2.5 The Power of Voice
with Leith McPherson
In this episode Bronte Charlotte is joined by the incomparable Leith McPherson, a world-renowned voice and dialect coach, acting teacher, and sometimes-director. During this discussion we delve into Leith’s history training as an actor and moving to London to study her Postgraduate degree in Voice at Central School of Speech and Drama. We chat about prejudice, and how learned beliefs can impact an audience's perception of character, language, accent and realism. We chat about Task mode vs. Approval mode, it’s life changing effects on both mental health and perceptions of the world around you
During this episode we discuss:
[02:18] Living in New Zealand for lockdown, and realising that even as an anxious human Leith has moved several times to different continents and started again from scratch, seeking the next exciting thing.
[06:41] Growing up in Queensland, the beginning of Leith’s journey in the arts, knowing within herself that acting was not right for her and her temperament and her mental health and having to make the decision to cease acting.
[10:48] Moving to London alone to study the Postgraduate Voice course at Central School of Speech and Drama, the best year of Leiths life to date.
[14:43] The very first job Leith had lined up after graduation and how it all fell to pieces, the unnecessary pressure of Showcase and just how much it truly doesn’t define your career, persistence as a key ingredient to success, and giving yourself wholeheartedly to everything you do.
[20:15] Leith’s crazy experience ‘interviewing’ for Once the Musical, and ending up running two 2 hour long accent workshops – IN ACCENT! How Leith snapped up her role as vocal coach for Melbourne’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and the power of first impressions.
[24:44] Mimicking voices as a kid, realising that people would think you were different if you changed your voice, how our idea of what places should sound like impacts the perception of audiences and enhances our continued programming by society.
[35:56] Task Mode vs Approval Mode and how deeply it changed both of our lives, the impact our perceptions have on our mental health, and Leith’s observation of actors on set re-auditioning for the role they already have due to being in Approval Mode.
[45:36] Bronte’s experience of switching into Task Mode, taking care of yourself and being kind to yourself because you are your own companion in life
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Bronte:
Welcome back to the Chats with Creatives Podcast! I'm Bronte, your humble little host, who this week is chatting with incomparable Leith McPherson, a world renowned voice and dialect coach, acting teacher and sometimes director. Those of you who have listened to some of my other episodes will know I adore Leith. I've spoken before about my experience working with her when I played Henry the Fifth in 2017, when she directed one of the most empowering pieces I've been a part of: A fully female identifying a non-gender binary cast, tearing up this Shakespeare history play about Kings, war, friendship and tennis. Leith was the dialect coach for the Australian cast of Once the Musical and also for Harry Potter and The Cursed Child. And we actually talk today about how she landed both of those gigs, which is a crazy story. It's just so typical of Leith to just jump into something like that. You'll understand when you listen. It's just so great. We also talk a fair bit about her experience working in New Zealand on The Hobbit trilogy, again as their voice and dialect coach. And also about prejudice and how learned beliefs can impact the audience's perception of character, language, accent and realism. We delve into the concept of Task mode versus Approval mode, and it's absolutely life changing effects for both of us. It's something people in any industry, but particularly for the incredibly empathetic and emotional humans that work in the arts, to be aware of and maybe have on hand is a tool in their toolbox of how to deal with the general stress of working and what could be a quite unforgiving industry. I wish we had more time to go a little further into Leiths experiences. You'll hear listening to this just how knowledgeable, intuitive, emotionally intelligent and nurturing this incredible woman is. And what a powerhouse of a human to have your back if you're lucky enough to work with her one day. Just before we jump in, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land, the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation, if any of my listeners are of First Nation descent, thank you so much for being here. I see you. Let's get started.
Leith:
Hi, lady. How you doing?
Bronte:
Good. How are you?
Leith:
Good. How are you? How's Melbourne? Hows beautiful, gorgeous, wonderful, marvelous, resilient Melbourne?
Bronte:
It's getting better. It's crazy how much it's getting better actually. Quite quickly things are changing, which has been just as overwhelming as it was when everything changed the first time.
Leith:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember when we came out of our first lockdown and that freaked me out as much as... I felt safer in lockdown than I felt out of it for a while. And still a little bit, even though over here, of course, we've been blessed for quite a while. It's been quite a while since our second lockdown. So, yeah, it's just, it's seismic. The year has been seismic and so the ground is not quite where it was.
Bronte:
Wow. Here you are. Hi. I feel like it's going to take me a while to get used to seeing you right there.
Leith:
Yeah. Let's get going. Sweet. All right.
Bronte:
Let's bloody do it. How has your day been?
Leith:
My day. My day has been terrific. I've been on very early calls this week and so I've been waking up on the weekends very early as well, which means cuddle time with the pooch. So he woke me up at about 5:00 this morning, even though I set my alarm for 7:30 I just thought, "I'm just going to lean into it. I'm going to have cuddles." And so for the first thing you say in a day to be, "I love you." That's you know, you're working back from five stores at that point. So, you know, it was pretty good. And, yeah, it's a gorgeous day here. It's sunny in a white light kind of way that just brings everything into a different kind of shimmer. So I'm absorbing a bit of energy and it's really great. How's your day been?
