Storytelling Resilience with Andrea Gibbs

Imagine being captivated by a voice that weaves humor and vulnerability into a tapestry of tales, drawing you into the very heart of storytelling. That's precisely what Andrea Gibbs, a storyteller extraordinaire, does as our guest. As she unravels the intricacies of performance, from the raw exposure of acting to the subtle rhythms of narrative comedy, we explore how each story, whether whispered in a theatre or laughed over at a comedy club, forges connections that ripple through our lives.

Andrea takes us into her world where humor and hardship dance in the delicate balance of storytelling. Through tales of personal challenges and career highs, such as captivating audiences alongside Cate Blanchett, she reveals the resilience it takes to not only succeed but also to genuinely impact others. The art of crafting stories, Andrea shows us, lies not in grandeur but in the authenticity and relatable moments that resonate on a universal frequency.

In the ever-unpredictable arena of the arts, Andrea Gibbs stands as a beacon of hope and adaptability. From the profound connection made with a delivery guy in a Love Actually styled encounter, to hosting WA's most authentic and unique storytelling event, Barefaced Stories, Andrea's narratives are a testament to the transformational power of storytelling. Join us around the warm table, and let Andrea's journey of creativity, change, and the pursuit of passion inspire you to see the extraordinary in the everyday and the strength in sharing your own story.

Links:
Andrea Gibbs
Barefaced Stories
Think Back Stack
Andrea's TedX Talk

Warm thanks to:
Sponsor: Females Over Forty-five Fitness in Victoria Park
Sound Engineering: Damon Sutton
Music: William A Spence
... and all our generous and inspiring guests around the warm table this season!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

You rehearse the play and you don't get fully naked. You might get down to your undies or whatever, but you don't get fully naked until you're ready to. And actually the end of the play was the two actors would get undressed very slowly while we were saying our lines and then Steve's character would walk off and I would be left alone on stage completely naked and my final line was please don't make fun of me. So we would rehearse up to that point We'd get down to our undies. We were probably about two nights away from preview, I think we were in the change room and I just said to him like a little kid I'll show you mine if you show me yours.

Speaker 1: 0:42

I don't know how like it's probably against the whole Me Too rules or whatever. But anyway, I was just like and I dacked myself and then he dacked himself and we just made it really funny. Do you know what I mean? We took all of like the seriousness out of it.

Speaker 3: 0:57

Thanks for joining me, sonia Nolan, around the warm table, or the tavola calda as my Italian papa used to call, a welcoming table of acceptance, positivity and curiosity. My Warm Table podcast aims to create that and more, as we amplify stories of Western Australians making our communities better. My Warm Table, season three, is proud to be sponsored by Females Over 45 Fitness, with a studio in Victoria Park and also online all over Australia. So now please take a seat and join us for Season 3 as we explore Stories of Hope. The stories we tell about ourselves and each other are powerful. In the end, all we are is a series of stories, a mass of memorable moments. It is what we remember about our family and our friends. Stories are what we share in wedding speeches, at birthdays, at funerals and when we reminisce over old photos and memories.

Speaker 3: 1:55

Our life is one big storybook and the stories we choose to focus on can lead us to many different places. It can lead us to dark places of despair and loneliness places. It can lead us to dark places of despair and loneliness and, thankfully, our stories can also take us to places of joy and hope. Hope reminds us that we are the narrator of our own story and we can flip the script and find truth, humanity and beauty in our everyday stories. I'm excited about the story we're going to uncover today, as I am joined around the warm table by the quintessential storyteller, andrea Gibbs. Andrea is an actor, comedian, improviser, broadcaster creator, mc trainer and, of course, she is a storyteller. Studied the art of storytelling in New York before returning to Perth to create one of our state's most exciting and entertaining storytelling shows called Barefaced Stories. Andrea, welcome to my Warm Table.

Speaker 1: 2:55

So lovely to be here, thank you.

