 2019 Green Room Awards. She's been shortlisted for the Philip Parsons Fellowship for Emerging Playwrights, the Rodney Seaborn Playwrights Award and the Max Afford Playwrights Award. She co-founded the Melbourne monthly performance programme called Small and Loud in 2016. She also Co-ran Dinner and a Show with her husband Julian Dibley-Hall. She is incredibly intelligent, beautifully generous and kind and honest. I hope you enjoy the chat. It's a long one, but it is full of gold. Welcome Liv. How have you been?

Liv:
How have I been? I mean, it's just been a big old time, hasn't it? I feel like, actually the last two to three weeks, since we've been coming out of lockdown, has somehow been some of the most difficult time of this year. You know, the last time we had this much physical freedom was before March. You know, it was before the first lockdown in March. And that was like our old lives. And now I feel like lining up with that sort of physical activity again, feels like a true like timestamp in terms of how much has changed in between. Like, I feel like being in your house all the time, it was possible to kind of move through a day without having to hold on to how much was happening. But now coming out of lockdown, we had a few friends that we would probably see week to week, you know, the pandemic hit and they've all moved interstate. Like, they've all moved back in with their families. Yeah. It's just like a really physical reminder of the difference between going in and coming out, is that the people that we're probably closer to are just not here anymore. So that's been... It's been tough, but it's also, it's felt like a real kind of flinging down of the gauntlet in my mind in terms of, "well, just got to get out there and like meet new people." And there's a ton of people that we are also close with but might not spend as much physical time with. And so it's about kind of really consciously starting to choose to spend time together rather than that, kind of like, the casual proximity pre-pandemic, it's like actively getting in touch with someone and being like, "I would like to see you."

Bronte:
So funny you say that, it's been like one of the main things on my mind throughout this whole time. Just being like, you know, especially if I've had like a down day being like, "who can I talk to?" And just being like, there are certain people that I don't necessarily want to bother, especially if I know that they're kind of in a similar... or they're just like not, they're probably not feeling like they have the emotional stability to comfort me or like support me, and just feeling like, "oh, there's such a limited amount of people that I would really go to with some, not necessarily heavy stuff, but like for support." Whereas pre-lockdown it was just like, you know, there's just people that you see around.

Liv:
You just chat.

Bronte:
Yeah. You don't necessarily have this global pandemic bringing you down.

Liv:
So I feel like there's something really interesting around incidental acquaintances, you know, like that's not really possible at the moment. And so it's about I guess, of all the people that you have previously encountered, who do you choose to try and travel down a path together with? Is quite an interesting way to shift from probably a more casual knowing of people, or like a casual intimacy, towards a more deliberate like, "I want to do this and I'm investing effort in this." I haven't really...

Bronte:
Maybe it's more like universal at the moment.

Liv:
I think so. But I think it's also something that's easy to kind of gloss over because so much else is happening as well. And so it's kind of like, intimacy needs, you know, kind of like beyond personal relationships, feel like very low down the ladder in terms of like the scale of world events. But it's actually the thing that we're all reckoning with probably in one way or another.

Bronte:
Thank you for being here. I am so excited.

Liv:
It's such a pleasure! Thanks for having me.

Bronte:
You're in my house.

Liv:
I mean, I was completely thrilled about the prospect of like an hour commute to get to you. Cause I was just like, that means I'm going to have to travel through the world. And I loved that, and it was wonderful coming here.

Bronte:
Amazing. How has your morning been?

Liv:
Actually, it's been pretty good. I am part of a writers group that started up, it would have been the last week of April. And we thought it was going to be a like first lock down, let's spend a bit of time together each week, kind of working our own thing. But like on Zoom together. We thought it would go for, like, you know, maybe six or seven weeks. And we've just clocked over six months continuously.

Bronte:
Weekly?

Liv:
Twice weekly. And it's turned into this quite extraordinary thing. The thing that I worked on during the session this morning was I decided to make a map of the year. Because I feel like my grasp on time has really disintegrated this year. It's been really difficult to distinguish events from each other. And so I thought it would be useful because most of my projects have wrapped up for the year to actually spend it like really deliberately reflecting on what has happened. Rather than being like, "oh my God, the pandemic!" And just thinking of it as a wash of experience. Trying to be really specific about the things that did happen so that I can also be like, "oh, these were like the great things that happened this year, in amidst all the rubbish." So I got up to August before I came here. Yeah. And it's been a very awesome exercise already. To just be like, "oh, I've actually been able to work really hard this year in ways that I would not have been working before the pandemic, but ways that I will probably continue to if this period of time ever ends." Yeah, so it was very good. I would recommend it. It's like so simple. I just like wrote out each month and kind of like all the things that happened within it. And it was really useful to see all these different sorts of patterns emerging and like the different types of work that were done. But also like the massive life events. Like I had this little life events section. And just like across the months, it just got bigger and bigger and bigger. It's like more things happened, you know, to like close friends and family and things. And then I didn't even record anything related to the pandemic. So it's just like that is like the frame for it. It was really good. So it's a good morning. Morning well spent.

Bronte:
What are some of the things that you've realised that you've been doing, some of the patterns that you noticed?

Liv:
I realised that I've just applied for an insane amount of funding this year. That has actually been a really good experience. I work as a, like in the arts professional sphere, I guess, as well as being an independent artist. In that half my practise, I work in fundraising, like arts fundraising. And kind of like fell into this career path, having had the experience already as an independent artist of always applying for things as a way to hone my ideas. I somehow have managed to like circumnavigate, I think because I've always also had a job, I've been able to short circuit the needing to depend upon funding in order to make my work. And so it means that funding applications, instead have become this way for me to articulate what I want to work on. And so I've always applied for a bunch of things. But I reckon that just maybe multiplied by half this year and it was great to see, I guess, like spread out everything that I've applied for in terms of the number of ideas that I have on the go at any one time and kind of how that shifts and changes across the months. It's like a really good way to track this stage of each idea at any given moment. That's a pattern that I noticed. And I also noticed that - I mean, the biggest thing was, you know, there's quite a lot in each of these months except March. Pretty much all I have written in March is "went to Odin Theatre, escaped Europe." It's so interesting how the scale of a life event can be so massive that actually it needs the smallest amount of words to describe it. And that is like such a clear pivot point in the year, because I'd gone over to Denmark to observe a creative development by Odin Theatre. And it was literally just as the pandemic was kicking off in Europe. And so I cut my trip in about half and managed to get back to Melbourne 40 minutes before the mandatory curfew came into place. It takes up so little of the March page, but it's actually entirely inflected the rest of my year. Knowing what it meant to possibly not make it home has meant that I've been really intensely grateful for having a home. And that has carried through, like that is probably as strong now as it was when we just got back. And I think it's actually made lockdown much easier than it has been for a lot of people, because the alternative, potentially what could have happened if we hadn't gone into lockdown, was really visible to me being over there. And so I think I really understood, kind of like, in an embodied physical sense what was at stake and why it was important to do what we were doing. So I think that's actually been, it was like obviously intensely stressful at the time, but it's been massively helpful this year and has really allowed me to kind of bed down into focussing on this idea, articulation, project development in a way that I might not have otherwise.

Bronte:
That's such a useful thing not to look at applying for grants as a chore or a job.

Liv:
Yeah! For some reason, it's always been the way and it's meant that I've never really felt upset about being rejected for anything. And I've been like, I wouldn't even know what the percentage was, but there are very few grants that I've actually been successful in.

Bronte:
And you write them all the time.

Liv:
All the time. The more things you apply for, the higher your chances of getting one of them. But for some reason, I guess my ego has always been protected from this idea of failure or success; a. From my experience professionally fundraising, knowing how much competition there is and knowing how little it has to do with your actual talent. And also this, I guess, this framing that I kind of fell into of it's actually an opportunity to refine your idea. And then, like, if you happen to get the funding, that is like an amazing bonus. It has been really helpful in terms of the way that I've approached the experience of applying for funding, of looking at it as an opportunity rather than a chore, maybe.

Bronte:
So it does seem to me that since we've met each other at least, that you've always kind of had a money earning job beside your creative practice that aligns with your creative practice. Or that kind of, as you said, like you've worked professionally with funding and you've kind of mentioned already that you just kind of fell into these positions. Is that like a consistent thing where you just happen to fall into it, or did you actively seek out creative work?

Liv:
It's funny because I always, I always wanted to work in development, which is the name of arts fundraising. I think maybe because arts feels funny about fundraising and so they call it development instead, even though it is just fundraising. And I was always interested in what that work was as an extension, I guess, of the community development work that I do and understanding that the sector is really hamstrung by being subsidised by government money. And being interested in, I guess, pathways that would make the industry less reliant upon such a tiny pool of federal, state, local council subsidy. I guess just to give an example of this 'falling in' experience... In 2016, I was in my final year of my master's at VCA and I was part of a young theatre maker program that Malthouse Theatre was running. And I remember I'd just gone to see a show, like a Work in Progress showing, of a third year performance at VCA. And I came out and saw this email that had been sent to this young theatre makers group as part of a broader call-out for a development coordinator. So the arts fundraising department at Malthouse were advertising for someone, I think it was like maybe a day and a half a week, basically to make the like end of year PowerPoint presentations for the sponsors. And I had been very much needing a job at the time. And I saw this. And I just, I honestly don't think I've ever written an email faster because it was like, "hey guys, just so you know, this opportunity, like we're putting this opportunity out there if anyone is interested in finding out more about it." And I was just like, in like a shot. And, you know, was lucky enough to get the job. And what was like, you know, quite an incidental, like very kind of low scale admin role, I really quickly realised that a lot of the things that I was interested in, in terms of this community development work, could really be fleshed out by taking on this perspective from a more company based perspective. So rather than just as a freelancer or in the indie sector, actually starting to work within organisations and understanding their infrastructure, particularly in relation to funding, and starting to think about how that sort of infrastructure could possibly be transferred to the independent sector. Because that really is where, it's a real gap for indie artists, is that they don't have an infrastructure to support them, not in the same way that companies do. You know, like a perfect example is the most recent round of de-funding by the Australia Council. The subsidy pool is getting smaller and smaller. And I think that it is going to reach this tipping point where people are going to realise that they really need to start wrestling with alternative funding streams. And I would like to be able to help people meet that, sector wide. So I think it's kind of really supplemented my own creative work in that way. It's really helping me keep perspective, I guess, from a top down level in terms of the direction that the industry is growing in and what is going to be required to make it more sustainable than it currently is.

Liv:
Everything that I have made thus far, I have self-funded. I mean, ironically, I got my first funding only this year to do a creative development of a new project that I'm working on. Everything that I've done in the past, I've subsidised with my waged work. Kind of the community development work that I do has always had some sort of small level subsidy. And so things like Small & Loud when it started out, it had like a very small seed funding so we could pay artists a bit. But then what happened with Small & Loud was it got taken on by the Arts Centre. And so they took on the infrastructure of paying everyone. And so that's a perfect example of an option that is available to artists. Like if you create a model that people are interested in, you can take that to organisations, that have that infrastructure that I was talking about, to partner with. So that you are still responsible for making the work happen, but actually, because you've partnered with an aligned organisation, you can use their infrastructure to enable the work that you're doing. That's an example of a possible pathway. Definitely there has been support of that kind of community development project, but for my own creative work, I've always self-funded it.

Bronte:
Yeah. Let's talk more about Small & Loud. It's a program that you co-created with Georgia Simmons. Obviously from what you've already said already, and from what I know, you're very passionate about helping creatives develop work and start new work and get that building and on a role. Can you tell us more about how Small & Loud came to be and what drove you and then how it flourished?

Liv:
I mean, it was kind of quite a propitious origin story, I guess. In 2015, I was speaking on a couple of panels for the National Young Writers Festival in Newcastle. And so I'd flown up to Sydney to see my family and I got the train up to Newcastle. And I'd wanted to go and see a particular talk. I was going to be doing a panel that evening, but you know, the train was running late and so I was like rushing in the heat to this event, and I like fell into the room and like fell into this seat at the back. And listened to this talk. I think it was on... It was like about asexual erotica from memory. It was amazing. And at the end of the talk, I heard someone saying hello and I turned and this girl next to me introduced herself. It was Georgia. We'd never met in person before. We knew about each other because we had mutual friends from Sydney. And we proceeded to spend the next 24 hours together in Newcastle. So she came, I did a panel that evening about kind of the early work that I'd done when I was still in Sydney around this sort of community development... And was talking about trying to address gaps in industry with that work. And Georgia came up to me afterwards and she's like, "I think we should do this in Melbourne. Do you want to do a program with me?" I was like, "yes." And that was it, really. So from there, we kind of, we had our first meeting when we're back in Melbourne and we were talking about the things that we wanted to respond to. So what we felt like was really missing from Melbourne at the time was an opportunity for artists to test out new ideas, not even new work, like kind of the very nascent like page one of an idea, in front of an audience. We felt like that particular combination was not present in 2015. And so we went about trying to create a structure to make that happen. Georgia had previously worked at the Workers Club in Fitzroy and so was able to get us the hook up for using their back room. And I came up with a values charter, because I had done an elective at the end of 2015 at VCA, which was run by an artist called Leisa Shelton, who really had quite a devastatingly humongous impact upon my understanding of my own practise. Because she was the first person that I had met who made me realise that community development is an art form in itself. Because I'd always thought of my community development work and my arts practice as like two separate things. And meeting Leisa, she said, she was like, "no, they're just like different strands of your practice and they're actually, they're governed by the same principles." I was like "Oh!" And so I did this work with her around, like defining your values and that actually a lot of the reason things can go wrong in the arts interpersonally is because, you know, you're generally working with people that you know, they might be your friends. And so you assume that your values align. Whereas actually, more often than not, you might have very similar values, but they will differ slightly. And it's along those kind of fault lines of difference that tension is produced, particularly in like as you move towards performance and the pressure gets higher. And so actually, it's essential that from the beginning of processes, you discuss what your values are and you agree on the principles by which the work is going to be made. And so making Small & Loud was the first time that I actively did that process. I'll see if I can even remember the values that we set, I think it was risk, empathy and courage. We made a like a mission statement that we read at the beginning of every event. I'll never forget the first event that we ran at the end of January in 2016, 100 people showed up in this tiny room. And also we showed up to set it up and they had decided to put a pool table in this room and hadn't told us. There's this photo of us like introducing this first event, and they're like 15 people standing on this pool table, the room is completely packed. It's an amazing photo, but we read out this address, like quite a formal address. And we proceeded to do that for every event that we subsequently ran. And it actually went a long way in terms of setting up the space and like calibrating people's expectations about what they were going to be seeing. And that we really wanted the space to be a meeting point between kindness and rigour. That we wanted people to understand that these were new ideas, but that also they were to be critically met. And it was a real, I don't know whether like success or failure is binary that you would use here, but I think it really helped a lot of people. And we ran like maybe 10 events in 2016. And then already by the end of 2016, we'd been approached by Arts Center, by the Channel, which is their outreach space, to take it on. And so we ran another year there. And then we, I think we maybe hit a point of critical mass in terms of what we could take on, because the administrative load of it was quite high, because we made a commitment to spend time with each artist before the presentation to work out what they needed from the event. So it was quite a lot of work from month to month. I think we maybe were two years in and we realised that it was really important that we made space for other people because we were, I guess we were plateauing in terms of what we're able to offer the program or the structure. And the other reason that we decided to hand it on was because of another gap that we felt like was in the sector, which is around transitioning. We felt like we hadn't seen a lot of examples of people giving up leadership gracefully, maybe because of the because of how few leadership positions there are, where we'd seen a lot of examples of people staying in their jobs, these leadership positions, for too long. And so making the transition very difficult for the person who's going to succeed them. And so we wanted to provide a model for a good transition process as well. So I think we handed it over maybe halfway through 2017. And I think in the time that G and I ran it, we maybe worked with a bit over 300 artists, which is like quite a thing. And it was really massively formative for me in terms of becoming embedded within the community in Melbourne, you know, just from meeting so many people from month to month, so many artists and like discussing their ideas and watching these performances. It was a really fast way for me to kind of get a grasp on what people wanted and were trying to do. Yeah, so I think it helped me massively and I hope helped other people. But yeah, it was kind of like quite a seminal moment, I think, in kind of the move down to Melbourne and like putting down roots here.

Bronte:
Yeah. And it was such a massive feat as well. Like, each single session was very complete in that, you know, you opened each session with your mission statement and that set up the space and then each session closed with the feedback circles. Yeah. And it's just, I just felt so... Every time I went that each artist there was just getting so much out of the experience and being so supported by the people that came to support and by you and Georgia. And it just was an incredible thing that you guys did and that you put together.

Liv:
Thank you. Yeah, I guess we just also wanted to respond to... I had had an experience just before I moved down at a scratch night in Sydney where there was like zero facilitations, zero feedback. And it made me start to think about what the purpose or function of scratch nights where at all if there was no feedback loop for the artist. Because, you know, I was watching these people get up and perform and the only response they were getting was that kind of immediate, you know, whatever they were getting back during the performance.

Bronte:
And that can be so clouded as well as you're performing.

Liv:
The adrenaline of performing.

Bronte:
Absolutely. And also the you know, the self sabotage of being like, "oh, nobody laughed." Or, "No one is watching." Or, "Everyone is having a chat."

Liv:
Even the breath of, like, everyone having a chance to perform and then everyone goes to get a drink and comes back for the feedback sessions. Even that amount of time created this real kind of shift into a reflective space that actually meant people were given an understanding of... Even the associative world that was produced in the room during the performance. You know, it was really important to me that the feedback was not geared around success or failure, but it was actually, you know... When we were facilitating, we would ask questions like, "what did this make you think of? What artwork's, what music, what memories did it trigger?" Because at such a nascent stage of an idea, it's much more, I believe it's much more useful for artists to understand what any single audience member is being made to think of whilst they're watching the work. Because if, like once they've built this map of, you know, these associations across a number of people, they can get an idea of, "yes, this is what I want to produce." Or "these and other associations that I want to trigger. So I'll head down a different path." Rather than being like, "That was good." You know, you kind of don't have anywhere to go from, from there.

Bronte:
And for me, as a person who would come in quite frequently and watch, and then join the feedback circles, and also would every so often be involved in the other program that you and Jules held - Dinner and a Show - those sessions of feedback and actually forming an opinion or articulating what was going through your head... For me, articulation has been something I've struggled with for my entire life. I've had thoughts and been unable to speak them.

Liv:
It can be massively difficult.

Bronte:
Yeah, I 100% attribute my ability now to articulate my impressions, or my feelings when I see a show, or my thoughts, my opinions, to those very specific feedback circles where I would watch 10-15 minutes of the start of a piece, or like, you know, the base level of what this person wanted to start building up, and then sit down and actually discuss with them and listen to other people and their opinions. And a lot of the time I would sit there and just listen, because I couldn't necessarily work out how to articulate what I thought or my impression of the piece. And I feel like being involved in those circles, and then being a part of Dinner and a Show, it's almost completely changed and developed my way of articulating my thoughts and my opinions about art.

Liv:
And see that, I mean, that is just like music to my ears. Like, thank you for saying that. I mean, to me that is the true value of these sorts of programs. Is that the most explicit, I guess, target for growth are the artists who are up on stage, you know, are the artists who are presenting their work. But because of the nature of these sorts of frameworks, actually it is a communal act of growth. Through listening, through actually being given the space to try and articulate an idea in response to what you've seen. From the perspective of the artist kind of being given this associative map. Even my skills as a facilitator, they are what they are today because of running Small & Loud. This sort of work, I believe, because of the flat hierarchy, because it works horizontally rather than vertically in terms as a power structure. There is this decentralised type of growth that happens. You know, it's not just the artists who develop. It's actually everyone in the room because everyone there has made a conscious choice to be there. And has chosen, and has agreed to be open to this communal process.

Bronte:
Especially with the space that you create. The very first thing that you say when you open the space, that this is an open space and we're here to support new work. And this work is very new.

Liv:
And it's kind of amazing to me what a difference that address made. That's something else that I really, definitely learnt from Small & Loud, is that actually probably the more explicit you can be, the better. Don't make assumptions about people knowing why they're there. If you say it out loud, that means everyone hears the same thing. You know, it's that same thing. It's like assuming that you have the same values. It's so much easier to just say what they are and what you would like and what you need and listen and be open to your collaborators and what they need. Because once you've had that conversation, it means you've basically created a working document around this shared agreement, which is fluid and will evolve throughout a process. But it means you're working from something, rather than is kind of like it's almost like you're in a dark room and you just like feeling around.

Bronte:
Did you kind of feel like you wanted to dive a little bit deeper when you started Dinner and a Show, because I know that was, that was like full length pieces.

Liv:
That's exactly right. Yeah, that's spot on. So Dinner and a Show, it was definitely about wanting to see how to produce a similar framework for engaging with full length works. And also because of this same teacher Leisa, I was becoming increasingly interested in what the ritual of sharing food could have upon a collaborative process. So in this like two week elective that I had with Leisa, every morning she would start with a communal pot of tea. And like, maybe some like, you know, those Japanese sweets, the like taro balls. Every morning. And the tea that she would make, it would be like a fistful of mint or herbs that she'd picked from her garden and she would explain where she'd sourced the tea from and talk us through everything. And it just, it created this kind of very expansive time. It was like, because she spent time setting this space up, it meant we could all be in it together and feel safe about being there. And that there was a feeling of, things would unfold in their natural time. Something around that. And so I was interested with Dinner and a Show about, what the ritual of sharing a meal could do to a conversation in response to a new work. That actually, you know, because sometimes the most intimate conversations they have associated with that, you know, the ritual of breaking bread together. Yes, so I was interested in kind of combining those two things. And, you know, some of the conversations that came out of that program were amazing. And quite a few of those plays went on to be produced. And I think even in our second year, we kind of put a patch on a program. So the first year it was the writers approaching in a quite ad hoc basis. The second year we wanted to be more deliberate and take a more curated approach. And so we programmed three months at a time and the writers had to go to each other's readings. And the first group from that second year went on to form their own production company. Yeah. It's a really visible impact that that framework had. And I think a big takeaway from, particularly from the work that I've done down here in Melbourne in this kind of community space, is that the structure that you create for people to come together can be a very light touch. It's like just bringing people together in a room and cooking a meal for them. And these quite significant outcomes are produced from that. I haven't quite worked out the relationship between the simplicity of the structure and this monumental impact that it can have. But I think it's something to do with, people need structure in some way and people need to be invited in, I think, and to feel like they are in a space that is being held. Rather than I guess, maybe like a free floating agent. Which is, you know, more than fair. But I've definitely noticed that these structures that I've come up with over the years, very simple, very, very straightforward. But have, you know, had these quite significant effects for people. And there's something there about the easefulness of it. And that actually I think all that needs to be there is a willingness on someone to hold that space, you know, and that's something that is part of my skill set for some reason. And that is just something that I feel very comfortable with doing. And so I've taken on that responsibility. And really that plus one of these structures is all that you need, really. And like the money to buy groceries to make a dinner.It's kind of very, very low impact. And it's much more about whether you have the emotional energy to hold space or not, I think is like the key resource.

Bronte:
Yeah, it's definitely not for everyone. I don't think.

Liv:
Not at all. Definitely not.

Bronte:
So your idea of sharing a meal, that comes from your teacher and not necessarily from your own personal love of food and baking?

Liv:
No, 100% a combination of the two. Yeah.

Bronte:
I was wondering kind of if it was like a chicken or the egg. Which on e came first...

Liv:
No, no. It was definitely a combination of the two. I think, even when I'd been in Sydney, I had tried to run a new writing development company there to varied effects. But the thing that I was most proud of in that company was a script development program that we ran out of Griffin Theatre for a couple of years. And I would bake for every reading. And at the time I thought my reason for doing that was because, you know, it was unfunded and so everyone was there out of there own, kind of the generosity of their own hearts. And so I wanted to show my appreciation and respect for that gesture and making something felt like a way to do that. I think that instinct was always there. And, you know, just being a person who physically needs to bake, I think there is also that. But then meeting Leisa and realising that actually, it is a mechanism for creating this shared space as well. And like such a simple one. There's something about the act of eating the same type of food that puts everyone on the same page somehow. And so it was very much kind of something that was in me already and Leisa kind of revealed the function of it to me.

Bronte:
Particularly also like, I know the types of things that you bake are all very like... Not all of them, but can be quite decadent. And there's like a pleasure in that food and then a connection because you're sharing this pleasure-full thing with the people.

Liv:
I think you're bang on again. I think there's something about, and it's the effort as well, it's like the effort is visible. Like if something seems hard to make, you know, that's probably quite important. I had never thought about that before. But it is about, if people can see that I have invested this effort, then it's showing that I am really invoking a reciprocity, like I'm showing my appreciation of them being there.

Bronte:
Which again, just leans into that safe space that you create for an artist that's sharing work that may not be complete or finished. And it creates a really beautiful base for people to feedback.

Liv:
It's like a form of showing up, I guess.

Bronte:
Yeah. And what a way to show up.

Liv:
What a way to show up. Sugar based showing up.

Bronte:
Ok, let's jump back in time.

Liv:
Love that.

Bronte:
Where does your creative journey kind of begin? Does it start when you're quite young and then like, what steps did you take? How did you end up in Melbourne? What theatres have you worked? Because I know you have a massive history of working in different theatres and for different companies. I'll delve into your work a bit later again. What has been your journey from the get go to where you are now? Just your life story.

Liv:
I mean, let me just mentally wrangle this. I guess the simplest answer is that it's never not been theatre. There's no before Common Era on my theatre journey. I do have a very clear moment where I was like, explicitly said that to someone else it was like the first time that I reported it outside of myself. I think I was maybe 11 and my mum - my mum was entirely responsible for my love of theatre. That should be said first of all. She loves the theatre and she would take my sister and I a lot when we were young. So she really set that kind of just like going to shows and seeing things and like being amazed. And not having, I guess, the awareness of the mechanisms yet. So really, I saw a lot of theatre without the self-consciousness of understanding how it was made yet. And I think that was responsible for, I guess like my arder. But Mum took me to see The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard at Wharf 1, it was an STC show. And we were sitting right down the front and the way Wharf 1 used to be constructed, it kind of had two major banks, kind of like The Playhouse at Arts Centre, but much smaller. And then this kind of like middle, this wedge bank. And so it meant our row was only two seats. And so we're wedged in near the front of the stage. And the entire stage, it was like a domestic drama, I think. I have no memory of the actual play. The set was a living room, except the walls and the floor were built of giant playing cards. Like king of spades, ace of diamonds, and then just like regular living room furniture on top of it. And the play unfolded and these cards were never mentioned. But it was like, something about the world was to do with these cards. And I just remember looking at it and clocking very consciously, the rules of ordinary life don't apply here. And just turning to mum afterwards and being like, "this is it. Like this, this is happening." I originally always wanted to be a performer. I was going to perform at The Globe, obviously. And that was very much squashed when I did the classic NIDA audition straight out of school.

Bronte:
Which can be horrific.

Liv:
It was indeed horrific. Let me paint you a picture. I was in a group of like maybe fifty pre-teenagers. I think I was like 17. And we were the first group of the day and I was made to go first in the group. And I got up to do Violas ring monologue from Twelfth Night. A classic, much overdone. And I started and I got two lines in... And there was like a panel of people, and the lead guy stopped me two lines in, he's like, "I'm sorry darling, have you ever seen Shakespeare performed before?" And, you know, just like felt my soul wash out of my feet. And that was pretty much a turning point where I started losing my capacity to perform. So I performed a little bit... Basically, I obviously didn't get into NIDA. That's the short story.

Bronte:
But also, you're so much better off for it. They don't deserve you.

Liv:
Oh, look, very much so. Thank God he publicly humiliated me. But I'd always been planning to go straight to Sydney University and I... So my big sister had been to Sydney Uni and had been part of the drama society there SUDS. And I thought it was just like a coolest thing that's ever happened. So I was like, my first day of orientation week I signed up in SUDS. And did some performing there across my first two years. And was doing a Wilino show. It was a beautiful production and I was performing in it. I remember Mum driving me home one evening and I remember turning to her, I think it was raining, turning to her and saying, "I can't... Like I can't perform anymore. I don't think I can be a performer." And her like almost like totalling the car. Because it was all I'd ever wanted to do. And so rather than like freaking out about not having an identity anymore, you know, I was like beginning of second year, I would have been like not even 19 yet. And I just decided to like, you know, like really bed down into uni and see what happened. And then I happened to read Antigoni in one of my English courses. I was like, "well, this is very amazing." And so I pitched it to direct at SUDS. And that was the first time I ever directed. And it was very much the point of no return. It was just like, I realised that I had been like fundamentally dissatisfied as a performer, only being allowed to think about one thing and that as the director you're actually in charge of thinking about everything. You know, it's not just your character that you're responsible for. You're actually responsible for the relationships between all of the characters and the relationship between the show and the audience, you know, all of those things. And so it really used my brain in a way that it wanted to be used. And I then did my English Honors Thesis in 2013 and wrote my thesis about Toni Morrison, which went on to have a massive influence on what I make my work about now. But at the same time as that I set up this first new writing company which was called Summersault Theatre. And ran that across 2013, 2014 and in 2014 did Summersault's first show. This was the first show that I had written. It was a solo performance that I made about my grandmother, who I never met. My dad's mum. I wrote this narrative about her escape from Vienna as a teenage Jewish girl, and I performed it with my cello, kind of as like a second performer, almost. And that was probably the most difficult thing that I've ever done because I wasn't a performer any longer and had developed massive performance anxiety. Also had massive performance anxiety around playing my cello in public because it was kind of, playing it was very much wrapped up with the death of my grandfather when I was in school. You know, I'd never met this woman. And what she went through had a devastating impact upon my dad's family. And also, as though all of that was not enough... Up until I had the idea to make the show, Dad had not really understood what theatre was. He didn't really understand why it was important. And then making this show was like a lightbulb. He suddenly got it. And so it's like to me, it had become this bridge for dad towards what I loved. So there was just like a humongous amount riding on this show. And did it. And it was amazing and extremely hard. I think I lost like eight kilos in two weeks because I had such anxiety. But whilst doing that, I was in a number of kind of creative and personal relationships that were like disintegrating around my ears. And also on top of that, I was the co-recipient of a grant in 2014 to go to a bunch of different fringe festivals in Australia and just see lots of work. And one of them was Melbourne Fringe. And I came down and whilst I was down here met up with the beautiful Charles Purcell, who I had known in Sydney, who I think was coming towards thee end of his first year at VCA in the performance course. And he was the one that was like, "you should apply for a VCA." I was like, "should I?" And that was pretty much the turning point for me in terms of... Sydney had started to feel very tenuous for me personally. And also, I could already feel that whatever my practice was going to be, there was not a space for it in Sydney. Perhaps because of the specialisation encouraged by NIDA. But cross artform work in theatre is really not encouraged. And already, you know, I had made this first show where I was working as the writer and the performer, and I could feel that the ways that I might want to work, were just, there was no space for it. I remember getting down to Melbourne. I think my first show was a LaMama show... There were five people who had made it and they'd all done like three roles each, it was like massively cross artform. That was kind of... I applied, I got in, I moved for the first time. I moved in by myself. That was a whole kind of, the like experience of loneliness really feels very closely tied to my encounter with learning directing. And so I did my masters across 2015-2016 and have stayed. You know, probably for obvious reasons. But there's a community down here that doesn't exist in Sydney and that plus the work that I want to make has a home down here in a way that I'm not sure it ever will in Sydney.

Bronte:
So you mentioned your first play. What was its name?

Liv:
This first show that I did was called My Name is Truda Vitz. Truda Vitz, Gertrude Vitz, was my grandmother. Basically, there was a family myth about what had happened to her. We had no real information. She never spoke about what happened to her. When my dad was seventeen years old, they were living in Adelaide at the time, and he found her one day just looking out the window and asked her if she was alright. And she told him to sit down and told him for the first time in his life, he's 17 years old, she told him that she was Jewish. On that day, he found out he was Jewish through her declaring this. But, of course, he was a teenager and it was 1964. So he didn't have any context for what that meant. And so didn't have a follow up question and she never spoke about it again. And Dad, I realised that Dad really felt like that was his opportunity to help her speak. And so that was the starting point for this show, was imagining what that conversation would have been if he had asked what that meant. And it kind of unfolded into this hypothetical framework of, kind of the show was peppered with me kind of telling these small stories of what her life might have been like in Vienna before she left. And always framing it with, "This is a guess, like this is hypothetical. We don't know." And the effect that that had, which I did not anticipate at all, was that it actually created this very reflective space for people who were watching it. Because we were so clear about it being a guess, but that because of the scale of this history, if it didn't happen to her, it would have happened to somebody's grandmother somewhere... It meant that a lot of audience members thought about their own family trees and the things that they didn't know. You know, so one of my best mates because of that show, found out that his mum was, in fact, not Argentinean, but was a Basque refugee and he'd never known that. And her reason for not telling him was because he'd never asked. And that happened to a number of friends, these kind of massive revelations of identity and the relationship between that and communication and that being quite a fraught exchange. And, you know, there was kind of this amazing moment, because dad had reached out to his brothers to let them know that it was happening. They hadn't talked in quite a long time. One of them responded, so they have a relationship now. It was like massive, a massive moment. And I think really sowed the seeds for me about wanting to make work from the ground up, like wanting to make something from nothing. And that actually took me quite a long time to come around to when I was at VCA, is that I was actually not at all interested in plays, or maybe directing even. And that actually is about this, making things, like making things by hand almost. And really actually like raughting them was the thing I was most interested in. And I think it was because of that first show, that it was like completely imagined, that seeded that maybe.

Bronte:
And you've continued to do that as well. And correct me if I'm wrong, but nearly everything you've written has been centred around women and women's stories and kind of like their place in society. Was that something that came up within your first piece or did that kind of develop...?

Liv:
Yes, so actually that came from that thesis that I wrote. So I wrote those things at the same time. So I wrote that play and wrote my English honors thesis in the same year. So they were very... I mean, the play took me four years to write, but I wrote kind of the heart of it in that year. And they massively inflected each other. But I would say my thesis was actually kind of more influential in what I make work about now. So I looked at Toni Morrison - completely remarkable, like just I don't have words for her, for how remarkable she is. But basically, I did a course in third year of my degree called Narrating Trauma. And Morrison's probably the most famous book Beloved was part of the course. And the course looked a lot... Spent a lot of time thinking about the tensions of narrating trauma. So like, for example, in relation to Holocaust literature, you need to make a record, like you need to pay testament to what happened so it never happens again. But also the act of language, the act of putting it in words is essentially reductive and diminishes the true horror of what happened. Like, that's a classic example of that tension. And Morrison's work, Beloved is exploring some of that, but also other trauma related issues within the context of slavery and kind of immediately post civil war. And I thought the book was incredible and it blew my mind. And what blew my mind even more was the teacher of that course, Victoria Burrows, who's just the biggest legend that I've ever met. I was obsessed with her. And I had gone to Sydney Uni and always wanted to write my honors thesis about Keats, John Keats the poet. But then I met her. I was like, she must be my supervisor. And she was like, could not have been less interested in Keats. And so I changed my thesis subject to be supervised by her. And Vic specialised in trauma theory and whiteness studies. So I was like searching around for a thesis topic and remembered how much I loved Beloved. And so went on to read everything that Morrison had written over that summer. And I showed up for my first supervision. I was like, "I think I would like to write about Toni Morrison" and Vic just like burst out laughing and told me to turn around. And she had like a floor to ceiling bookcase about Morrison. It turned out she specialised in Morrison. And I had no idea. So we went on to have this year of conversation about her. I ended up writing my thesis about the relationship between female friendship and identity in her works because I realised that she had basically created this model of identity forming, identity building, in her work where these young African-American girls meet each other on the cusp of adolescence. And through the force of their attraction to each other, through like the depth of their friendship, this like soulmateedness, they create this kind of small, precious bubble around them in which they can celebrate their blackness and their femaleness. Its like by seeing themselves in their other, they're able to valorise themselves. And there is always a moment in the books where that bubble is shattered and they're forced to come back into the public sphere through a process of shaming. Either racial shaming, sexual shaming, usually both. But what I was interested in was the moment before the shatter, like how to keep the bubble un-popped, I guess. And that's where the trilogy that I'm working on has come from. So each of these plays that I've been writing, the first one was my VCA graduation project, which was the first time.... This amazing moment, Draf my directing teacher, like a completely seminal influence. He was one like maybe six weeks into VCA, he pulled me into his office and he sat me down, he was like, "listen, you accept the fact that you're a writer and you need to write your graduation show." I was completely blown away. And I was very much kind of, like I was completely let loose at that point because I think I'd felt like I needed some sort of permission maybe. So this first show that I wrote was set in a women's swimming pool changing room. And I was explicitly looking at this bubble. So these two women who are strangers to each other, and what a moment of togetherness might offer as a process of transformation for them to enter back into the world, into the public sphere, stronger than they were when they left it. And I wrote that as a standalone work. I hadn't thought of the trilogy yet. And then that play got shortlisted for a prize. And I had not been aware in the process of applying for this prize that if it got shortlisted, I had to pitch a new play to them. And so I Sat And Waited, this first play, was actually the first play I'd ever written because Truda was a, it was like a solo, it was a monologue. So I'd never written dialogue before or characters or anything. And so of course I did not have a backup play, like I didn't have any pitch. And so I had two weeks to come up with an idea. I had to call them and get them to explain a pitch to me. And over the course of this two weeks, I had this idea of these two sisters in a prison visiting room. That was the very beginning of an idea that turned into the show, My Sister Feather. And it was through having that idea that I realised that I wanted to make this trilogy. And all three of these works I wanted to be set in a public space, looking at a moment of transformation between women. So the first one is a swimming pool. Second one is a visiting room in a women's prison. And the third one, the one I'm currently working on, is set in a blood donation centre. So it's like, that's the content of it. Its really influenced by the thesis that I wrote. And I guess the form, like the theatrical form for it, is massively influenced by Jenny Kemp, who is probably one of Australia's greatest female writer directors. And she mentored me in my second year at VCA. And she, I think she made her work almost entirely about women and particularly a look at the female psyche and its capacity to imagine and dream. And as part of this, she kind of forged a feminine dramaturgy, which is in part defined by this concept of vertical time. So rather than going through a traditional conflict driven narrative and using patriarchal storytelling structures, it actually goes down instead of forward. And I've really actively taken that on in this trilogy by choosing to look at a single moment, between these sets of women. It's like a single encounter to really drill down into that experience rather than having a plot per say, rather than kind of like moving through a sequence of events. So I think they're kind of the influences in the mix. It Would be definitely Jenny in terms of form, and Toni Morrison in terms of what I'm trying to investigate, maybe. Big summery.

Bronte:
No! So great, though. I've seen both of those that you've already written and put on and they're stunning. And there's something as a woman watching them, it's very empowering to see female relationships on stage. And also knowing the type of space that you create and having the types of experiences that I've had in theatre... It gives me so much hope and so much joy to know that there are people who get to work with you in a very safe space about very beautiful and important things that relate to being a woman in this world that we live in. It's a very exciting thing that you're working on.

Liv:
Yeah, it's interesting you say that about process. That's definitely something that I've also come to. Particularly during the process of making My Sister Feather was that, I guess this realisation that if the process is corrupt, the outcome will also be corrupt. Like if you don't have a good process, then what you make has no value. And that is... That's probably what is most important to me now, is that there is real integrity in the rehearsal room and that what we are making work about, I guess the politic of it needs to be as present, if not more so, in the way that the work is made. Like a can't just... Like what the work is trying to do or affect, really the feeling of it has to come from the way that it was made. I really realised that through presenting Sister Feather and a lot of feedback that we got was that people could feel that Emily & Belinda trusted each other. And that made me realise that that is actually key. That's integral. Is that the quality of the making is the most important thing, because if you can guarantee that it's almost like the show will take care of itself.

Bronte:
Yeah. There's also proof in how those spaces are run with such integrity because these actors keep coming back to work with you.

Liv:
Well, I mean, that's kind of, that's been the truly blissful thing of kind of moving to Melbourne. With both I Sat And Waited and My Sister Feather, I took a real gamble with both of them, of writing plays without telling the actors that I'd done that. So I Sat And Waited, I had seen Em perform - I'd never met her - I'd seen her perform. And I just thought she was amazing. And so I wrote the character of the woman for her and like sent her this very tentative email, got her email address from a friend who I knew she'd done a show with. Sent her this email, we found it the other day, we were laughing about it. This is Emily Tomlins. Sent her this email being like, "hi. aaarghh." And basically introducing myself and telling her that I had written this play. And would she be interested in coming to read it? And thank God she's as generous as she is and said yes. But then I did exactly the same thing with Belinda McClory for Sister Feather. Because we had, the show that I assistant directed with Jenny Kemp, Belinda was the lead actor and we got on really well. But, you know, she's completely formidable and terrifying and amazing. But I did the same thing. Em knew that I was writing it for the both of them, but I didn't tell Belinda until I'd written a draft. I was like, just inviting her over to read it. And she said yes as well. And, you know, I kind of knew that it was maybe going to happen when she showed up for that reading with a whole cake. So silly!

Bronte:
Soul Sisters. Meant to be.

Liv:
Yeah, I know. You know, it was really... Like the calibre of those women is extraordinary. You know, I vomited on my way to our first rehearsal because it's like, for them to trust me, that is... I have felt that as a massive thing that I have to meet. You know, it's on me to make sure that they have invested their trust well. That's my responsibility as the holder of that space. And, like, exactly like what you're saying. These plays are about how it is possible to create space in a society that does not have a lot of safe spaces in it. And so that meant that, you know, it was imperative that I did that in our rehearsal rooms as well, because that was the whole point of the shows.

Bronte:
You've kind of, particularly with I Sat And Waited, you wrote one of the characters for Emily Tomlins and then My Sister Feather, you wrote one of the characters for Belinda and the other for Emily. Is that where you start to build? Is that something that's kind of happened, where you kind of see the actors and you want to write a part for them? Or do you have a story beforehand that you want to create? Or does it go hand?

Liv:
It's really good question. I actually always, or have so far, written from place first. So I imagined the rooms. I think because that's maybe the thing that I am most interested in, is this ability to be in a public space and produce something private in it, like a sacredness, you know, whatever that kind of intangible thing is. So for all three of them, I wrote the space first and the ending for all three of them. I knew immediately how all three of them would end. I don't know how that happened. So they're kind of like the first two things that come to me, and knowing that I want to work with these actors. So I always know that. So actually, Bleeding Girls was the first, it was the first time I'd written for more than two people. It was also the first time I didn't know who one of the actors was going to be. I mean, I worked it out pretty quickly. It was very interesting, kind of the very first development we did when I only had about 40 pages of its text. It was Em and Belinda and a number of different performers. And that was really interesting, kind of finding differences in those voices and kind of clarifying what voice was needed through hearing that spectrum, I guess. But yeah. So it's kind of, I know the space. I know the ending or like the final moment, not how it should end, just that kind of, you know, so the fact that My Sister Feather had to end with a poem, the fact that I Sat And Waited had to end with them singing together, you know. It's about a shared act and that's actually exactly the same in Bleeding Girls. So it might just be that it, all three plays of the same ending. That might be the trick. It's just like different variations of them. It's really important to me that I write to voice, that I write... I guess it's part of this like handmade-edness, is that...

Bronte:
And being so involved with the work that you kind of get to pick whose voice that gets to be.

Liv:
Yeah. And I think it's also because I don't think of what I write as plays. That's been like an interesting realisation over the last little while, like when people refer to me as a playwright and that feeling... Just feeling like it doesn't fit maybe. Because I think particularly because of the way that I write as well, I deliberately never finish a script before we hit the rehearsal room. So I usually write maybe 2/3 of it. Deliberately for us to create the entire text together through the rehearsal process. So an example would be for Sister Feather, there were five scenes in the adult space, in the prison visiting centre, and there were four scenes in the shared childhood of the two sisters. So we see them as estranged adults in the centre and as like extremely close and loving sisters. And I wrote the text for the prison scenes, for the adult space, and I wrote placeholder scenes for the childhood. So I was like, for each of the four childhood scenes I basically knew the information that we needed to disseminate in it to make sense of the adult space, and that was it. And we used two very different processes. So for the adult space, it was just a text based rehearsal process and we would do that every morning, rehearsing the scenes. And then we'd break for lunch. And then in the afternoon we would run an hour, an hour and a half, two hour long form improvisation sessions. So I would give Emily and Belinda a task, or a piece of text like the poem, or usually an object. So each session I would give them like a bag of redskins or a box of tampons or one session a feather pillow. And I very quickly realised that I had not put a tarpaulin down and we were in a carpeted room. That took two hours to pick those feathers out of the carpet, but it was entirely worth it. I realised that what was really important was that through these improvisations, the women, Em and Blinda created the history of themselves as sisters. Not only did that mean that we had a bank of material to devise those childhood scenes from, but it also meant that that history and that language that they developed in those play sessions became the bedrock for the prison scenes for them as adults. You know, they actually genuinely had a shared history that that animosity could sit on top of and kind of crumble over. And so I think that's maybe why I didn't think of them as plays, because there is such a deliberate incompleteness on my part, because I'm much more interested in this kind of shared authorship that happens through this kind of text and devising process. I guess, you know this is a very long answer to a question, but it is like space, knowing the performers, and knowing that I only need to write a certain amount before we get into the rehearsal room. Basically, it's my job to come up with text. You know, I've pretty much written the entire script for this latest one for Bleeding Girls, but that it's also about being in charge of the blueprint of what we're going to fill in together. So it's really like being in charge of the structure rather than knowing what the thing is actually going to be or look like. I think. It's obviously still like an emerging process, but that seems to be what it is so far.

Bronte:
Is there a plan of when we can see...

Liv:
It is going to be, we're thinking it's going to be next November. It's going to be July or November. The dates are still...

Bronte:
July or November.

Liv:
July or November. They're kind of like the two patches of availability that we all have. But yeah, very much next year. You know, even just this week, I've been going through this process... Because we were facing this decision at one point about whether we would need to postpone it another year. And it was actually an amazing, it almost felt like I'd been dunked in a bath of ice water because I realised it would be too heartbreaking to postpone again. Because I think I have felt quite dissociated from performance this year, you know, because of everything that's been happening. But it was amazing. It was almost like someone had switched the light on maybe. The threat of this being moved back again made me realise how much it has been what I've been working towards. In terms of what I've been maybe pinning hopes upon it.

Bronte:
It just needs to happen. Next year.

Liv:
And also, probably in terms of growth of practise. You know, this trilogy is really the first thing that I've done as an artist. And so I probably need to start thinking about other things as well. Maybe.

Bronte:
Maybe. But also like I mean, how can you know, I feel like this year is really clarified for me, I can't make plans. Like you know, there were a few moments where I, I think I'd even talked to you about it, that I'd planned to write... This is so funny when I talk about it, because I'm like, "oh my God, Bronte." I had planned to write my first play for this year's Fringe. And then it kind of like, just the year that has happened has just not been one that's conducive to me writing that. There's no way that I could have planned that. I know some people work really well on a time frame, but for something like that, particularly with it being like the first thing I've ever written... Yeah. It just is not realistic for me. But, you know, you never know where this trilogy could take you. You know, and I guess because it's your baby, it's your thing that you have created from scratch... The possibilities are endless and also incredibly exciting.

Liv:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, kind of we've really deliberately as a team, been working towards it being presented as a trilogy at some point. We are having a conversation with LaMama about that.

Bronte:
Wow. Oh, my God. Just for my own interest and like the actors... Would that all be performed in one day.

Liv:
I honestly don't know. I don't even know how you perform a trilogy.

Bronte:
Can you imagine poor Emily doing my three in a row.

Liv:
Yeah, I have no idea how you present a trilogy, but I think if anyone is able to do three plays in a row, it's Emily Tomlins.

Bronte:
Absolutely.

Liv:
But I think also I'm really interested in the scale of it I guess. In the, ambition feels like the wrong word. But, you know, if I was to think about it for too long, I would never consider myself someone capable of presenting a trilogy. But I think that's why I want to do it. You know, it's that kind of... It speaks to me somehow about something that I've always been interested in, is the relationship between the intimate and the epic, kind of very small and the very large. And that, you know, it's a substantial amount of work presenting a body of work. You know, a trilogy is like, you know, suggest a certain scale. And yet the plays themselves are so small, you know, there is like a smallness to them that feels really important. And I'm interested in that tension, of the like the scale of creating three plays from scratch and them all deliberately having the same production values, I guess. Like we've really deliberately not, we haven't tried to pitch the plays as they've progressed. We haven't done LaMama explorations, LaMama Courthouse, 45 Downstairs. Or like 45 Downstairs, Malthouse. It's really important that the scale has stayed the same. What is ambitious is the vision, maybe, rather than the production values, which I think is how people think about scaling up sometimes.

Bronte:
It's so just fascinating to hear you talk about it because you're so articulate in your own observance of yourself and your process and how you...

Liv:
Oh amazing I'm so glad. I don't know. I don't know whether I feel that on the inside.

Bronte:
That's normal, I think. I've always thought this about you that it's very, I mean it feels clear to me that you have a lot of self-awareness. And that you can articulate on it and that even talking about taking these shows and building them or like allowing them to become whatever they become, and then also your awareness of like maybe it's time to start looking at doing something else. It's like you have this self awareness of your abilities and your process and what you're working on. But then also looking forward, it seems to me, in a very nourishing way of like, what can challenge me next? Like what can I develop next or what can I learn next? And it just feels very refreshing because I get the feeling from you that it comes from a very supported place within yourself of being like... Not like a self flagellation, self thrashing. Being like, I have to move forward. It's a very gentle thing, which I think would help your creative practice be quite sustainable.

Liv:
Yeah. And I think, you know, I've been working pretty deliberately on a two year model, so doing one show every two years. I mean, obviously that model is vulnerable to a pandemic, it's turned out. But as is everything. Yeah. It's an interesting question about growth. I was just having this conversation this morning actually, thinking about growth even within what I'm currently making and noticing what that is, is feeling more and more comfortable with knowing less and less. And that actually, you know, I Sat And Waited, I'd written maybe two drafts before I showed it to Em and Rosie, the two people I'd written it for. Sister Feather I'd written a draft. Let Bleeding Girls, I'd written 35, maybe 40 pages before our first development. A new show that I'm working on outside of the trilogy - Heavens above - I very deliberately wrote nothing before we went into our first development. And I presented the idea. Like I presented the story and we workshopped the story together. And then I went away and wrote each week. And by the end of development, we had the first 20 pages of the show.

Bronte:
This is, again, this is developing with your actors that you're going to want to move forward with. What an amazing way to work. The text and the story will be so ingrained in those actors and the characters they've built and grown up with.

Liv:
That's exactly right. And it also, I think that's also really come from... I did a lot of assistant in directing in 2016 and I observed a number of rooms where the performers were radically underutilised. I watched rehearsal rooms where actors knew things and had skills that would have absolutely transformed the show. And realising that the director was not even aware of them, let alone choosing not to use them. That was a really seminal moment for me. I think, in this like path to working with a team from scratch because it feels like a waste to me to not use the resources that are available to you in the people that you're working with. You know, like a perfect example is this new show that I'm working on, one of the two performers is a singer songwriter. And so this is like a kid's show that's going to have songs in it. And so she is writing the lyrics as well as us creating this character together at the same time. And the other performer has training as a classical opera singer. And so that's informing the type of songs that she's writing for him. I just feel like it's so imperative to honour what people are bringing to the process and to the room. So I think that is another reason why I do create things from scratch, because I want to be able to harness all of that. Rather than having a play that already exists and those skills not being able to fit into that framework, maybe. Yea,. so it feels like, this feeling OK with being more and more vulnerable in terms of not knowing, and trusting people that not knowing and like being open about that not knowing, can actually be very empowering for collaborators. And that kind of moment where, you know, you're facing maybe something that needs a solution or kind of a question and actually... I remember the first moment in Sister Feather where I said, "I don't know, I don't know what we should do here." And there was just this avalanche of suggestions in the room. It was just like one of the most miraculous things I've ever seen. But it's like, it was a truly transformative moment of recognising that being the holder of the space doesn't mean you need to know at all, let alone have all of the answers. Yes, I think it's like a combination of feeling comfortable with that and really wanting to harness people's skills from the get go that has led to this, like an increasing lack of script, I guess, in my processes.

Bronte:
It sounds like such an interesting way to work. I don't think it's a common experience for many actors.

Liv:
And I think it would definitely not be everyone's cup of tea. It really does ask people to offer themselves. I hope that by being open and vulnerable, I will inspire a reciprocity. I will inspire my collaborators to do the same. But not everyone wants to do that, you know, and that needs to be respected. I have experienced a certain gravitational force with my collaborators. We've kind of just like appeared to each other and realised that we're simpatico in terms of feeling comfortable with being open. And that's how the collaboration has formed.

Bronte:
That's perfect. And very lucky.

Liv:
You know, I am aware that it is not a process that is very common and also that it probably would not have traction with a lot of people. And that's completely fine.

Bronte:
Have you ever heard the analogy of the bird and the worm? The type of writer that you are? I'll share it with you. I feel like you've kind of already answered it, but when I first heard it, I thought it was a really interesting way of understanding the way that you work. And you may not relate to either of these because the way that you work is quite different to, you know, a writer that sits down and...

Liv:
Writes a play.

Bronte:
Writes a play. So the idea of the bird and the worm is; the bird is kind of flying above the idea and can see everything, see how things interact and the journey of the story and, you know, flies above and sees the ending and then has it all thought out before they start writing. And the worm is more of a... You know, the worm burrows underground and is kind of in the darkness and doesn't really know which way it's going until suddenly it pops out at the end and sees the work that it's created. I'm curious to know, do you relate to either of those? And I mean, obviously, as I said before, it doesn't relate to everyone. I thought it was a really interesting analogy of how writers work.

Liv:
That is a great question. Maybe I'll describe the way that I write. And we can work out if it's more like one or the other.

Bronte:
Ok, I think I know, but yes.

Liv:
I feel like I actually don't write very much and that is something that I would like to change. I would like to write a lot more than I do. Because I have developed this mindset somehow that writing makes me feel so good that I'm not allowed a lot of it. And so I've developed this work process, this writing process as a result, where I have long periods of gestation. So I started thinking about Let Bleeding Girls Lie in May 2017 and I started writing it in October 2018. And I think about the idea for a long time and then write a lot in a very short amount of time and then leave it again for a long time. Because I think I have picked up a faith somewhere in the background processing that a brain can do and trusting that it will work out the logic of the play if I just leave the draft alone. Rather than trying to work out the logic through the writing process, it's like writing and coming to understand some of the logic through that writing process. But then just leaving it and letting my brain tick it over in the background whilst I do other things. And so it means, I write very, very fast. I kind of could write a draft maybe in two weeks, but then I would leave it for eight months.

Bronte:
Yeah, right. And that draught that you write, do you kind of already know where you're going with it?

Liv:
No, I don't think so. I think...

Bronte:
That makes me think it's more of the worm approach.

Liv:
I feel like I always... I definitely fall into this trap where I always start editing from the beginning. It means my first scene is the most polished of my drafts because I always start at the beginning and then get a certain way and then I have to stop and rewrite a bit. Definitely is the worm, isn't it? Probably.

Bronte:
I think so.

Liv:
I feel I get some things from above. The ending and the like way to make and that sort of thing. But maybe the writing process itself is like a burrowing through. Good question. It's my takeaway for the day.

Bronte:
That's my job here. It's to ask the questions Liv.

Liv:
Well they're very good.

Bronte:
Thank you. Ok, we've been at this for a large amount of time that I've thoroughly enjoyed every second of. We'll just do some quick little questions kind of about your practice. Do you have something in your day that you just have to do? And if you don't do it, you don't feel right?

Liv:
I mean, LOL, the answer's writing. It's definitely writing. And I have to, I also have to move every day now and I have to swim at least every second day. This week is a great example of recent tumultuous times because I've been for six swims in five days.

Bronte:
What?

Liv:
Yeah. Like split between the ocean and a pool. It has been necessary, but yeah. So I would say swimming is like essential, but really being very active every day. And if I don't journal it's like there's been a constriction in my heart. It's like a physical pain.

Bronte:
Yeah. Like there's a lid.

Liv:
Yeah. And just like the pressure... It's like the heart valve and the air hasn't been released.

Bronte:
I feel that. What is your favourite thing to do creatively.

Liv:
Oh my God. Probably writing. I think just like the pleasure of it is so intense. Probably my next favourite thing to do is; when developing a script and usually Belinda McClory plays this function in the room, but it can be anyone... Says, "oh, this means that." You'll be like "what do you mean it means that?" And this person will go, "yeah, well, these three different things in the script, they all mean this." And it's like the script is actually a sandpit and there's a bunch of buried treasure in it. And these collaborators find these pieces a treasure, they like draw conclusions from these patterns that I haven't even known are there. And then because they've like shown me these objects, I can then go and deliberately write towards that. It's like one of my absolute favourite things. Because it speaks to our ability to make meaning where other people didn't realise meaning was there.

Bronte:
Absolutely. It just fascinates me, the meaning that an audience can make.

Liv:
It's amazing. It's so subjective. It's radically subjective. I mean, that's why I love theatre, because it's just like two different people will have one hundred percent the opposite reactions to a show. And it's the same show.

Bronte:
Almost like they're having completely different experiences, even though they're in the same room.

Liv:
Yeah, they're sitting next to each other.

Bronte:
Absolutely. What's the thing that you're most proud of that you've done in your creative career?

Liv:
Oh, my God. Probably writing My Sister Feather for my sister. I mean, I had a horrifying moment... My mom and my sister came down to see it in its first week and we all went for pizza after the Friday night show. There was a big group of us walking back to the tram stop. And my sister hung back with me. She and I are extremely close. And she said to me, "I'm sorry if I didn't play with you enough when we were little." I was like, "oh, my God, this play is not about us." Because I dedicated it to her in the program and I tried to explain that the spirit of it was dedicated to her, but she genuinely had taken on that what had happened to this sisters was like how I felt about our relationship. Yeah. That would probably be it. Being able to somehow wrestle my giant feelings for her into a performance.

Bronte:
What a gift.

Liv:
And also the moment that I realised that I truly had written it for her was the first night that she came and saw it. And she laughed the loudest at all of my dumb jokes. Like jokes that I didn't even realise were in there. And no one else laughed at. And her laugh was just like ricocheting off the Courthouse walls. I was like, "oh, it really is for her. She gets it the most."

Bronte:
Oh, my heart!

Liv:
It was the best. It was truly the best.

Bronte:
What brings you joy?

Liv:
Actually, so many things. I think that's one of the big things I've realised this year, is that I think because I find joy in very small things, that means there is a lot of it, which is like quite amazing and exhilarating to realise. A perfect example is I'm obsessed with flowers. Like if I could be a florist, I would be. Seriously. My sister bought me a floristry course for my birthday, which I'm just about to be able to start because we're coming out of lockdown. Oh, my God. But the experience of being, you know, in stage four lockdown and we would go for a big walk, like an hour long walk every morning. And becoming really intensely familiar with our suburb and the gardens in it. And because stage four happened to coincide with the first flush of spring, kind of seeing this like tidal wave of flowers pass through our suburb each morning and just like each morning actually being so different because of this growth, this period of change. That is just like one of the most intensely joyful things to me. And it's like so accessible. I feel so lucky because of that. Reading brings me really intense joy and I think connecting. I mean, this sounds so obvious but genuinely connecting with people that I love and all the small different ways that you can do that. But, you know, really realising, not being allowed to be with people this year, and I have a lot of very close people who experienced quite intense personal tragedy and the like.... The not good enough-ness of sending a bunch of flowers, but not being allowed to be with them in person and realising that proximity and presence is actually the most important thing. And that that is the thing that we have not been allowed this year. That proximity and that sharing of space is like intensely joyful.

Bronte:
Well, it's been a joy to share his space with you today.

Liv:
What an honour. Thanks for having me.

Bronte:
Thanks for coming. Thanks for sharing everything that you've shared.

Liv:
Such a pleasure.

Bronte:
It's been a joy. So that was my chat with Liv. I don't know about you, but I could talk to her forever. She is so generous with her time and with her thoughts and with her passion. She's so willing to share her love of writing and theatre. It's infectious and it's wonderful. Our next guest is someone very dear to my heart. I have talked about this person several times on the podcast, probably to the point where you know exactly who I'm talking about when I say this person is integral to my confidence and my self belief as a creative human. I'll be announcing who this guest is in the next couple of weeks. So just keep an eye out on the Chats with Creative Instagram. That's @chats.w.creatives and you will find out soon enough. If you think you know who is coming up next by me literally just saying that this person is someone that I look up to very, very much. And that I've talked about several times on podcast. And who is also currently not in Australia, but in this wonderful land very close to Australia off the East Coast. Yeah, just holler! Let me know if you think you know who it is. I'm super excited to be sharing this next chat with you. Stay tuned. Stay creative. I'll chat to you soon.

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RESOURCES 

• Odin Theatre Company, the theatre company Liv was observing as the Pandemic hit

• Small & Loud, the Melbourne monthly development meet ups that Liv started in 2016

• National Young Writers Festival

• Leisa Shelton, the teacher who would start each lesson with a shared pot of tea

• My Name is Truda Vitz by Olivia Satchell, Somersault Theatre Company

• Olivia’s Theatre Company: The Voice In My Hands

  @thevoiceinmyhands

• The Grief Trilogy by Olivia Satchell

• Dr Victoria Burrows, Liv’s supervisor in her honors year at Sydney University

• Jenny Kemp
  

Head over to the @chats.w.creatives instagram page to stay up to date with episodes and guests we have coming up!

Follow our host Bronte Charlotte on Instagram @bronteandsunshine

Follow this week's guest Olivia Satchell on Instagram @ojsatchell