Bronte:
Oh, it's been all right. Woke up quite - not quite early - but early-ish. I taught two yoga classes this morning, so I've spent my morning in a hot room and then exited that into a very hot Melbourne day. And how has New Zealand been? You've been there now for almost a year.
Bronte:
I have. But at the same time, given that 2020 has been seven years long, I guess you could say I've been here seven years.
Bronte:
You could! We count COVID in dog years.
Leith:
Yeah exactly. And it's a minute. Time is so infinitely stretched and also collapsed. Physicists will be writing about this for many many years. But New Zealand is, New Zealand is extraordinary and wonderful and I really love it. I've been missing Melbourne a lot. But at the same time, I don't think I could have chosen a better place to ride out this year. And it's such a soul filling place to be. It really does - it's felt like a second time for a long time, as you know, for me. And so I do feel, I feel of this place in a small way. Not in a sufficiently grounded way to not have that pull back to Melbourne and all of my glorious friends and family there. But it's been good. It's been a refuge for the year, which has been great.
Bronte:
That's so nice. You've spent many years of your life travelling around, have you not? Like this is not a new situation for you. Is it?
Leith:
Well, I don't think of myself as nomadic, especially given my vestibular system. I don't like to move very much. I quite like staying in one spot. And I don't enjoy travel very much because I get travel sick. So I don't think of myself as a traveller. And yet it is undeniable that on multiple occasions in my life I have upped sticks and moved continent. Multiple times, often starting from scratch when I arrive in my destination. I've done that multiple times. And as someone who thinks of themselves as anxious and risk averse, I cannot deny the fact that every... I don't know how long. It's not a regular thing. It's not a seven year itch... But there comes a point where I go, "what else does life have to offer?" And I take an unexpected turn. So that's a bit confronting when you have to say to yourself, "OK, you thought you were a scaredy cat and yet you keep doing this. What's that about?"
Bronte:
So when those things happen... OK, I want to kind of walk through your life. Let's do that.
Leith:
In real time, because that's going to take a while.
Bronte:
I have many moons of time, for you in particular, but also like literally right now. In this COVID life. Ok, where did you grow up? Let's go, let's go back to... Where did you grow up?
Leith:
It's really weird because... You know, that part before the zoom connects where it says "your host will let you in in a moment." And I found myself asking the - It might seem pretentious - question, but I'm prepared to be considered pretentious. That's fine. I was thinking, "OK, so what accent am I going to do for this interview?" Because I haven't been in this accent for most of the week. So when you say, "where were you from?" That's going to screw me. All right. So we knew we were going, which is Brisbane, mate. So we're going to head into something... So I was born and bred in glorious Queensland.
Bronte:
As was I! How did I not know who this?
Leith:
How do we not know this? Oh my, God. Yeah, I'm a Brissie girl. And you can hear my vowels starting to change as I talk about it. And I went to drama school straight out of high school. I went to QUT. I didn't audition for anywhere else. It's like, "well, there's a drama school just over there. I'll go there." And so I did. And I trained as an actor at QUT seventy thousand years ago. And by my second year of training, even though I'd done theatre through my sort of childhood, and especially through my adolescence. By second year of that course I knew I didn't want to be an actor.
Bronte:
So early on!
Leith:
Yeah, it was really, really clear. And unfortunately, no other plan presented itself as a great alternative. It had been the one goal -apart from psychology, which was also of interest - it had been the one goal. I thought that's what I want to do and that's what I will aim for. And then to arrive there with no Plan B... Go, "oh, well, I'll just see this through." So I did. And I finished the course and I moved to Sydney and got an agent and all of that sort of stuff. And it just didn't sit well with me. It just was not... I had an agent who I will not name, who was a really good agent, a well-respected agent. He said to me, "you know, you're 19, but you're going to be so castable when you're 32. You've just got this old soul thing about you. And I just don't really know where to put you." And I thought, "Okiedokie." And I was working as a temp, which I loved, in Sydney and... Stationery. I'm all about stationery. So that was great. But, I thought to myself, "I have had this feeling for so long that this isn't going to be good for my mental health." It really was... It really was that. It was this realisation very early on that I didn't have the temperament for it. I don't... You know, the stuff that you have to do in the lobby and you have to put yourself out there and meet people and be your own business and promote yourself. And I found that close to impossible. I found it really, really difficult to do. And I noticed even back when I was in drama school and doing shows, you'd get to the end of the performance and people would say, "oh, that was terrific!" Or give you great feedback. And I would go, "oh, no, really, it was..." And I would immediately dismiss it, if not tear at it with my teeth. I would tear at praise and tear it down. And I thought, "woah, OK. If this is supposed to be going well and you're not enjoying it and you're pushing aside any positive validation... And you're not going to be comfortable promoting yourself, being judged by factors that are completely out of your control - as actors often are, in terms of the way that they look or their age or their gender or how they represent themselves in the world - I thought, "this way madness lies. This way literally madness lies." And I knew enough from family experience to know that mental health was something that you have got to put front and centre. If that isn't right, nothing will be right. And so I jumped off the Hogwarts Express, as it were, and I left Sydney. I went back to Brisbane. I sat on a sofa for several months going, "What do I do now? What do I do? There is no Plan B, what do I do?" And I realised that the intersection of my two passions, one of which was music and one of which was theatre, the intersection of those was voice. So I went back to my voice teacher at drama school and said, "I think I want to be you. I think I want to do this." And she said, "if you're serious, you'll move to London and go to Central." And closed the door, literally closed the door as though I was never going to do that, but if you're serious, you'll do this. And I thought, "well, bugger you, I will." So I had to save for a long time. And sell everything I owned and be helped by my mum. And I moved to London when I was twenty one and did the postgraduate voice studies course at Central, as it was at the time. Which was - up to this point, I'm open for it to be topped - but up to this point it was the greatest year of my life. It was fantastic.
Bronte:
Wow. That was a big, it would have been a huge move. As you said, you like your stability and your comfort. You literally moved across to the other side of the world to study and I assume to start fresh. Did you know anyone over there at all?
Leith:
I had some family which was good and bad. But learning is possibly my favourite thing. And it was a dream course. It really was an extraordinary year where I felt as though the top of my skull had been screwed off and people were just pouring in their best material. And you would finish an amazing day and then go to the theatre at night and see people whom you revered. And on a close to nightly basis. Well, depending on the budget, which is stretched in London at the best of times. And so it really was a year where you felt like you were being given the best chance to learn and extend and specialise and thrive and set new horizons and meet new people and emerge into a different part of yourself or a different self entirely. So it was extraordinary. It was extraordinary. And that dear was 25 years ago next year, I realised the other day. I thought, "oh my goodness me. It's been a long time." It's so weird when you can actually, when you get to the point where you can measure your life in a quarter centuries. And measure your career in quarter centuries! I had that realisation the other day and dropped my tea and just thought, "oh, well, I suppose I should probably get quite serious about this now, you know!" So yeah, that was that. And I stayed on in London for five years or so, got married, worked over there doing mainly teaching, also private coaching, a bit of show coaching, working with actors who were... And this has kind of persisted, actors who were working on a screen project, but I didn't work on set, I just worked with them in preparation for set. And lots of teaching at many, many drama schools in London. And then I did what I had always intended to do, which was move back to Australia. So I never had that feeling that Australia was the place to be left in the rear-view mirror and never returned to. I never had that sense that... I never had a feeling of motherland or that the UK was the place where serious work was done and the colonies were a place that you would have to... you would be slumming it if you returned. Or that something would have had to have gone wrong for you to make the decision to return to Australia. It wasn't the sense that the UK was the place to be and Australia wasn't. I loved the theatre industry that I had known from such an early age, and my intention was to grab what I wanted and could and return with that knowledge. So I did.
Bronte:
So you went pretty much straight into teaching after your degree?
Leith:
Yeah, it was a very prestigious course and we were - headhunted as too strong a word - but all of the graduates from a very small cohort were snapped up. And so everybody had jobs. Ooh there's a story there I could tell, but I don't know... Oh, it's one I've never, I've told privately, but not publicly. It was - I had a very, very, very plum job lined up, which had been carefully negotiated clandestinely through my final term at Central, and then all fell in a heap. But what it led to was the fact that the rest of my classmates had all been snapped up and I had literally flown back to Australia to get a change of visa from a student visa to a work visa to fly back for this plum gig. And when I arrived back in London with a suitcase and nowhere to live and no job, and without that structure of the course, and the person who had set up the job for me, not returning my calls, I was completely at zero. So I didn't have... yeah no job and no prospects and no network. And it was challenging. It was very challenging. But I did OK, spoiler alert! I did OK!
Bronte:
That's very clear. But it's always... I mean it seems to be that that beginning, that moment when you leave... I've been thinking about it a lot recently. Like, it's very like, it's very pressurised and it's kind of pushed to be the be all and end all. This moment that's going to define the rest of your career. And so often it just doesn't. It's like, that is not the pivotal point of your career or of your life, the leaving of drama school or the leaving of a degree, the leaving of high school, whatever it may be. There's so much more that follows on. And it's not about that one moment. I guess it's about your own persistence or your dedication or your passion or your talent. And that kind of flows forward. It doesn't necessarily end if the job is cancelled or if things don't work out in your first couple of years. That's what I've been hoping to be true, anyway.
Leith:
No, it's absolutely true. It's absolutely true. And as you were saying that last sentence, I was trying to think of graduates - and of course, having done this for so long now, I have hundreds and hundreds of graduates that I've taught - and I'm honestly trying to think of someone who for whom graduation and that, that moment, that moment of showcase and agent acquisition honestly led to any kind of elevator to the stars. And I cannot think of a single one. I honestly can't. I think that if there is... There are some people who have jobs that are lined up before they graduate. But for everyone else I can think of, it really does... It's an ephemeral moment. It's a really... It's not incidental, but it isn't indicative either. It's not an indication of where that person will be ten years down the track. It really isn't. And ten years is a long, is a hard horizon when you work in an industry like ours, and especially I would think... Well, no, especially in a year like this, where the industry is so delicate and income has stopped completely and the pressure of "Should I? Shouldn't I?" is excruciating. It's very difficult to keep a far horizon. And yet success is about persistence. Success is about... I mean, the thing that I learnt in that first hard, what was I heading into? Winter. Having graduated and having no job in London, in London, which is the most expensive place I've ever lived... To head into a London winter unemployed. And fortunately, my tutor, my mentor, David Carey, who took me through the voice course at Central, I just went back to him and said, "help." And I got little bits of work from him. But what I told myself in that moment was. "Every single thing that comes your way, you have to do the best of your capacity." And it's not, "well, I'll do this so that I get the next thing." It's "this thing that is in front of me, I will give my best self to as far as I am able." And that attitude slash necessity, at the time, has borne fruit for me in some extraordinary ways. That job that you don't look to be a path to something else becomes a path that you only see in retrospect. So that meeting or that audition or that perhaps incidental professional engagement, or so it seemed at the time, has come back to lift me somewhere else and take me somewhere further so many times in my career that it has proved to be a really valuable thing to have asked of myself. To just, to not... I guess it's an ambition thing. I haven't been ambitious. I just stick to the task in front of me and hope that goes well, and that seems to have carried me on. That has given me momentum rather than any kind of through line of, "oh, I want to be that person." Or, "I want to go in that in that direction."
Bronte:
That so much to think about.
Leith:
Is it? I felt about forty five seconds ago I was like, "rambling McPherson. You're rambling!" I can give you a for instance.
Bronte:
Yeah, I just want to yeah, I want to hear more about that, I think.
Leith:
Well when I got back from New Zealand from doing The Hobbit trilogy, I had a very, very strange, wonderful day. Because I was asked to come in to meet the director, John Tiffany, who was working on Once the Musical, which was rehearsing in Melbourne. Which had already started rehearsals, as I recall. And I thought I was going in for a job interview. And I did prep, as I do. I try not to walk in blind. But I am a bit of a third speaker debater, which means you arrive with blank palm cards and you kind of figure it out from there. And I arrived and met the director who walked me into the assembled company and said, "right, so Leith, why don't we do a two hour workshop with the Czech actors and then we'll do a two hour workshop with the Dublin actors." And as I think you know, when I do dialect work, I work in accent. So I had listened to some Czech recordings. But knowing now what I what I wish, what I should have known then, I would have done a bit more prep. So I just had this voice in my head and I thought, "OK, all right, OK. Yes, and. All right." And I still thought, "is this part of the interview?" Really confused. But we started. So we did a two hour workshop in Czech for half the cast and then a two hour Dublin workshop for the other half. And this is quite a fun story, actually. I quite like this. It's one of those moments that I just give my self a little... Just a little punch on the shoulder of "hey! That was all right." Ronan Keating was there. He was about to do the role in London. And Ronan Keating, as people may know, is from Dublin. And he came in for the start of my Dublin workshop. And I did the whole thing in accent, as I do. And the director walked out after a while. Fair enough. Other things to do. And John Tiffanie, the director who I hadn't met before that day, came back into the room at the end of the session and said to the whole company, "Ronan thinks you're from Dublin. He wonders how he doesn't know you." And I thought, "OK, I didn't fuck it up." Which is my, that's my... Again, tracking back to mental health. I don't like going. "You were a legend. You were just amazing!" Or like, you know, you're like... I can't do that, but I can go, "I didn't fuck it up. Hazzah!" So I thought, "great!" I did not see him again after that day. I worked with the actors on the company. I saw John at I think a preview and then at opening night, but had hardly anything to do with him. And that was several years ago. Cut to about three years ago now, where I got a call from the producers of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which was about to rehearse in Australia, saying, "We've been given your name by John Tiffany, the director. He wants you to do this." And I hadn't spoken to him in, I don't know how long, five years, something like that, with no contact in the interim. And you just... You plant a seed. You don't have to nurture it. You just have to make a good impression and do your best in that moment, because people remember. The industry is small. And if you are a decent human being who has ability but is also particularly importantly good to work with, and somebody that other people want to spend time with and want to share the bringing up of their creative baby with. They go, "Yeah Bronte. Yeah, let's get Bronte. Absolutely. That's the person I want to be in a black box with for the next six months. Yes, I do, because I remember that time we did that other thing and it was great." So that's one fun example which I'm enjoying reliving in the moment. But there have been many like that where you go, "Oh right. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Oh that was right. Good. Yeah. Good. Oh yay."
Bronte:
That honestly just, that makes me feel so anxious. That's such an anxiety inducing thing to think you're going in for a job interview and then you're doing two workshops in accent.
Leith:
It was insane. It was base jumping. Oh this is an office building. Oh right. Why are you strapping that to my back? Oh I'm jumping off this building. OK, great! Yeah. That was one of the more hair-raising, armpit-moistening kind of experiences of my career I must admit.
Bronte:
Have you always been quite natural at clicking into accents or did that come through your training?
Leith:
Yeah, I was a natural, probably annoying, probably still am annoying, mimic as a kid. So I would watch, I would mimic the actors that I saw on TV. I watched a lot of TV growing up. Yeah. So the Young Ones, for example, which was a formative show in the 1980s, and my brother and I would quote the Young Ones at the dinner table, which is the first time I got away with swearing. And I would just mimic those accents and just constantly listen to people. And my dad had worked in radio. I was often asked if I was English growing up as a kid. So having that sense of, "Oh, you think I'm different? Why do you think I'm different? What about the way that I'm speaking makes you think I'm different?" So I had that awareness from quite early on and then just doubled down.
Bronte:
Do you think people are asking if you're from England because you had quite good pronunciation, especially for a place like Queensland?
Leith:
So over here people... also because I'm working an accent. When I'm working with the actors, I stay in whatever accent that actor needs to be in for the day. So the crew that I'm working with, you know you have that thing of, "where are you from? I don't know where you're from, and you sounded different yesterday." And stuff like that. But when I say, "oh, I'm from Brisbane." The - and this is one of the things that happens a lot in my career - is that people have an idea of what a place should sound like. And often it's a very singular idea, which is such a misrepresentation of the multiculturalism of any part of Australia. And also it tends to be a very white idea of what someone from that place should sound like. It tends to be gender stereotyped. It tends to be racially stereotyped, socially stereotyped. And so when people ask me that question, you get an immediate idea of the boxes that are in their mind and how flexible or inflexible those boxes are. And that comes up a lot with my work, because when you are... When the brief is to put a particular accent on stage, I know that I'm dealing with people's boxes. I know that I'm dealing with these preconceptions the audience has of what a place should sound like, which may not be at all, certainly not a broad representation of that place at all. It could be a very narrow idea and very stereotypical idea of what that place should sound like. So people have a very clear idea of what Queenslanders in general, that being a huge area, should sound like. And no, I never have sounded like that. I never have.
Bronte:
I used to get in trouble for this. I was in this little production, this like children's show and it was the Pied Piper and I was the queen rat. And I had to say this line where I'm like, "all my babies are gone." And I say it now, like I say, gone, "gone." I would get in trouble for saying "gone" because apparently I have to say "gone." As in I have to say, as in like, I was expected to be better at pronouncing this particular word because I sounded too much like a bogan and couldn't present this queenly rat thing. But I really struggled with, like, saying the word "gone." And the only way I honestly, nearly every character I've played since has had that word in the text. Like no joke. Henry had the text, Reverend Paris had the word "gone." And the only way I could get to say this word, how people kept telling me to say it, was to think I was saying "John." And I would just change the J to a G. And I would say, "gone." And in my head, I'm like, 'that's not the word. I'm not actually saying the word "gone." Because in my head it's gone." Yeah, it took me until someone was like, "just say, John," for me to change the way I said that word. But that always for me, I thought that came from me growing up in Queensland and that being seen as a more typically bogan type of ocker Aussie language. I've never fully understood why I say that. I think it's just a thing that I do. But yet to hear that, obviously there's so much space in Queensland and everyone... There's so many different people coming from all different places around the world, there's no one typical Queensland accent. I'm just odd.
Leith:
There are accents which are, dominant isn't the word, because again that gives an idea of normal and then other, which I don't like. But there are stronger representation of a particular accent. That's true, because there are more people in rural areas and that has an influence. If you're mapping it, if you're getting out your graphs, yes, there is an accent that you will hear more in a particular part of, well, anywhere in the world. But that doesn't mean it is the only accent of that voice. And we are two examples of that being true. Huzzah!
Bronte:
It's so linked into stereotypes and your kind of training by society to think a certain way, and to present in a certain way, and to just put things in boxes and...
Absolutely true. But without putting too fine a point on it, what isn't? What isn't about...? What I keep telling myself, if I hit something... If I hit up against something, I just think, "oh, what's my programming been here? Why am I...? OK? Wait a minute. Woah who programmed me? With what intent? And what is something that...?" You know, because we are, it's that line from Ulysses, you know, "I am a part of all that I have met." And so, of course we are our experience and our formatting, as it were. I remember having this really passionate fight with my very best friend at high school about this because I came from a very strong Labor Party family. My mom was very heavily involved in the Labor Party in Queensland in the 70s and 80s. So when it was a kind of very subversive thing. And my best friend at school came from a very passionate Liberal Party family, and we were having a conversation about politics one day at lunch, as you do. We were debaters. And I think we just, we also need to accept that we are a product of our upbringing and we are infused with our parents beliefs and values. And she didn't talk to me for a week. The idea that she was, that all of her opinions were not born of free will was something that she found incredibly offensive. And it seemed so obvious to me. You can rise above it, deviate from it, push back against it, protest it. But you have to know the programming before you can consciously be able to paint the whole map. And I see it all the time. I see it all the time. Working with the voice, you are constantly dealing with people's fixations, slash programming, on what is the right or wrong representation of a female voice or a male voice or a young voice or an old voice... let alone an educated voice or a cultured voice or any of those sorts of things. And let alone... I mean, the map stuff, you know the, "oh that's a Queensland voice. That's a Sydney voice. That's a western Sydney voice." All of that kind of stuff is even more obvious. All of this other stuff that's insidious of people feeling that a deep voice is necessarily more filled with authority and worthy of respect because we associate that with male voices and men should be afforded more respect and more authority. And all of these sorts of things where you just think, "who told you that? And why did you swallow it? And why are you regurgitating it throughout your life? Other than this constant - wow, I'm really on a roll - Other than this constant need, people have to figure out where they are relative to the people around them. You know, it's that it's the boxes thing. It goes back to the, "I need to know who you are so I can know who I am relative to you." That you see people doing constantly and much more so in the UK than in Australia, but similarly in Australia, especially if you come from the deep north, as we do. "Oh you're a Queenslander?" Therefore you are culturally inferior. Therefore you are politically inferior. Therefore you are not capable of contributing an authentic voice that is as worthy as someone who was born and bred in Melbourne or Sydney. That's what I grew up with. And maybe what you've grown up with, I don't know. And it just seems so bizarre to me. It just seems like, it's the Matrix. And when you see The Matrix and you see people's programming... You're going to make no friends in the moment by bringing someone's programming to their attention, then it can be very frustrating. The world can feel quite limited.
Bronte:
It can be really confronting if your programming is is brought up into your awareness, especially if it's something that you don't want to have, maybe. Or you don't want to have people know about, or you don't want to admit to, or you wish was different. It can be really, really confronting, i think.
Leith:
It is. It absolutely is. And speaking as a cis-gendered white woman... I mean, woman gives me some kind of minority political "oh, you've been oppressed. Oh maybe you might have something to say." But but to be cis-gendered and white means that you... Yeah, we are in this extraordinary period of needing to shut up and learn a few things. And to also have people point out your programming to you. And it's very confronting. It's incredibly confronting, especially when you think yourself open minded and good hearted. To go, "oh, OK." But at the same time to also find a balance between that and, for me, what can flip the whole boat of that feeling of original sin, that feeling that, OK, I must carry all of the oppression for myself because I see so many people who are being discriminatory and pushing back and you know calling out politically correct language as being an overreaction... To try to find some balance and to try to not be the worst of what you represent to people, but to try to address that balance, sometimes... Finding that sense of humility and also pride in your own identity and pride in your ability to grow out of being corrected. To go, "oh, oh. All right." And then be better. It's a really... We live in interesting times, we live in very interesting times.
Bronte:
I think it kind of like clicked with the idea of programming. We've talked about it in terms of like political programming or your upbringing and your ideas about certain things. I feel like for me, I had Approval mode programmed into me. And this is what I want to jump into is... We, you and I have spoken about this before, but also you spoke to my whole company, I'm sure you've shared it with several people, the idea of Approval mode versus Task mode. And how particularly in our industry, if you work in approval mode, it's going to be really hard. It's going to be really, really hard to feel good about your work or to feel like... It's going to be hard to get that approval because so often what needs to get the job done, people will be in task mode. And there won't be any recognition of your need for the approval. And there's no time for that. I wanted to kind of, maybe delve into your experience with approval vs task mode and how you've kind of used it to get your work done, but also to stay solid in your personal practise and your work.
Leith:
Well, yeah, I'm glad and relieved that I taught you that lesson or gave you that lesson.
Bronte:
Oh, absolutely. I'm going to throw that all onto you. That is completely... I don't think I could have dug my way out of this need for people to tell me that I was OK, or doing a good job, or was valued if I didn't have that ability now to switch into Task mode and be like, "I have a task to do and I'm just going to do it."
Leith:
That's I mean, well, cool. Because it was life changing and life saving and it is the most valuable lesson I have learned. Certainly in my career, possibly in my life. And it was born of being on The Hobbit set, dealing with the task of correcting actors. Which technically isn't my job, but was given to me on that job. And I was also being bullied by one particular crewmate. I don't know if I mentioned that when I taught you this lesson. But one way or another, I was in a very, very dark place in terms of my mental health. And I just really wasn't coping with this dream job. The pressure of it was huge. And I was just in this environment where I wasn't functioning well and I was getting to the end of the day and feeling awful. And so I started to... I thought, "OK, there must be people somewhere who've written about some kind of strategy for how to deal with what I felt was a difficult work environment." And so I Googled things like, how to work with difficult people. I think one was literally, I think a book that I found was literally called How to Deal With People You Can't Stand. And through that reading, it led me to the realisation that two of the modes that you can be in, both in your personal day but also in your work day, are to either be in Task mode or Approval mode. And I realised that when I was stepping towards an actor to correct them, particularly one actor that I revered and thought I could be good mates with because we were working together for so long on that job. I was hoping for some kind of special moment between us on this set with six hundred crew, on the biggest film that had ever been made at that point. I was somehow hoping that he would see something in me and we would connect and it would be great. And for some reason I thought that would happen at the moment where I'm stepping in and correcting him on his lines. Oh, no. And I realised through this reading that every time I stepped towards Sir Ian McKellen, I was in Approval mode. I was hoping for some kind of validation that I wasn't doing an awful job. And because I was in approval mode and he was in his own sweet hell, because he had forgotten a line and that's a bit embarrassing. And he was frustrated with himself and all of that kind of stuff. I was never going to get it. I was looking for love in all the wrong places. It was never going to happen. And if I could step towards an actor or the director or whomever I needed to speak to in Task mode, where I was not looking for any kind of validation, I just was being paid a decent income to complete that item, at that moment, to facilitate the creative process. If I could be in Task mode and be satisfied to complete a task, then the mood of the other person was incidental, was irrelevant to me. I was there to do a job. I took a long time. It wasn't an overnight thing, and I developed a kind of a mantra to remind myself that when Ian would yell at me, "what? Yes? Christ what did I say? No, I didn't. What? Oh, Christ." Or I would step towards him on set and he would look at me like I was the Grim Reaper and I would die on the inside until I flipped mode. Until I thought "it's a line straight from the book. It's my job to correct him. I'm going to do that." I became invulnerable on that set. I developed the ability to not, to literally not take it personally and to keep it professional. And what I observed in that epiphany, that kind of, you know if an epiphany can last a few months... An epiphany... Was that almost every actor on the set, almost every actor, was in approval mode a lot of the time. Certainly every day player who came on, which is an actor who's just there for the day. They weren't performing, they were re-auditioning. They were in approval mode, and they were trying to get the job even though they were already there doing the job. And if there is a single person in the industry who is more in task mode than a film director, I don't know it. Because the film director has four hundred questions to answer before breakfast. Everyone on the crew wants to know exactly what you want them to do. So you cannot have a room in which everybody on that crew is stepping to the director to know if they're doing a good job. There are things to do. You've got to get through the day. And so if you are in approval mode and the other person is in Task mode, you will dig deeper into your mode until it is satisfied. And the thing about approval mode is it's shelf life is so short, as as you probably... I don't know if it's the same for you, but praise just skims right off the surface. Accomplishment is replaced in a breath with anxiety about what happens next. It's so ephemeral. Satisfaction and approval and that sense of accomplishment about how someone is telling you you're doing, in that way, is subjective and fleeting. But to say "I did a good job." To say "I achieved this." To say, for example, if you're going to an audition, to not say, "Am I right for the role? And can I...?" To not ask questions that cannot be answered or are none of your business, but to set yourself a specific task. "Well I want to explore this about the character today. I'm going to use this moment." And auditioning, of course, for actors is the thing that you have to do most. To use an audition not as a moment to find out whether you have made the right career choice, but to just, to try something that has to do with your craft and to set a goal that you can satisfy in that moment. To be task focussed. In that moment, you can complete the task. You can you can achieve satisfaction with it. So when I am overwhelmed with anxiety, and I am an anxious person and so from time to time that happens, or someone is in a bad mood and the shockwave is coming your way.... To be able to go, "OK, first of all, what mode are they in? Because bad behaviour is almost always - bad behaviour. My term - but people acting out is almost always insecurity. And when I say almost, I'm understating it. It's always insecurity. It always is. So OK, "what mode are they in?" And for me, "what mode am I in? Am I strong in this moment or am I going to be bowled over because I think somehow, egotistically, this shock wave coming my way has something to do with me and is my fault." That's egotistical and it's in approval mode. Rather than going, "OK, I am here to help this person. How can I best help this person? What is my task?" And you step forward and you are, you're there, in terms of the dialect coach, you are literally there to get the dialogue in the can for the show. So, "how do I help that distressed human being?" Or "how do I help this distressed human being to achieve that goal?" And if I'm in approval mode I'm... Oopf I have this mental picture of Whodini in a straight jacket covered in chains at the bottom of a river. No, no, no. No, no, no. That way madness lies. No, no, no. Task mode if you can get into it and stay in it. In this industry, it's a super power. It's a super power.
Bronte:
Absolutely, and listening to your experience and speaking from my experience, it changes the way that you move through spaces. It changes the way that you interact with people and it changes your relationship to yourself and how you allow yourself to take up space.
Leith:
Nicely said.
Bronte:
Thank you. Yeah, I think specifically for me that there was a moment, particularly in drama school, where in my anxious state I couldn't take a step for needing approval. And if I didn't get it, because everyone else was so busy in their task mode of completing their task, I would break down and couldn't find in myself the approval that I needed or that I felt would take me out of my anxious state. And so when that flip happened, literally almost within a week, when I became aware of it and was like, this is the issue that I'm dealing with... I felt like my life changed, my anxiety levels went down, my performances just got better, my relationships with people changed and the stress and the pressure of being in that state, or in that performance, or in this industry, or in an audition, or in a rehearsal room, the pressure just kind of drifted away because it was a task. I just had to complete a task. And it was no longer, "what do you think of me? Am I doing the right thing? Is this is this what you need from me?" It was just, "this is what I'm doing. And that's a task. And if it's not completed to your expectations or what you need for me, I'll take the feedback. I'll change what I'm doing, and then I'll complete the task." Like it just completely changed how I function. I mean, that's like... That took work and and it still takes work. But in the clearest way of the steps that I take now, it's very much like once I notice that approval mode slipping in, it's like, "no no - task mode." And things just change. It's like a snowball effect of just change. It's one of the most amazing things that I've been able to cultivate in my practice. It's just changed so many things about how I move through particularly performance spaces, but many different spaces in my life.
Leith:
That's great. That's so great. Yeah, it has for me too. It's really changed a lot for me. But as you say, it's work. I haven't stopped being an anxious person. I haven't stopped caring what other people think. And there are still days where I have to write it on my, on the top of my notebook or on my hand. "Stay task focussed!" Actually I have an alert in my phone that goes off at 9am every morning saying, "Stay task focused!" In case I'm having a rough day.
Bronte:
But you're right, it takes consistent work to create any form of change. And so that in particular is... Again, I feel like I sit in approval mode when I go, "When will this be easier for me?" It's just, "no no, it's a task. You've got to keep working at it. That's your task now is to just work at it."
Leith:
And I think that one of the trickiest things for performers is that your sense of self esteem is something that you are encouraged to outsource. You are encouraged to give your kind of polestar to other people and you move around in relief... And I mean that in the sort of, positive negative sense, that you are reacting to their sense of who you should be. It's like that, you know, that exercise where someone forms a shape and you form a shape around them. Sometimes you could just feel like you're constantly the one who's reacting to the other. You're just, "oh, you want me to... Oh. I'll go there then. I'll bend this way." And if you can develop internal points of reference for your own self esteem, given that performers are by necessity, not just nature, but necessity, that they have heightened sensitivity... If you have someone with heightened sensitivity and anxiety, if you have inner points of reference for your own sense of stability, you will, given that you're all your own companion through this ridiculous journey of life, you've got something to draw on that isn't... that doesn't require you to reach for the other. And that can be that can be so valuable in the darker moments, I think. To just go, "hey, you've fought bigger dragons than this. Like just objectively, remember that time that that thing happened and you didn't think you could get through it? You got through it. So statistics sort of suggest that you might get through this. I might be OK." I mean, kind of presenting yourself with your own better-self-strong-day advice can sometimes be more reliant than the advice of another person, you know what I mean? It's that, when I am strong, I write messages down for myself, for the weak days, for the weaker days. When someone else saying, "oh, don't worry, you'll get through it." Or "cheer up." Or any of those really helpful things... But if it's a note from yourself, you can't go, "oh, you're an idiot." You have to go, "Oh, well, you know me. So maybe I should listen to you."
Bronte:
Can I just ask you one thing?
Leith:
Yes.
Bronte:
What brings you joy creatively?
Leith:
The truest answer, I think, when I feel like I have helped someone, like really helped them. That happened... There were a couple of points in this working week that just happened where you could tangibly feel that the help that I had given in that moment was a bit of a key, was a little bit of a turning point. And the joy I get from that is pretty singular. Yeah, pretty huge actually.
Bronte:
Love it.
Leith:
There must have been some reason I've stayed in this crazy game as long, so that's it. To just go, "Oh, I think maybe I helped. I think I helped. That's cool. That's better than not just fucking it up, but I think I helped." That's cool. What brings you Joy?
Bronte:
I think it's when I bring about change, either in myself or in others, in the way someone thinks or in the way that I think or if I discover something new that changes the way that I think or move or see people. Yeah. There's something in that change that I think is just a part of learning. And then I guess that learning is something that I crave. Oh, thank you so much for chatting with me.
Leith:
It's such a pleasure. We could talk forever, ever!
Bronte:
Oh forever. My goodness. I have so many more questions about your life.
Leith:
I'll just have to come back another time.
Bronte:
Yes. Thank you for sharing and thank you for being so open and caring and honest. It's been a pleasure. Enjoy New Zealand life.
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Follow our host Bronte Charlotte on Instagram @bronteandsunshine
Follow this week's guest Leith McPherson on Twitter @leithmcp