Speaker 3: 2:57

I've been so excited about speaking with you, Andrea, because I've sort of followed you a little bit in the background and the more that I scratched, the more that I uncovered how incredibly connected you are with every sort of form of art in WA.

Speaker 1: 3:13

Yeah, when I'm at parties and I start listing off the things that I do, it kind of sounds a little bit like I'm begging for a job.

Speaker 2: 3:20

And I can do this, and I do this, and I do that.

Speaker 1: 3:23

I think that is just what my life has become being an artist that has chosen to stay in WA because you know to make a living from the arts, you just have to I don't know attach many strings to your bow, really, yeah.

Speaker 3: 3:37

And constantly recreate yourself. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:41

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:42

I mean, and I have just followed what I've had a passion in as well. So you know, your passions change over your life and yeah, I've just kind of tended to go where doors have opened and what's made my heart sing and that's just been storytelling and acting and comedy and yeah, I've moved through a few different worlds.

Speaker 3: 4:03

So tell me about the first passion and that road of passions as they've changed, as you've grown in your field.

Speaker 1: 4:11

Well, I used to always think I didn't, because I grew up in the country, I didn't really have opportunities and I didn't really have people who I could directly look to to kind of say, oh, they're in the arts, and so I wouldn't have even known what the arts was.

Speaker 3: 4:26

To be honest, Did you do anything artsy at school?

Speaker 1: 4:30

Oh, like I was creative, like for my, we had to do speeches to try to become, like year seven prefect, and mine was by far the most creative. Most people got up there with just a speech that they read. But I used the photocopier at school and I made a life-size cardboard cutout of myself and I dressed up as a scientist and I called myself Verity Attenborough, david Attenborough's sister, and I proceeded to do this presentation, pointing at this cardboard cutout of myself, saying this is the perfect prefect, and I didn't end up getting it. I don't know, I think it probably had been predetermined who was going to become prefect anyway, and my mum was a teacher, so I was probably kind of shit. We can't, you know, let her in the door here. But um, you know, I was quite performative and creative, I think.

Speaker 1: 5:23

Think back then, and we did do a school. We did a school play and things like that, and I was always really keen to get involved, but we didn't have specific drama classes or speech and drama. That wasn't until I went to Bunbury High in year 11 and 12. And then, you know, they had a whole performing arts centre and that was really a way that I made friends with some of the Bunbury crew. You know it was my way in to just be funny and you know to make jokes and be playful all the time. So I know and I was good at that and so you know, when you're good at something, you just kind of keep doing it.

Speaker 3: 5:55

And when you get the laughs, you just want to keep making people laugh. Yeah, yeah, exactly Is that sort of, I guess, contagious, or is that the way it feels?

Speaker 1: 6:05

Yeah, well, I mean, you know people always say about barefaced stories oh they're always funny. And they're not always funny. The laugh just comes from people being very, very honest. But if you are honest and you do get laughs, then you're immediately warm to people, you're immediately trustworthy to people. So that's how humour, you know, helps you make friends really.

Speaker 3: 6:31

It's so true. And actually let's talk about barefaced stories, because it's really quite, I think, iconic in WA. I think it's an amazing. I've heard about it years and years ago, before I even realised you were the creator of this, and I've recently started listening to the fact you've now converted all of those stories onto podcasts. Oh my gosh, I was doing I don't know folding the laundry or something the other day and had my ear pods in as I was listening to these barefaced stories and I was laughing out loud at the I don't know absurdity of life, like the things that people find themselves in, just an everyday situation which becomes extraordinary. And I think we've all got our own stories, haven't we? We've all got our stories which could become a bare face story.

Speaker 1: 7:16

Yeah, and I think a lot of people may get intimidated when they think, oh, I haven't had anything epic, that's happened to me, so I don't have any good stories. But the best stories come from the everyday because they're the most relatable. So it's the minutiae of life and it's just like having an awareness of the absurdities that happen in your day-to-day life.

Speaker 3: 7:39

yeah, so walk us through. How do people go from having you know an absurd thing that happens in their life to then, all of a sudden, being on stage in a you know sort of a Perth pub telling their stories to a live audience, like what happens in between?

Speaker 1: 7:55

Well, if you want to go great guns, you do put a little bit of work into your story before you get up on stage. But I mean, if you were in my workshop, one of the very first questions that I ask is just tell me something odd or interesting about yourself, and immediately, and it can just be something like oh, my first car was a Kombi van. I guarantee there will be a story attached to that. So it's just thinking about those, anything that is a little bit odd or interesting about you, I guarantee there's a story attached to it Any time. Thinking about those, anything that is a little bit odd or interesting about you, I guarantee there's a story attached to it.

Speaker 1: 8:30

Anytime you've ever been out of your comfort zone. So think about I do this exercise, which is like you write a column of like I am. So I am this type of person. I'm definitely not this type of person. So, and I'll give just basic categories like appearance, your house, sports and people just brain dump, and then I get them to read it out and immediately you see their eyes light up.

Speaker 2: 8:49

They don't even know they're doing it.

Speaker 1: 8:50

But when they're talking about I am this and I am that they'll have a real positive attitude towards that Everything in their I am not column, is this like hatred towards?

Speaker 4: 8:59

and it's there for a reason right.

Speaker 1: 9:01

That's something you've had to confront, a situation that you've been in. There is a reason why you are not that type of person. So quite often in the I am not column, it's a good idea to have a look at that and go oh, is there an out of my comfort zone story there?

Speaker 3: 9:14

And often you find out what you're not because you've had to try and do it right and therefore you realize, yeah, I am not, you know, I am not going to be a skydiver. I am not, you know. Whatever it is, it's because you just know that you've been there and you hated it.

Speaker 1: 9:29

Yes, yes, yeah, and if you've hated something, there's a story there because yeah you've got an attitude behind things as well.

Speaker 1: 9:33

We like to see people up on stage with an opinion of something. You could actually create a third column, which was I was, because you're always to tell a good story. You're looking for a moment of change and we've all changed. If you've lived a life, there's yeah, I mean you can just look back at the music that you used to listen to and has that changed? Or, yeah, the way you used to have your hair. You know, we all change in some way. So you're looking for those moments where you can begin the story as one kind of type of yourself, I guess, and then, by the end, how has that experience changed you? There's got to be a change.

Speaker 3: 10:07

Yeah, I like that. I actually like that third column, the. I was because we do move and change and morph into different elements of ourselves as we age, don't we?

Speaker 1: 10:17

Yeah, yeah definitely yeah, and that's fun to share and it's totally relatable as well.

Speaker 3: 10:21

Yeah exactly, and it's also reassuring that you don't have to be stuck in something that you were. Yeah, you're allowed to not be that person anymore.

Speaker 1: 10:30

Yeah exactly and be truthful with that as well. Storytelling's all about learning from the past, owning who you are right now, so being really honest with what's happened to you and becoming the future. So I suppose that's where kind of hope may come in. You know, I always people say, oh, do you need to end a story on hope? It's like, well, your ending needs to be satisfying, right. So that means that it needs to make sense, but it also needs to be surprising as well, and it also does need to point to the future. We do need to know if someone's telling a really difficult story on stage, that they are okay, so that becoming the future could just be an outlook. You know how's their outlook change? Or what do they hope for themselves in the coming years? Yeah, whether or not they get it, we don't know. But to be left on a little bit of like hope is important in stories, hard stories.

Speaker 3: 11:23

Yeah, I agree with that, but I reckon the ending's always the hardest thing in storytelling.

Speaker 1: 11:28

Am.

Speaker 3: 11:28

I right on that, because you don't want it to make it kitsch or try hard or you know, tie it with a bow. I read a lot of stuff and you know sort of think, oh, I can just see what the ending's going to be, because they're going to tie it with a nice little neat bow at the very end and then we're supposed to be satisfied with that. I do think the endings are hardest.

Speaker 1: 11:48

Endings are really hard. My trick, when I do it myself, I write out the ending in the most cheesiest way possible. It is like just dripping with cheese. I would never, ever say it out loud on stage. But then I look at that and go how can I say that with an image? So it becomes a bit more visual. So I'll just make up an example. So if your story is about you wanting to become a good mother, in the end you do become a good mother. Instead of saying that's when I realised I had achieved my goal, I was finally the mother that I've always wanted to be. An image, for example, could be I arrive at work, I open my lunchbox and there's a note from Bethany that says I love you mum. Yeah, nice, that's like more visual. Yeah, think of it as a short film. Your story Like what scene would you finish on at the end, which would say what you wanted to say, so that you can avoid doing all the cheesy stuff?

Speaker 3: 12:47

Yeah, yeah, I like that, I like that visual element. Yeah, yeah, and quite often.

Speaker 1: 12:51

Sometimes you can butterfly your story. So I'll often get people to start off in that same way in a story. So be really present. Like I'm standing there at the edge of a cliff, I'm looking down, I'm thinking how the hell did I get here? So can we get back to the cliff at the end? You know what I mean. So I'm standing there on the cliff and I'm thinking I can do this, I've got this, I trust myself and I jump, you know. So, yeah, you can sometimes, yeah, fold your story in half and what you started with you can finish with. I mean, that ties into the little bow, but it's less cheesy. It's less cheesy and keep it snappy. With a real-life story, we understand, once the climax has happened, just you can get out of it as soon as possible. We don't need a huge another story of like and then this happened and this happened. We understand life goes on, right.

Speaker 3: 13:38

Absolutely. And you know what? I was watching a movie the other day and the narrative arc just kept going and going. I was going, I got it. I got it 15 minutes ago. There's enough now. And so I went off and did I don't know. I probably doom-scrolled on Facebook for a little while while my husband's still watching it and then finally we get to the end and he goes oh you, sort of switched off. Halfway through. I said I knew what was going to happen.

Speaker 1: 14:06

It just went on too long. That's enough now.

Speaker 2: 14:08

Yeah, yeah, actually, because I'm in the process of adapting my play Barracking for the Umpire into a film, and I'm working with two screenwriters.

Speaker 4: 14:11

Oh, that's exciting.

Speaker 1: 14:11

The process of writing a screenplay is quite different. You know, like with a six to eight-minute story that you tell on stage, it's a very simple narrative arc. You don't have time to, you know, to bugger around too much. But yeah, just the format of a screenplay, just the I don't know what needs to happen before the first act and then the second act, and you know you can pretty much pinpoint what's going to happen on a 30-minute mark of a film, like yeah, so it's a very different process, yeah.

Speaker 3: 14:41

Oh, that's so interesting. And look, Barracking, for the Umpire. I'm super excited because you mentioned this to me when you and I crossed paths a few months ago and then I all of a sudden saw it come up in my feed to say that it's back, we're at the Regal and I'm going along to it in a few months and I'm so excited about seeing it. I didn't realise you were adapting it into a screenplay as well.

Speaker 1: 15:01

Well, we're at early stages, so we've got some funding from Screenwest and now we're on the hunt for a producer. So it's good timing, the play, actually, because we can invite producers along to check it out. Yeah, but the script version is quite different from the theatre version. It takes place over a weekend and is mostly set in this family's living room, and that's just purely because of the constraints of theatre, right. But yeah, to expand it into film, then we can, you know totally.

Speaker 1: 15:30

You've got more licence to do something more there might even be a car chase in there, oh my gosh, how exciting.

Speaker 3: 15:34

Can we get Daniel Ricciardo to do that? Oh, we could yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:37

Because, you know he's a local boy. Yeah, absolutely, why.

Speaker 3: 15:40

Why not, and tell me a little bit about Barracking for the Umpire, because I believe there's a real family story behind it.

Speaker 1: 15:46

Yeah, well, the title itself is taken from a running joke in our family. So my dad used to play football in the 70s for Donnybrook and he started quite young and he started getting head injuries pretty early on, to the point where the doctor just said you shouldn't be playing anymore. So he loves footy and it was heartbreaking for him. He couldn't really fully give it up so he became an umpire. So he used to umpire in the Southwest Footy League and he was really good at that. But my mum used to still go to all of the matches that he was umpiring at and she would be the only one there at the ground ever barracking for the umpire. So that's where that title comes from. But yeah, the play itself is, I guess, the journey. If my dad didn't give up footy, playing footy, if he kept playing, what the consequences would have been then?

Speaker 1: 16:38

So yeah, so Doug is the patriarch of this family. They're in Donnybrook, they're a footy-mad family. There's three kids. Only one of the kids doesn't like footy. She stayed in Donnybrook but she's trying to tap out of the whole football sycophant situation. The son is an AFL player and the other daughter is a sports journalist. They both live in Melbourne and they fly home for the weekend for Dad's big presentation night and, yeah, that's when they start to kind of see things have changed in Dad's world. Yeah, because of the head trauma.

Speaker 3: 17:12

That's interesting because that's such a topical issue. The head trauma in contact sport yeah, is that something you like to write about? Like topical issues? Is that where your, I guess, creative journey takes you?

Speaker 1: 17:26

Yeah, I think I probably gravitate towards like I like characters that are maybe hiding something vulnerability, shame and then I also like to kind of pepper it with that kind of good old Australian coping mechanism of laughter and humour. Yeah, I think that's really probably how my family's like dealt with a lot of things, you know, a lot of heart and a lot of love, but also, you know, not afraid to laugh, you know, because laughter is a really soothing tool for us as well and brings us close together. So I think, yeah, I really like that and I feel that it's particularly Australian, like we have the ability to laugh at things in perhaps, what would maybe be a very awkward situation for other people, other nationalities. But I think we're pretty good at kind of, yeah, getting by with some humour.

Speaker 3: 18:27

Yeah, dark humour.

Speaker 1: 18:28

Yeah, any sort of humour is pretty acceptable in Australia, isn't it?

Speaker 3: 18:32

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:33

And I think you can live with both. Do you know what I mean? It doesn't. The world is both. The world is funny and the world is darkness, light and shade, everything in between. So, yeah, why not try to live it all the best you can?

Speaker 3: 18:46

Yeah, I agree, I agree. Now tell me about your official, I guess, education in storytelling because you went overseas. Was it to Canada?

Speaker 1: 18:57

I went to New York for storytelling. Yeah, I've done a little bit of travel because I was after uni so I did performing arts at uni and then wanted to stay in WA. So that's when I was like, oh, I've got to kind of do some other things and I got into stand-up. So, yeah, a friend of mine signed me up for Raw Comedy, which is like the Melbourne Comedy Festival competition, and I ended up getting runner-up in that and then got the wild card to go to the Melbourne Comedy Festival to perform over there.

Speaker 3: 19:27

So, yeah, I did stand-up for a long time and I really enjoyed it Was that sort of based on your you know insights and life experiences. What did you use as material?

Speaker 1: 19:38

Yeah, it was definitely rooted in. You know comedy stories, so a lot of stories about my family, you know, which I would manipulate to probably live outside of reality, which you can do with stand-up. Do you know what I mean? You do it You're basically massaging and working on material until you get it to a point where it's perfect and you know it's going to go great, and then you start with that and you finish with that material and then new stuff, you work in in the middle, um, and hope that it goes well. So, yeah, it was definitely narrative based, um, but I wanted to tell longer stories and I wanted to tell stories that did have a bit more light and shade and depth to them, um, which you kind of can't do on a stand-up stage. You know people are paying to laugh and that's what you're going to give them laughs every. You know 20 seconds.

Speaker 1: 20:28

So, and storytelling is not like that. It's kind of. You know you need patience at the beginning to then have the payoff at the end for an audience and I was listening to, I mean, the Moth was in the very early days of podcasting, so that was like 2009, I think. What's the Moth? The Moth is. So in America. The Moth is this storytelling night which started on someone's back veranda, and the reason why it's called the Moth is because there were moths flying around the porch lot.

Speaker 3: 21:00

I love the backstories of names.

Speaker 1: 21:02

Yeah, yeah, Fantastic yeah and then that kind of grew to be like pub stories and now it's a huge organisation. They have nights around the world. There's nights now in Sydney and in Melbourne. Their formats for their storytelling nights are a little bit different. So people come along and chuck their name in a hat and they get pulled out, and so I mean to be honest, the majority of the ones that I've been to, those Pull your Name Out shows are really hit and miss. But then they have more curated nights where they have celebrities and stuff, tell stories and stuff and they do a lot of community work as well. But they're huge in the States and I was lucky enough to get a grant, which was a mentorship grant, and they said you know, pick someone you want to learn a particular skill off, think big.

Speaker 1: 21:49

And there was no one in Australia that was doing the type of storytelling that I wanted to do. So I found a lady in New York who was a Moth Grand Slam winner, so she's a really good storyteller, and she had started her own night called Stripped Stories, which was sexy stories like late night ones, yeah. So she used to do that at one of the improv clubs over there and the grant paid for me to stay in New York for three months and just work one-on-one with her. So I was working on my own stories and building a solo show, so when I came back I could tour that.

Speaker 1: 22:19

And then, yeah, there was nowhere really to do the type of storytelling that I had learned, and my best mate was managing the Blue Room Theatre at the time and she was a bit jealous of my trip overseas. She was like, let's bring Margot here, my mentor, and so we actually racked up our credit cards to get Margot over to run a bunch of workshops and so we had about 30 people who were trained up in the craft of storytelling and then we built Bareface from that. So, yeah, from the beginning, it's been really important to us to have a quality night, because that's how you get word of mouth. So, yeah, and that was 2010. So we're in our 14th year now. So, yeah, it's excellent.

Speaker 3: 23:01

It's excellent. And didn't you do some sort of caravan conversations with the ABC?

Speaker 1: 23:07

Yeah well, no that wasn't with the ABC, but that was. I've built a caravan called the Chinwagon which is a mobile recording studio. Yeah, so I whipped that out for all sorts of events. It's been right up to the Pilbara to grab stories from up there. It's got no air con because, as you know, you can't have the background noise of air con, that's right.

Speaker 1: 23:29

So that was a very sweaty event but that was a lot of fun. The Highway to Hell. So when Perth Festival did their Highway to Hell, I parked it up on one of the main parks, put a sign out the front that said come in, share your Akadaka story. And my God, I got so many brilliant stories from that. Yeah, and I'm doing stuff with the City of Mandurah in the coming months about immigrants, people who have come over here and lived in Mandurah for a while. So, yeah, all sorts of things. And my favourite format in the Chinwagon is to actually get two people who know each other inside and one of them interviews the other one. I just sit in the background and help out if they need help and help them wrap it up at the end. But that's been really, really lovely and I feel very privileged to even be sitting in the recording studio when they're having a yarn. You know, and have the space to ask questions that they wouldn't normally ask each other.

Speaker 3: 24:18

Yeah, yeah, oh, how lovely. What a beautiful concept.

Speaker 1: 24:22

Yeah, and so then they get a photograph of themselves and they get a little USB with their own conversation. So, yeah, I've had, like you know, grandparents being interviewed by their grandkids, I've had work colleagues, I've had neighbours talking to each other. Just brilliant, yeah.

Speaker 3: 24:36

Just lovely. And so what else do you do with those stories, like, do you publish them or broadcast them in any way?

Speaker 1: 24:42

Well, some of them have gone to the WA Museum so they have a section called the Reflections Gallery. So there's a couple in there near the Wall of Love and Loss. So just little snippets of people's stories. I have played some of them on the radio. Mostly they're just. I mean that scenario is just for those people to keep and then to share with their friends, or just, you know, hold on to. Yeah, how lovely, how lovely. There's something special about your voice you know, so I don't know.

Speaker 1: 25:14

I had a friend who passed away when I was like at uni and I found some old cassette tapes of us when we were kids, just recording our voices. And, my goodness, when you listen and you can hear her again, it is remarkable. It's magic, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 25:29

Yeah, I agree, I sat down and had a conversation with my dad some years before he passed away and every now and then I just sort of have a little listen to that and, yeah, it is special it is special.

Speaker 1: 25:41

Your voice is so distinct, it's like your thumbprint, you know.

Speaker 3: 25:44

Well, it is. I mean, I think there's been science about that actually that your voice is unique to you. Yeah, which is so scary, the AI situation.

Speaker 1: 25:56

I do a lot of voiceovers and everyone in the voiceover world is like panicking because, yeah, we'll just be out of work.

Speaker 3: 25:58

Yeah, no, it's true, there's a whole lot of unknowns with AI at the moment, with our imagery, our voices yeah, the whole lot, but that's not a very hopeful conversation to talk about that. No, no, with that idea of having conversations and reminiscing and conversation starters, you developed something that's just up there. You know those things, the ThinkBack stack, which I just think is amazing. It's a deck of cards which our conversation started. So tell me the story of that.

Speaker 1: 26:35

Well, I used them in my workshop. So I've created like this homemade box of just like laminated cards that I made and I've got about how many in that box. I would have over 100 in that box, but people were like trying to write them down and wanted copies of them and I was just like I'll just make a box that I can sell you. So, yeah, that's where that came from. There was a while there where I was doing a little thing called the Daily Egg On, which was I was sending out a daily prompt to people who wanted to. You know, follow along and I tried. I got 365 prompts so you could do it for a whole year if you wanted to.

Speaker 1: 27:15

But it's just. I mean the stories that I hear from people, how they use them is amazing. Like some people you know just journaling, I would have expected that Other people use it for letter writing to each other. Oh right, yeah, so with a loved one who's overseas or whatever they'll just like be like. The most romantic thing I've ever done is this and you write that back Character development. So people have used them for, you know, in their scripts and things to like, blow out characters and try to find little stories that their characters might have. So, yeah, it's been pretty amazing.

Speaker 3: 27:46

Or just conversation starters People using that at parties. I've seen them as icebreakers you know, sort of in facilitated sessions.

Speaker 3: 27:53

So I just think they're amazing and it's such a good idea. And I know, years ago my husband and son went on a big trip away, you know two or three weeks, sort of camping trip, you know sort of rite of passage type of thing. I guess you know that they did and I just thought this is such an amazing opportunity for them to talk, yeah, and so I wrote these conversation starters for them and just very strongly suggested that this might be something they might like to do at some point. And they did actually drag them out at some point in their trip and had a little conversation about, you know, just about you know life, and you know how Paul and I met and you know all that sort of stuff.

Speaker 3: 28:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so they're just such a divine thing to do and I'm going to grab them, and I'm going to actually if you don't mind, can I ask you some questions from your stack?

Speaker 1: 28:40

Sure, yeah, I don't know how good I'll be at them.

Speaker 3: 28:45

I will put a photograph of these on our Facebook site so that you can all see. So they're called the Think Back Stack and they're all about asking questions, and I just I expect that they would be just such a beautiful thing to do with a grandparent, or even someone in an aged care home, to help them reminisce and bring back memories that are really meaningful for them.

Speaker 1: 29:06

Yeah, you just have to be aware of one of the cards in there. I've got friends who are teachers who have said oh yeah, we take the sex card out. Probably a good idea. There's a card that says how did I learn about sex? So yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 29:20

Well, I'm going to. I've actually stumbled upon this one. I think this is a really, really good question for us today. Andrea, if I had to train someone to be me for a day, I'd get them to. Oh, that is a good one.

Speaker 1: 29:33

It's a good one. Call your mum, make a to-do list, have an anxiety attack. That's probably my three things.

Speaker 2: 29:43

Just to be honest.

Speaker 1: 29:44

Love it. I mean, I have, like this probably changes week to week, but at the moment I'm trying really hard to strip back a lot of things so that I can focus on writing. Yeah, because I'm so used to having a lot of things going on, but I'm I don't know if this is just an age thing, but I'm starting to feel like things are getting quite foggy and it's very hard to focus on things now. So I just need to clear my plate so that I can work on the big, important stuff and the scary stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm writing a new play at the moment and it takes so much energy and just even thinking about it. Do you know what I mean? You can't be busy with other stuff because the weeks and weeks just go by and then suddenly you've got this deadline, which is, you know, a couple of days away, and you just haven't given yourself the energy that it needs and the dedication that it needs.

Speaker 3: 30:40

Do you work better under pressure? Because that's the excuse I give myself when I leave things and sort of think, no, no, but I really work better under pressure, so it's going to be fine. It's going to be fine.

Speaker 1: 30:55

Yeah, I fine, yeah, I do, I do, yeah, so, but I'll, so I've learned now to set myself kind of deadline dates that involve other people. So, yeah right, you're accountable yeah yeah, yeah, that's sort of be like I need to have this on the table for them in a play reading by this particular date, you know. So if I give myself those deadlines, I'm okay, yeah, but yeah that things that ski deadlines that ski are important.

Speaker 3: 31:13

They are, they are, that's so true. They just make you get there, make you get there yeah yeah. So what's the most favourite thing that you've done in your career? Is there a real highlight that you can share?

Speaker 1: 31:26

Well, I can tell you one that I've been thinking about this recently because on Thursday night at Bareface we had the theme was celebrity and stardom. So there were a lot of stories about, you know, celebrities that people had met and I had been cast in this show called Eight Gigabytes of Hardcore Pornography. The show itself Was that here in Perth. Yeah, it was in Perth and it was in Sydney first. So it was a co-production between Griffin Theatre Company in Sydney and Perth Theatre Company here. And I remember when my agent called me I was touring around New Zealand doing stand-up and she said I'm going to send you a script, but just a heads up, it contains nudity. And I was like, oh okay, because no one I mean, I'm not the kind of person who's comfortable in that space to be nude on stage. Anyway, I started reading this script and I was in from the get-go.

Speaker 3: 32:23

Oh really.

Speaker 1: 32:23

Yeah it was very kind of confessional. It was a double-hander, so it was just two actors was a double-hander, so it was just two actors, um, and they were the middle-aged single people who were really lost in their life and they end up kind of meeting online, um, and the kind of the. The title itself is kind of a bit of a kind of throwaway. It's not about pornography, really, from my character's point of view, um, anyway, I read this script and I said, oh yeah, I'll audition for it and we'll see how we go. Anyway, I auditioned for it, got the part and really kind of put the just the nudity bit which happened at the end of the play in. Just I just put it in a little box and tried not to think about it until we had to.

Speaker 1: 33:09

And it was really funny in rehearsals in Sydney, just the process of that. You know you rehearse the play and you don't get fully naked. You might get down to your undies or whatever, but you don't get fully naked until you're ready to. And actually the end of the play was the two actors would get undressed very slowly while we were saying our lines and then Steve's character would walk off and I would be left alone on stage completely naked and my final line was please don't make fun of me. Oh yeah, it was a really heartbreaking ending. So we would rehearse up to that point, we'd get down to our undies and then, once we were probably about two nights away from preview, I think we were in the change room and I just said to him like a little kid I'll show you mine if you show me yours.

Speaker 1: 33:59

I don't know how, like it's probably against the whole Me Too rules or whatever, but anyway, I was just like and I dacked myself and then he dacked himself and we just made it really funny. