1.6 On Tour

With Liam Alexandru

Liam Alexandru and Bronte Charlotte chat about their different experiences touring educational theatre in schools across Victoria (Australia) and throughout Germany, Spain and Portugal. They delve into 'small town mentality' and how it shapes your understanding of people and society around you, how to shift your mental state when playing a certain character can start to affect your mental health, and how the effect of the coronavirus will create the “New Renaissance of Art.”

During this episode we discuss:

• [03:58] An unexpected Melbourne winter, solo travelling through Europe, how travelling and the information and experiences you have while travelling changes your perception of life around you

• [09:00] Liam’s journey into acting and writing, and why “come back with more *life* experience” is classic feedback when going through drama school auditions

• [17:05] Bronte and Liam realise they’ve lost an hours worth of interview

• [18:02] Liam and Bronte are back discussing Liam’s experience touring educational theatre in Europe, finding the fun in the work, and how touring just inherently develops your acting and craft 

• [23:17] How to shift your mental health when you are constantly affected by playing certain characters - day in, day out - and the difficulties that arose with different schools and audiences that would make each day just that little bit more challenging

• [32:29] Brexit vs Coronavirus, the two big evils for creatives and touring shows

• [34:50] Shipwreck Productions, collaborating with friends, and the “New Renaissance of Art”

• [39:09] Growing up in a small town, and breaking free of the “small town mentality” that goes hand in hand with that 

• [44:21] Having a daily practice, the joys of creativity, and a super speedy list of all 39 Shakespeare plays

• [51:04] GET ON IT: Anahata Collective 3x weekly Zoom workouts for creatives

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Bronte:
This is Chats with Creatives, a podcast where we talk about living as creative humans in a capitalist society, the experiences we have insecurities we hold, a place where we have open and inclusive conversations to learn, understand, educate and connect. My name is Bronte and this is On Tour with Liam Alexandru. Liam and I talk today a lot about our experiences on tour. We have both done educational theatre tours in very different circumstances. My tour was in 2019, touring regional Victoria with Educational Shakespeare. And Liam's tours have been in Germany, Portugal and Spain. We talk about how the people you're with and the audiences that you come across, the schools that you go to and the students that you're performing to, how those things can really change your experience of the tour. Also how your role in the plays can affect your mental health, your experiences while performing... It's just a really interesting chat about performing one thing for a really long time to a particularly hard audience. Kids can be pretty tricky to, kind of, satisfy. Liam and I will talk about how we met and how our friendship blossomed. It's a really precious friendship to me. We did really bond when we first met over theatre and our love of performing. The friends that you make about travelling tend to have a special place in your heart. I will say that Liam will be my first cis white male guest. I have kind of leant away from having cis white males on this platform, just because I really do want to hear what people have to say that don't usually have heaps of opportunity to speak about their experiences. Liam and I do talk about our similar experiences because we've both been on tour and I think it is important to also have allies on this platform and people who are fighting the fight for us as women, nonbinary folk and female presenting people. I should probably add as well that while recording my interview with Liam, I had my first technical slip up. Which I think is okay, considering I've done a few of these and I'm not hugely technically savvy. I did have to check out some sound stuff that was going on in our Zoom chat. And when I logged back on, I didn't press record. So the second half of this podcast was recorded on a different date. And I would like to also point out that Liam joked about this several times in the first recording. He kept saying that, "you know, if something goes wrong, we'll just have to do it again. We'll do it five times until we get it right." Lo and behold, we did have to do this again. So, just cut me some slack on this one. I've definitely learned my lesson and I am checking that record button every time I record now. Just before I begin, I do want to acknowledge that I am recording this podcast on Wurundjeri Land, the stolen lands of the Kulin Nation. So grab a cuppa, go for a walk, sit down in your comfiest chair... And we'll get started. Welcome, Liam! How are you?

Liam:
I went into lockdown like, "I'm going to get some things learnt. I'm going to read some things. I'm going to play some games. I'm going to write some projects..." What do I do? I play all my games and I start planting seeds! And spinach which I got told would not grow indoors, but I beat them all.

Bronte:
Spinach?

Liam:
Yeah, they told me that spinach can't grow indoors because it's an outdoor plant. I guess I'm a naughty boy.

Bronte:
What a talented man. I mean, that's all you need as a cis white male to just plant some things and everyone's like falling at your feet. OK! Easy questions first, how did we meet, Liam?

Liam:
How did we meet? We met on a bender weekend down...

Bronte:
A really good way of describing it. People who know me will know that I drink one glass of wine and then I'm like, "good night, everybody."

Liam:
And that is good. That saves money. And it means that you save quickly. Yeah, we met because I... to make a short story long... I was really sick of my life here in the UK. I had just come off doing a really, like, horrible acting job and I was like, "I need to get away from this country. I'm so done." And so, I went to a couple of auditions, one being in Spain, and then I flew from the UK to Spain, Spain back to the UK, UK to Australia. Yeah, I came to see our mutual friend Tara O'Conner - shout out! - And yeah, we all agreed to go down to the south coast... Great Ocean Road.

Bronte:
Great Ocean Road. Oh my God. Do you remember the fucking walk we did where we were all in very inappropriate footwear and it had rained overnight and we were just sludging through mud.

Liam:
Yes, the mud and there was like a stream and we were all in vans. You wore Doc Martins though! I'm pretty sure you were wearing dungas, a black shirt, some kind of like Parka jacket. And that was the ultimate going-out-wear... Dungas, Parka jacket, Doc MArtin boots. It's better than all of us! I was wearing black jeans, a Christmas jumper and vans. A Christmas jumper in the middle of July. It's because I... OK for anybody listening who's from Australia, which I'm pretty sure is going to be like 90% of the demographic...

Bronte:
Except you and Julie!

Liam:
I travelled over to Australia in July thinking it would be a heat wave because I'm used to heat waves in July/June time. I get over there and I'm so cold I think I spent a quarter of my spending money at Savers. So cold! I brought shorts and sandals!

Bronte:
Do you know what, if you had gone to Queensland, Queensland has the most beautiful winters. Like 20 degrees, sun's out, frosty mornings but the days are t-shirt weather. So you would have been fine, but not in little old Melbourne.

Liam:
I think I've never been colder in my life. I never thought I'd say that about Australia. I was just so cold. And what was worse... I say worse but it was also a godsend because Tara's great... I was sleeping on Tara's sofa or 'couch'. Obviously you don't have insulation because you don't need to because you're a nice warm country. So I was sleeping on this sofa with like three blankets on top of me, fully clothed. And, I was sweating because there was so much on me, but I was also cold so I was waking up in cold sweats. It was the funniest thing. There was nothing like, there was even sun in Melbourne and that was really nice. But as soon as you got into the shade, the cold just like wrapped around.

Bronte:
I shouldn't laugh at your pain.

Liam:
It's fine I got some really good stuff from Savers. I'm really upset there wasn't, there isn't something like that in the UK. I bought my best Hawaiian shirt in Melbourne for eight dollars.

Bronte:
Do you still wear it?

Liam:
I do. It's extra large. It's too big for me. I think that's what makes it look better.

Bronte:
Fashionable. It's all about the fashion. So what happened after that? After you were in Australia?

Liam:
You gallivanted around all of Europe! I was so excited I was following your journey! You want to places I haven't even been to.

Liam:
No way.You went to Hungary!

Bronte:
I did go to Hungary. Yeah, I did. I fucking loved it but it was also incredibly difficult. I essentially went to all the places really, really badly affected by the Holocaust. And I did whole like history tours and stuff and then I ended up going to Auschwitz and then I went to Berlin and I just spent all these places that were like... That had like a really dark, sad history. And I was alone and sad because I had just started a relationship with someone who was on the other fucking end of the world. He was in Antarctica while I was in Europe. Yeah. Fuck, it was it was rough. And I think seeing you for that weekend in Germany, that gave me this huge breath of fresh air to be like, "I can do one or two more weeks and then I'm with you again for the new year."

Liam:
Yeah! That was really fun. That was so surprising. I remember us talking about let's meet up, but then that is still the best, one of the best accommodations we stayed out because it was right up in the mountains.

Bronte:
Yeah there was like a foot of snow outside. We couldn't go outside! The truck nearly didn't get up the mountain. Remember when you came to pick me up at the train station?

Liam:
I shouldn't have been driving that night. They said, "don't leave!" And I was like, "I have to pick someone up." Driving into a snowstorm. I went to Krakow in Poland, and I find it so haunting. But it's just so eye opening, it's so crucial to do to like see it and like learn from it. I don't know if you felt the same when you went to those places as well.

Bronte:
I do. I don't think I could... I've never fully understood and I still can't fully understand. But I have a much deeper understanding of that part of history and how horrible it was for so many people. For whole countries. God, it's just horrible. But I think, I agree, I think it's really important to do and really important to see. Can you give us a little rundown of who you are and your history in the creative industries?

Liam:
I am an actor, or thespian if you will. You shall. An actor, writer, theatre maker? I think that just for me, kind of encompasses director and producer, because I wouldn't call myself either of those because I'm not very good at them but I can make theatre. And just creative, really. I just think it's so hard to put like a pin in things, especially in this industry, because this is the industry of 'Jack of all trades.' We all do a little bit of something.

Bronte:
Did you start getting into the arts in high school? Were you a creative child?

Liam:
Well, no, there wasn't any kind of creative role models in my family. I always loved films. Films and TV and video games were my solace and my, kind of, 'get away' from everything. I loved watching films - not critically - comic books and books and all that kind of medium, I just loved reading. I loved the visuals of TV and film. Religiously, I wouldn't come home and do work or homework or anything. I'd watch TV. For a long time I thought that's a bad thing. But in recent years, which I'm sure we'll get onto, I don't think that's the case. I think that's actually a very good thing for this industry. But yeah, I wasn't really a creative kid at all. I actually wanted to be a history teacher. I wanted to teach history at a high school level. I think, I took up youth theatre when I was about 13, just local community, because all my friends did it. And I was interested in kind of like acting, but not so much like I am today. But I was like, "oh, this might be fun." And it was more of a social club than it was like, 'come here and learn how to act.' And so I wanted to do drama GCSE levels, which is the end of high school. And I was persuaded by my mom, "don't do it because it's a waste of a qualification and you'll do nothing with it. Drama will get you nowhere." I took cooking instead. So then I got a bit more into drama and I enjoyed it. And I went into A-levels, which is basically college, thinking "I'm still going to be a history teacher. This is what I want to do. I want to teach history." So I took history. I took politics because I thought it was something that goes quite nicely hand in hand. I took psychology because it was always interesting. And I took drama, but I only took drama as a way of learning how to talk to an audience, which would be my students if I ever become a history teacher. And when I was doing drama theatre studies... This is when I kind of realised, "this is what I need to do." I loved devising, I loved creating something. And we created a lot of theatre. We played around with different practitioners and methods. We didn't really look at Shakespeare at all, until an opportunity came up with a company called Shakespeare for Schools, who I've since worked for. And what they do is they, it's kind of this opportunity program where the school pays in a certain amount of money and then they get to take a class of kids, teach them Shakespeare and rehearse it with them. And then, at the end of a time, they get to go and perform that Shakespeare play - Only half an hour, it's abridged - In an actual professional theatre. So we went to a local theatre in Birmingham when we did it, and we did A Midsummer Night's Dream. And we were, it's the oldest theatre in Birmingham called the Old Vic. So that's such a massive thing because you're there in a real professional standing. People pay to come and see you.

Bronte:
And you only had half an hour?

Liam:
Only half an hour because you are up against four other schools. And it's not a competition, but like... And I played Bottom - and I got told that because I have no inhibitions, apparently. I don't know how good that is. It's like, "you just don't care. You'll do anything." I was like, "Yeah, cool, that's me." I remember I did one bit and it got a big laugh. I wasn't really well acquainted with Shakespeare before this, only from what my dad had taught me. And I just remember seeing this whole audience room erupt with laughter. And I just realised, "yeah, this is, this is what I need to do with my life. This is me. I like acting. This is what I like doing." It was at that moment I was like, "I need to do this. I can't do anything other than this." So I carried on with my studies and then I got to the end of college... It was make or break time. Do I go to university or drama school and study further or what do I do? I wasn't ready for university and I watched a friend of mine who was also in drama and theatre studies - and she was a phenomenal actress - She auditioned for drama school and didn't get into anywhere, which is unfortunate, but she really wanted to escape our little town. And so she went to a university. And she loved the university but I think she came away and she didn't want to do that anymore. And I thought "that's the last thing I want to do is, I don't want to go and study and realise I don't want to do it anymore. I don't want to go down this line." And especially since we have to pay so much money for it as well. It's nine thousand pound a year just for tuition fees, everything else is on top, living, accommodation and whatnot. So I went and did a foundation course at our local theatre. At the end of it, you get as your like 'final exam', you get thrown into an actual paid professional performance and you get paid what they called 'work expenses'. And so you didn't get paid a full wage like all the other actors. You got paid your travel to and from the theatre space. So that was like a really nice jump into the industry. But the best thing to come out of it was networking and the people you met. That's kind of how I got in, further into the industry. It was by knowing people and networking and just making friends with people and meeting them and going to auditions and... Yeah. It was a really interesting thing. And I try to encourage people like that. These days people say like, "they have to go study." You don't have to. I want to still, I still want to go and study. It's not like, you want to be a rocket scientist and thereby you have to do all the sciences, get a master's, things like that. You don't, you can go in off what you know. And I remember one guy who I performed with once, he went to a boarding school and then straight after boarding school, went to university and did genetics. But then he realized, "I want to be an actor." So after then, he went to a drama school to audition for their master's degree. He told me that they were reviewing his files and his information and they just went, "So this is your first year auditioning?" "Yeah. Yeah." "So before this, you were at University of York doing genetics?" "Yeah. Yeah." "And before that you were at boarding school." "Yeah, yeah. Yeah." "OK, cool." And he said that they just put the papers down and put their pencils down, just like that, and just sat back and watched. And he performed it, and they said, "you were really good but you haven't got enough life experience so we can't take you on this year." And I thought, "There's so much more to see right now that would make it so much better." Because if, I think at that age, at 18, you kind of think... You're quite a cocky person, you know the way the world and whatnot. But there's so much more to learn.

Bronte:
I auditioned for drama school straight out of high school, didn't get in, and I got the same feedback. It was like, "you haven't lived. You haven't experienced anything outside of your home, your town, your city." I auditioned the next year... Similar feedback. Responses generally were, "Go and live!" Because the second year that I auditioned, I hadn't moved out of home, I hadn't travelled, I had just studied a bit and worked a bit. And that wasn't life experience. And I, looking back, I fully agree. I agree wholeheartedly that if I had gotten into drama school in those first couple of years, I wouldn't have had the capacity to experience things the way I did when I re-auditioned four years after I'd graduated from high school... or four or five years. And then I came back in... And even like coming back from Europe, my art and my acting and my understanding of people and my understanding of myself was so different to how it was before I went to Europe. I was alone for three months in like, on the other side of the world. And even though it's not that long, it's a huge experience to have. And it totally changed the way I even treated myself and talked to myself and saw other people around me and started to understand other people's experiences a bit more. I completely agree. It's so hard to go into a drama school at 18 years old and you're still living at home. I mean, life experience is different for everyone, but living and experiencing things is always going to deepen your understanding of people, which is essentially what acting is.

Liam:
It's very subjective. And like, I think the biggest thing to take from it is like that, you need to have lived. You need to have lived the world and see the world. And I don't mean necessarily like travelling, but like experience different experiences. I think that is the biggest thing is, because that's our job, we've got to show life. So whether you study straight away out of school or you defer it until a little bit later or you don't go at all, you just need to kind of like, jump headfirst into life and just take everything that comes with it.

Bronte:
Oh, my fucking God.

Liam:
What?

Bronte:
I'm not recording... Oh, no...

Liam:
For the record, Bronte just gave me an hour's worth of interview and she didn't record.

Bronte:
Literally an hour, though.

Liam:
A solid hour worth of content.

Bronte:
The content is gone forever. And I never want to hear you say any of it ever again. I'm kidding. Oh, fuck me dead. I can't repeat gold. You know, I do it once and then... I'm a terrible actor clearly.

Liam:
Unless you're Stanley Kubrick, you ask for 40 takes. Just keep going. Just keep repeating it.

Bronte:
I can't imagine that.

Liam:
No, it's gold! Everything that comes out of your mouth is gold, it's fine. We'll just do it again and again and again until we get it right.

Bronte:
And we're back. Here we are again. Liam Alexandru, take two. I'm so grateful that you are talking to me again today. You're amazing. And honestly, probably the best person this could have happened with because you're crazy generous and so sweet. And you - it's your fault. Let's be honest. It's your fault. I did listen to our recording and there's a funny thing about it. You made about five jokes that we'd have to redo it. I just want to put that out there. You kept saying, "oh, you know, well, if we just have to redo it, we just have to redo it." And here we fucking are. It was my fucking tech issues.

Liam:
Are you saying that I jinxed it?

Bronte:
I mean, yes... I'm not NOT saying it.

Liam:
I was thinking about it... I got in the shower, I had to have a second shower just to try and wake myself up. I was like, "what do we talk about?" And I was like, "What did we talk about and what did we talk about that didn't get recorded." Why don't we just have a brew. Have a tinny. That's right. It's twelve o'clock here I can have a tinny. We'll talk about the industry. Who the fuck is John Simms? And we'll just see what comes out.

Bronte:
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. What was your experience like touring Europe.

Liam:
Right. OK, yeah. So we did talk about this last time, for all those listeners at home that didn't get to hear that sweet, sweet gold. I did a couple of tours in Germany and in Spain actually. Only one tour in Germany, one tour in Spain. See, I'm rambling. I knew it would be concise and precise good stuff.

Bronte:
I take full responsibility.

Liam:
I'll go back to this cold tea, and chandy. My experiences were great. I really enjoyed it. And I remember we talked about what kind of I enjoyed about it. But I think it depends on who you're with really, and what shows you're doing. And I think there's a lot of freedom in touring theatre, especially with theatre and education. It just has so much liberty to it. And you can have so much fun because, at the day you're going to school to teach them English. But it's so much more than that. And I'd say in two countries, Germany and Portugal, where we performed their English standard is so high. I've never seen a country that speaks English as a second language before that have got a grasp on it so well and thorough. So much so that we even used to joke that they knew English better than we did. So a lot of the time, they only know the English that you're performing to them. They just want to see a show because what they don't have, which maybe we do because our countries are so built upon theatre and the arts, they want to go see live theatre and live shows because they don't have it like we do where we can just go to the theatre and see something and it's like the standard over here... Especially like for Shakespeare in England. So they just love that. And for a lot of them, and we were told this by all the directors, a lot of them, a lot of the time, this is... Whatever year they are, their first encounter with any kind of theatre. Yeah. We just wanna have fun and we try to enjoy it. So one show that we did was just ridiculous. It was a version of Alfred Hitchcock's 39 Steps. Well it wasn't Hitchcock's, Hitchcock did the film. And we were so far from the film. And we just took the absolute piss. We did not take it seriously whatsoever because we just wanted to have fun. And in the end, it became more like a Mr Bean sketch with a lot of Monty Python thrown in. Because the kids, they knew the sentence structure and, especially in Portugal, they knew English humour, so they were ready to go with the fun. But the full length script was about an hour fifteen. And the director said, "oh, we need to cut this down to 55 minutes, so you've got to cut twenty minutes somehow. Off you go." Yeah. And we got so many things wrong, but that was the fun of it because the kids still enjoyed it and they still got it and there's so much audience participation. It's nice to have a bit of fun with it. Like I know one group that just, their whole play became adlibs in the end. So much so that, they did a version of Two Gents of Verona, but modern day. And they changed the name Proteus and Valentine to Vince and Pierce. But Vincent is the first person to say Pierce's name in the play and the actor who was playing Vincent was a serious practical joker. So every time he went on stage for every show, he would change the name Pierce so that it's already established and all the other actors have to go with that name. So, they came on and were like, "how's it going, Peter?" And he's like "Oh, God. OK." So he has to remember that the names changed. They can't go back to Pierce. I know it's a bit cruel and I would recommend it to someone, but they enjoyed it. And it's having that communication with... don't just do it willy nilly. Have that communication with people first. See if they like doing that, otherwise you might get yourself in trouble.

Bronte:
Do you feel like it's changed the way that you perform?

Liam:
I think the whole experience definitely had a massive shift on my life because I hadn't really moved away from home beforehand. So that was a big shift. In terms of acting. It definitely gave me a feel for like being able to think up something quickly on the spot. If you just need to change something up. You have to engage with your audience because I think that can be such a big problem these days, is that as much as I'm a big fan of Stanislavski and the fourth wall... is that you kind of need to gauge with the audience, otherwise it can become so sterile. And I remember one practitioner saying about Shakespeare, is that Shakespeare wanted that back and forth for the audience. He put questions in for the audience to shout back at him. So you need that kind of engagement. So I think that kind of idea of performing definitely became stronger. But we were quite lucky in our tour in Germany. It's not like, it wasn't all just kiddie silly shows, as much as they were fun for improving comedy and trying stuff out... We did a version of Tess of the d'Urbervilles for the older college university kids, and it certainly made the tour quite dreary at times, especially when you had to play Alec, the bad guy. But it was interesting. And it was definitely like, "how do I play this character who is just such a horrible human being for such a long period of time?" And I remember speaking to one actor once, and he was performing a character who got berated the whole way through this one hour piece. No relent, just constant abuse sent towards his character. And I spoke to him afterwards and I went, "how do you kind of manage with this? Because you have to do this for rehearsals, for shows, like you've been doing this for a while." And he went, "I, honest to God, go home and I need to sit on my own for 20 minutes before I engage with my wife and child." And that's what it became. I found myself very low and quite sad by playing this quite horrible, nasty character. And I think sometimes you, kind of, fall into that place where you can develop things from being this character. This might just be the chandy and the ol' tea talking right now... But dealing with that, that was definitely an interesting development. And just like, how to separate yourself from the character.

Bronte:
Yeah, I definitely felt that as well when I was on tour. Both of the Shakespeare shows that I was doing, I died in both. In one I was being sold off to marry an older man and I take my own life. And in the other I die from heartbreak and madness. And it's like, doing that two times a day, five days a week... It can take a huge toll on your mental health and your self-worth.

Liam:
Yeah. And this is also on top of all the other factors which come into play with your mental health on tour anyway. So like, whether it be how you're feeling of the day, how you're feeling with your colleagues, how you feel about the kids. Because quite frankly, I was very lucky with both the groups that I was with, my touring company, and also the schools. I never really had any bad schools. And if I did... There were definitely some schools where I just remember being on stage like, "oh, great, I'm getting nothing. I know exactly where I am in this play. I know exactly how many minutes there are to go. I'm counting down the minutes in my head." But I was lucky, I didn't have schools which would, I would say, shout abuse. I did do a performance of A Christmas Carol once to teenagers who had an exam on it the next day. And this was an after school performance. And they basically said, "hurry the fuck up." So I've had that. And I was like, "Right. Cool. Brilliant. "

Bronte:
Some of the schools that we went to that were in inner city Melbourne, they were really hard. We had some situations where the kids particularly - and I hear this from teachers all the time - that kind of like 8s and 9s, they're like the worst year group because they just don't care about you. They're in this space in their head... They're working on their image and who their friends are and, you know, moving through puberty and all this stuff. Our worst show, in terms of the hardest audience to deal with, spoke the whole way through, phones went off... But when one of our male actors came out dressed as the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, which is quite a funny bit, and they do really well, and when, you know, when you have a really engaged school, it goes down quite well... We had a kid call out "faggot" and nothing was done about it. And we had been told as the actors that we're not in, we're not authority figures. We are educational figures. So we were not to stop a performance and be like, "hey, kids, that's inappropriate. Let's stop now and think about, you know, how to behave in a theatre or how to behave when you have real human beings on stage acting and being vulnerable." Because you know, that that show then continues on to be like, Romeo and Juliet have their first night together, and then Juliet fakes her own death, and then Romeo comes in and kills himself, and then Juliet kills herself. And it's like... You've just had a fourteen year old boy call out "faggot." And you have to continue. After that performance, I definitely was a lot more like, if they were being super disrespectful, I would kind of like, in my little narration bits I'd be like, "okay, kids, let's think about how we're behaving"

Liam:
Really? You went full teacher?

Bronte:
But like, it was so hard to continue in that particular show. Like, that was an awful... I was sitting backstage and I heard it and was just like, "how is... How was that not stopped? How is that behaviour just allowed to continue?" It's so good to hear that you had such wonderful kids. That's great. We had some experiences that were wonderful, particularly out rural Victoria, with students that never really see theatre or not really have visitors to their school. But yeah, we had some really rough shows that were kind of shocking to realise this is how kids are acting in school.

Liam:
But that said, I had some... We had some difficult moments and I have heard some horror stories. And I think it's also, it is hard finding that sweet spot between, I'm a performer here for the day and I'm also an adult with these opinions and also... Some of us like, obviously teach in our spare time, they're very overlappable professions. And it's like, we would discipline something like this beforehand. And we never had a situation like that. And I'm just going to name two situations that I've heard in the past. And one was with us. And this, 39 Steps ends with me getting, being knighted sorry, by the Queen of England. So at the end, we have to do God Save The Queen with our hands on our hearts, which breaks down into Jump Around. But we try to encourage the kids like, "everyone stand up and of your hands over your heart and what not." Now this is Spain, what was it? Thirty years ago, still a dictatorship, a fascist dictatorships. We had kids raising their left arms in like a Nazi salute way. Yeah, genuinely.

Bronte:
As a joke?

Liam:
We don't know. We honestly don't... My colleague was quite distraught by this and we kind of had to have that... We had to mention it to the teachers and say, "look, this is not OK." Spain's obviously, it's a former fascism. They were neutral in the war. How much education goes into teaching that these days, there? I don't know. I can't... I don't know. But we just like, all we can do right now... We can't, it's the end of the show as well. We can't pick them up and go, "you. Not OK." We did it kind of like this... Like, "come on guys, it this, it's this." So we just had to raise it with the teachers and be like, "look. This was happening and it's not OK." And then there was another situation where, this was another team's show. They were doing a show and a friend of mine who is part of the LGBT community comes on... He's a host! He's in a bright white suit with Union Jack stickers all over it. Phenomenal actor. And he... I don't know what part, but I remember him telling me the story. And someone said something about being "gay" as a slur. And at the end, they all did the bows and whatnot. And he said, "sorry, miss, can I just have you and that student over there come towards me." And he went and spoke to them both and he was like, "you said this while I was performing. Now I actually am gay. And I found what you said really offensive. And I just want you to know, that is not OK to say." And it wasn't aggressive, but it was kind of just like, and it wasn't to tell him off like the teacher. But he was like, "I need you to understand, you can't say this." Which I again, I think that's better than him going off and thinking he's like, you know, he's the class clown for saying that. Other teams I know, one team especially, they got... I heard they had the worst experience. They were doing Othello. They just had constant abuse. So much so, and we always got told in Germany, "don't stop the show if they get out of control, just leave it to the teachers." Now, a lot of the time, especially in the UK, I would say. Less so in Europe. The teachers don't really do anything if you're like, you know, this is their time to get on with their own work. And and that's not fair. It's not our job to manage the kids, it's our job to teach the kids and perform for the kids. But it's not our job to control them, literally. And this group do Othello, they genuinely had to stop the performance and go, "right. We're not doing a single thing now until you shut up." Kind of that blunt and that direct because it got that bad. And I thought, "you must have been pushed so past the point of breaking to do that." Like good experiences, bad experiences really come down to who you're with, both audience and colleagues.

Bronte:
Yeah. But also things that push you to the point of needing to stop a performance... It's not always just the audience that you're with on that day. It's like that you've been up, you got up at 5AM. You've been in the car for three hours. You've set up a show. You haven't had a proper night's sleep in however long. And then you get some kids that just really rattle you the wrong way and are disrespectful, and you're like, "this is what I do every day and I'm getting abuse every day." And it kind of gets to the point, like, I can totally understand that those people stopped their Othello show. Like, "this is not OK. It has to stop." We had a few teachers that would kind of jump in, but generally teachers would sit at the back on their laptops and do the work that they needed to catch up on. It was generally left to us to, kind of, hold the attention of sometimes 300 children. And it was really hard a lot of the time.

Liam:
It's just not fair, it's just not fair. But I feel like we're being very negative about touring right now. Yeah, it's certainly an experience and it's like, it's good for a lot of things. And I think you can have a wonderful time doing it. But it's not for everyone. And that is also another thing. It's not for everyone.

Bronte:
How did Brexit affect your work?

Liam:
In regards to Brexit, which got technically passed the referendum in 2016... I toured in 2017 and 2018 and 2019. Directly, it didn't affect it. It didn't affect it whatsoever because the UK were just juggling ideas about by this point, nothing really got passed. So much so that when you go and, when I spoke to the directors of the companies and I was like, "what's going to happen?" They all - all of them, big and small companies, ones that had been going for 40 years, some that have been going for 10 years - just went, "I have no idea!" No one had any idea what Brexit meant because it was so up in the air. Would we have freedom of travel? Would we need to get visas, work permits, et cetera? So I didn't really get directly affected by Brexit. The only time I did was when I was in Spain in 2019. Brexit was slowly starting to get passed and they discussed that a UK driver's licence would not be legal in European countries. So you'd have to get a driving permit, which would cost you about 60 pounds. That's all well and good, apart from when the permit would take three months to get, and you have a show the next day. So it's a case of, well, do we drive around illegally? Or do we get a permit and still drive around illegally but with the paperwork to be processed? So we just didn't know. And it was a risk that just had to be taken. Because it was so up in the air and they didn't consider that. And it was like, well, if we get pulled over the police, would they let us off because, "ahh alright we are working over here... we're getting paid into Spanish banks and getting taxed and whatnot. So we are technically working...: Would they let us okk? Or would they actually fine the company? We just didn't know. So that was the only time we really got affected by it. But it's the coronavirus which is really crippled all these companies. They've all been cancelled. My colleague Adam from last year, he did the tour again this year and got stranded in Portugal. The tour got cancelled there, so the others went back off to the UK, back home. And he's been quarantined in Portugal ever since. He can't re-enter Spain. And another company in Germany, I won't name their names, but my partner worked for them and - they were pretty good, they tour most of the world - I've heard they've gone bust. It's just so tragic what's going on. And you just couldn't predict anything like this. The coronavirus has affected touring more than Brexit has so far.

Bronte:
You recently started your own production company. How did you set it up?

Liam:
I did! Well, I started my first company in 2014.

Bronte:
Oh, so long ago!

Liam:
Back when I couldn't even grow facial hair.

Bronte:
Nor could I.

Liam:
I still can't. Yeah, I started writing... well back in the beginning really, after I'd finished college and whatnot, I went to do a foundation course. And I was working with someone and she said that she had written her own play and I was like, "what? How did you write your own play?" And she went, "I just did it." And I'm like, "Yeah, but! That's such a big thing!" I couldn't get it into my head. And she's like, "yeah, I published it as well." I was like, "What?" I was like so confused. So I just went away and wrote something. Because I wanted to enter a competition but I thought, "I'm not paying licencing fees at 18 years old, I haven't even got enough money to get the bus." So I wrote my own play. And it did quite well. But you need a name... And that was all it was for the time, this production company, just the name. It served me well so far. But then I got back from touring and I met with an old colleague of mine from Germany, and we just had a few drinks discussing play ideas and things that I'd been writing, things that he'd been writing. I've done pretty well with writing up until now and I went, "This is my next project. This is what I want to do." And he went, "that's my next project." And so we just kind of put our heads together and went, "Well, maybe we should try and do this together." And so we did. So we just started melding ideas together. And then eventually we said, "well, why don't we just try and do this together professionally? Why don't we actually build a company like... I've already started doing one once, I want to work with you." And, because it's so much harder when you're a one man band of producing, writing, directing, without bringing other people in. If you've already got people in, that's great. And it just, it lightens the load. And it's good to work with friends. And he also had a colleague who was a filmmaker. And this is something I was always interested in. I'm much more of a theatre guy but I want to do films and I want to work within the film medium. And that's something I'd written for in the past but never been able to do because I don't know the skills. So we all just combined together and started a company. Yeah, it's called Shipwreck Productions. Our first kind of plan, was to produce a short play that I'd written. We got a call out the blue, to say that there was a spot in a local festival that needed filling. And they said, "Do you want to do it? You've got three weeks... you've done it before. How about it?" So I wrote something really quickly. I rehearsed it very shortly. And so we wrote, directed and performed this play all within three weeks. And it won! It won everything. It did really well. It won best original play, best play, best actor. And it would have gone on to do other things if it wasn't for the coronavirus. But I just thought... Oh, look who it is.

Bronte:
Hi!

Julie:
How are you Bronte!?

Bronte:
Hello!

Liam:
She's saying goodbye...

Julie:
Lovely to see you.

Liam:
She said, "come back over," as well.

Bronte:
I want to! I want to!

Liam:
Come home. For all you happy listeners that was my mum coming in to say goodnight. To tuck me in. What was I saying?

Bronte:
You were talking about all the awards you got.

Liam:
Oh god. So narcissistic and egotistical. Nah, it was just a good stepping off point. So we just, we were hoping to launch actually with some quarantine based stuff soon, that we're hoping to get filmed within the next couple of weeks. Because that's the problem, is that, we decided to start a company at the very worst time. But in saying that, it's a really hard time at the moment with this coronavirus. We've got no funding whatsoever for the arts. We've really been shafted. Some performers have been lucky and are able to get a self employment fund. Some can't get that. So there are some people who get stuck in the middle where they just don't get paid at all. So it's quite hard. And I think there was a statistic saying that 75% of companies will go bust, in regards to the arts, by the end of the year without relief. So it is a dreadful time. But trying to think of the glass half full, this is a really good time to plan stuff, write stuff, produce stuff, so that when this lockdown and quarantine is over, people can just jump straight into some new creative media. And be like, "right, we've done this. Now, we're going to go forward with film it or producing it as a play." And I think, I heard this expression somewhere, it might have been on the radio. But it's like... there's going to be a new renaissance of art to come from this trapped in doors, that it's just gonna explode looking for any space they can. And I think that's quite a nice thought. So I'm hoping that we'll be a part of the bandwagon.

Bronte:
Is there something that you struggle with industry wise on the daily or the weekly?

Liam:
I remember this question because this is something you pointed out for the loud audience to hear... well, they couldn't hear because you weren't recording. I am a cis white man, so I shouldn't really have any problems really, when in regards to the arts because I'm a cis white man. But I think there is an underlying horrible nature to the arts. An artistic director of this company where I was studying at one point, he made a comment around the rings of, "This industry is the only industry where you can hire someone based on race." And he was saying that because, if you're looking for someone who's white, if you're looking for someone who's black and he was, I think he used the example of, "you wouldn't see a black father, an Asian mother and a Caucasian daughter as a family dynamic on stage." But it's like, why? Why does it have to be that reduction? Why is it... Why can't there be that casting? And I just think that was a... There is that kind of underlying darkness within the industry.

Bronte:
It's so interesting that someone actually said that to you. Like, they vocalized this thought that is so racist and quite blind. I've always thought that theatre is one of those places where you suspend disbelief and what happens on stage in front of you is the story. And if that happens to be that the family makeup on stage is interracial, then I 100% believe it. But not only that, I believe it when I see people walking down the street. Families are created in so many different ways that interracial families are not rare, they're not abnormal, they are the norm. And I think that that representation on stage is realistic.

Liam:
I don't even want to say it was a, it was a 'generational thing' or a time thing, because this was in the past 10 years. He was a cis white man from a well-to-do middle class background. So... There is that stigma behind it, really. And I think there is! There is still that kind of discrimination within the arts and there is still that kind of 'small town mentality...' Where if you don't really know anyone outside of your area who is of a different culture, race, religion, creed, et cetera, you're going to kind of see it as something different. And I definitely suffered from this. I live in a town which the BBC called the "second most normal town" in the UK.

Bronte:
What does that mean?

Liam:
I don't know! What does that mean? All I can tell you is the town that I live in is extremely white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, conservative. Yeah like, no, the conservatives have never kind of left power. There's about five churches. I don't really know, I don't think there are any other place of worship, of different religions. There's not a large multi-ethnic community in this town that I'm aware of. So there is a small town mentality, unfortunately. And I lived here for a long time. And so being at school, I think there was probably about a handful, must have been less than about 30 people, who were of a different colour or race. And so I remember going for my first big audition in Birmingham, because that's how I kind of got jobs really, I got them through networking and just meeting people and saying, "oh, you'd be good for this. Or would you like to come audition for that?" And I went to this big open audition in Birmingham, and I'd never really been to an open audition before. Normally I'd been invited. And I just remember walking in and... Birmingham is wonderful. It's the most multi-ethnic city in England or maybe the whole of the UK. There's apparently 122 different ethnicities all just living in one city. It's beautiful. And I remember just walking in and I just saw like, a whole room full of people who came from different backgrounds and who were different races, different colours, different religions. It was wonderful. But it was so intimidating at 18 years old, because I'd never seen this before. And also because of the background I had come from in terms of my education, unfortunately, there was this kind of indoctrination where... I got taught that you have to, everyone you audition with is your competition - don't be nice to them. And I think that's, that's definitely not something to go with in your head. So I remember sitting down and keeping myself to myself and thinking, "right, who's my competition in here?" And, then this extremely tall Middle Eastern man comes walking up to me and goes, "hey, how's it going?" And I went, "hi..." He's like, "I've never seen you before. What's your name?" "Liam. What's your name?" And we just started this dialogue. He's like, "it's really good to have you! Have you ever worked with Tracey before? Oh she's lovely! I hope you do really well!" And he was so charismatic and so lovely and welcoming. All that kind of hostility and competitive nature just like, swept away from me. And I had the most wonderful time. And I'm so lucky, I got a part in the show. And coincidentally, we went on to be brothers together. He was my older brother and I was the younger one. And it was just wonderful to work with him in that play. And then again, going back to the point that this creative made... At that time, I was like, "OK, so he's my brother, but he's of a different nationality and colour." And I just realised, like, what does that even matter? What does that even matter to the show? It doesn't. We have this relationship. It's brotherly. We're brothers. Does anything more need to be said? Not, really, no. And we had the best time and it was so wonderful working with him and he's still a good friend now.

Bronte:
I'm going to move on to some mildly quickfire questions. And, as you know, they're not actually that quick fire. OK, 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?

Liam:
I answered this and no, I don't. But I wish I did. My friend and partner in this company that I run, Charlie, he recommends a day to day routine. It helps you feel good, it helps your mental health, it helps your physical health and whatnot. And it's something that he... He was suffering with that in quarantine and his mental health dropped because all of his routines went out. And he said, "just get that back, put something in - as little or as big as you want - back in place every day that you do, and that will make such a difference." And it did for him. It did work. And it's something that I've been trying to implement. I'm just so lazy. Even if it was just like an hour's worth of working out or an hour's worth of writing, it's something that I think, I know I should do, but I don't do. Maybe I'll change that.

Bronte:
Is your process the same or similar from job to job?

Liam:
Learning lines... It's the hardest thing for me. That is my biggest difficulty is learning lines. But it does. Yes. I wouldn't say as drastic as some people. I wouldn't say as little as some people. Some people like their routines. Some people want to constantly change from show to show and learn new things. And I think this is definitely a good industry where, you have to constantly keep learning. There's no right or wrong answer. It's not like history or science where you learn the facts. It's always opinion. And I'm a big fan of going into a show and giving a character it's background, like giving your... Personalising your character. So, for example, when I played Tybalt, I tried to... Why is he so aggressive? What made him like this? And I gave him my backstory so I could think about that and it helped me. And why is Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream such a dick to Helena? What has he done to her specifically in the past to scorn her? And like you know, but why does he fall so madly in love with her at the end? And whatnot. So I kind of like that approach. But that said, my partner, she specialises in the Meisner technique. And so it's very much based on reactions and response. It's very much in the space. And we have debates and you know, where she'll say something like, "yeah, but you doing all that character work... What does that matter when you're doing this scene, this specific scene with someone on stage and you're not listening to them?" And I'm like, "well, why can't you do both?" And we have this debate, but it's... I think it's important to try it. I recently did a production of A Comedy of Errors. And I did two different versions, same company, but it was a different cast. The first person I was cast with played the character very young and hip. So we had this very like young and banter-ful relationship. And the second person who played it, played it very stately. Lord of the town... And it completely jarred me and the way I'd play my character before, because I already had this kind of relationship inbuilt with the first actress. And so, I had to work with her. I had to work with how she was acting. So I tried to take on those Meisner techniques and just listen to her and, like you know, see how she's responded to me as opposed to having this pre-rehearsed, pre-thought out method that worked for the last show. So, in terms of my process, I do like to create a bit of a back story. I like to personalise it to me. How would I do it? I always like to look at inspirations. Like the character I played was a gold dealer, so I based it on this character from a British sitcom called Only Fools and Horses, and whatnot. But then at the same time, I like to try new things out, so I'll try a little bit of Meisner.

Bronte:
What brings you joy creatively?

Liam:
What brings me joy creatively? Oh, I love to hear people laugh. I think that is the, that is what made me want to be an actor. And I think that is also what I thrive from being a writer. And I think that's sometimes hard, when you write something funny and someone doesn't laugh. But that's not necessarily, you know, it's funny. But I love to hear people laugh I think that's very important. There's no reason why your show can't have deep, strong, personal meaning, but also not make someone laugh. It's all about the ups and downs.

Bronte:
And finally, Liam, do you want to list all the Shakespeare plays for me? Because I know you fucking can.

Liam:
This is something to do on the tube and I do when I'm bored and I've got no battery on my phone, my kindles run out of battery. All I'e got is my notebook, my watch and a pencil.

Bronte:
I love that this is a skill that you have. When we first met, you listed all the Shakespeare shows me because you kept telling me that it was something that you could do. So I was like, "fucking do it, mate." And then you did. And in my memory, that was always under 3 minutes. But last week you were like, "nah, it's probably more of a 5 minute thing. Lo and behold, we fucking did it without recording it. And do you know what's on my phone? The last time that we had! Last week, 2 minutes and 55 seconds. So!

Liam:
Have you got a list yet?

Bronte:
According to this site there are 37.

Liam:
Well, I'm going to give you 39.

Bronte:
Ok. Okay are you ready? Go!

Liam:
Henry IV Part I, Henry IV Part II, Henry V, Henry VI Part I, Henry VI Part II, Henry VI Part III, Richard II, Richard III, Henry VIII, King John, Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, Timon of Athens, Julius Caesar, Troilus & Cressida, Andronicus, Coriolanus... Pericles, I think I said Othello. King Lear. Onto the comedies! I'm going to go for Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, All's Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Comedy of Errors, Taming of the Shrew, Winter's Tale, Merchant of Venice, Two Gents of Verona, Two Kinsman, Twelfth Night, Love's Labour's Lost. How many have I done so far?

Bronte:
I think you need two more...

Liam:
Two more? Edward III, The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Bronte:
It starts with T, it starts with T

Liam:
Why would you do this? Oh, The Tempest.

Bronte:
Yes. Let me just pause and count 1 minute, 51. That's... You nearly halved your time from last week, I'm so impressed.

Liam:
New personal best. I've got to get better! I need to do it in 20 seconds - flat!

Bronte:
Must get better. I can't wait to go back and listen through and actually work out if you did say all of them.

Liam:
Oh, God. OK, that will be on the take 3 then. Sorry, so we've got to do it all over again...

Bronte:
Thank you so much for chatting with me. It's been a bloody pleasure.

Liam:
Well thank you for having me. I feel like I waffled a little bit more on this one... rather than giving concise, fantastic answers. For the listeners, I'm so sorry. It's been wonderful talking to you.

Bronte:
Each week I've been giving a little suggestion of something to kind of check out or get on... I call it my "Get on it" section. You guys don't know that because I have never said that before. But in my notes, it's the "Get on it" section. As many of you probably know, this week was the first week of Melbourne stage 4 lockdown, which is pretty big. We have a curfew, for those of you who don't know... We can't go further than 5 kilometres from our house, we can only leave the house once a day to exercise for an hour or to shop for essentials or to provide care. They're pretty intense restrictions, they're not like unlivable... But in terms of our kind of social needs and connection needs as human beings, yeah, they're pretty tough to handle. And I've been having a lot of discussions with friends and strangers even over social media, about how this time has been affecting us already and how these new lockdown laws are bringing new and different fears and struggles into our lives. And I wanted to just plug Anahata Collective, which is a company that myself and my partner, Leigh Scully, co-created. And it's essentially a company where we provide things for actors that we as actors ourselves have found useful, as creative human beings. Leigh and I are both very physical people and for us, and our mental health and our state of being, moving our bodies is something that has been incredibly important for us throughout our lives. Now, even more so. In the first lockdown in Melbourne, I was running every second day, I was walking every day, I was getting out of the house, I was working on handstands in the park, I was doing yoga in my back garage. Like, everything I did was kind of driven by this need to move my body, to shake out any stagnant energy from being stuck indoors or unable to socialize or unable to go to the bush and go for a walk, or just go to the beach and sit in the sun. And now that we have these really intense laws that are keeping us even more confined into our homes, whatever our homes look like in their many different forms... Moving my body is still one of my top priorities. It's almost a necessity for me. I'm not running anymore. I am really focussing in on more restorative shapes because of how the lockdown is affecting my mental health. I'm finding that I don't really want to be outside running without a mask on, especially where I live the path near my house is becoming quite busy. So I really am making sure that if I am outside, I have a mask on. So I'm not running outside anymore. I am just practicing yoga, stretching, going for a walk. But I'm also doing Anahata workouts, which is a very long winded story to get me to the blug of Anahata Collective. Since the lockdown began, Leigh and I have been doing online classes via Zoom. I was teaching yoga once a week and Leigh was teaching a workout every Saturday morning. Now my structure of my time has changed, now that I'm editing Leigh's web series and this podcast and holding interviews and I'm also studying online... So I've kind of stepped back from teaching yoga and Leigh has stepped up to take 3 online classes a week. These classes are incredible. They're nothing flash, they're not professionally made, they are literally us in our bedrooms, in our living rooms, out in our gardens if we have one... All on a zoom chat, just working out together. They're really short sessions. But the act of logging on to zoom, seeing familiar faces, connecting with a community of creative people who are all in a very similar boat in terms of being stuck at home and missing theatre and missing performing or missing working and connecting with other humans... It's a really, really heartwarming experience. Every Tuesday and Thursday night, we log on at 5:30 and the class runs until 6. Saturday mornings is a 10AM class, 10 till 10:30. At the moment, Tuesdays are a functional pattern flow type workout. It's kind of a mixture of body strength, kind of inspired by a yoga flow that we move through. Thursday nights is a core class, so we will get that rocking abs and glutes, chest, shoulders, that whole core section of our body gets a big old workout. And Saturday mornings is a high intensity workout. Every single person is welcome to join us. They are free workouts. We accept donations if you have an income at the moment, but please don't feel any pressure to be paying. We want to be giving our community of creative's something that is useful and needed at this time. So if you're feeling pretty stuck and you're having a shitty day, you don't even have to turn your camera on, you can just log on, hear people fuck around and start to move your body. You can adjust anything you do. Every single one of us will adjust something at some point in the class to suit our bodies. You can rest whenever you need. You can push harder if you want to. You can even just log on and sit and watch us and chat and throw out some comments, whatever you want. Anything you need, we want to be giving what we can for you, particularly throughout the next six weeks, Melbourne.. Or however long this is going to last. So we have a mailing list that we send out the workout links each week, and we send out a recording of each work out. So if you don't feel like it on a Tuesday night, maybe you've already opened a bottle of wine, totally fine... Totally understand. Jump on Wednesday morning, and we've sent you a link to the class that we did the night before. Jump on to our website or our Instagram. Our Instagram is @anahatacollective and our website is mindstrengthmovement.com you can find that link on our Instagram page. Sign up to our mailing list or chuck us a DM with your email and we'll pop you on the list and we'll start sending you out these workout links. It's a really beautiful, supportive, kind hearted, generous group of people that we have at the moment joining in on each workout and creating this community. And we would love you to be there as well. If there is anything else that you need throughout this time, please never hesitate to contact myself, or even Leigh. He's always incredibly supportive and happy to chat if you need. But my socials are either @chats.w.creatives on Instagram or @chatswithcreatives on Facebook. On Instagram I am @bronteandsunshine and on Facebook I'm Bronte Charlotte. Send me a message. Even if you want to have a facetime chat and go for a walk, and just feel like you're walking with someone. Check me a message if you're feeling down, or you just need to vent or you need to ask how you can shake off a certain feeling. If you want to do some meditations, I have some meditations coming out. I just want to stress how very much you are not alone throughout this crazy time that the world is going through. We are all going through this together. We are all struggling in our own different ways, experiencing different anxieties or depressive episodes or mental health things that we just cannot pinpoint and can't work out. And there is this energy of anxiety, concern, unsurity just in the air at the moment. The world is in pain, essentially. And we can feel it as human beings, as empathetic people, especially creatives who tend to be quite empathetic. Anyway I've rambled a lot. I just want to be very clear and open that, if you're feeling alone, there is someone who is feeling just like you. Reach a hand out, check in on your friends, check in on your family, check in on people who you know are living alone during this time. Make sure that people know that you are there, even if you're having a hard time and someone chucks you a message, just let them know, "hey, I'm having a hard time right now, but I'll send you a message tomorrow" or, "hey, I'm having a hard time right now. Can we chat over the phone instead of message like I'm so stuck in my phone. Can we go for a walk?" Obviously, over the phone with your medical grade masks on. Yeah, I just, I know that I feel I alone a lot of the time, and I have been feeling alone a lot throughout this time. It's those moments where a random person will message, or a family member will just let me know that they're thinking of me, or having a little event over zoom... Doing a trivia night with your mates. Those things make a huge difference in this crazy time that we're experiencing. Also, don't feel invalid if you're loving it, if you're enjoying the pressure free life of not having to go to work, everything you're feeling is valid right now. I just want to express that, if it's more difficult than something you can deal with alone, please reach out. I'm here and I know that anyone, anyone that's worth their salt as a friend is there for you too. Okay. Love you guys. Stay creative. Chats with Creatives is produced by Anahata Collective, music of by the wonderfully talented Rick Scully. Please rate, review, subscribe. Let me know how you like it. Let me know your thoughts. Holler if you want to chat. I'll catch you next week.

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RESOURCES 

• Shipwreck Productions @shipwreckcrew

• GET ON IT: Anahata Collective @anahatacollective

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 Liam Alexandru on Instagram @liam_alexandru

Produced by Anahata Collective @anahatacollective

Music by Rick Scully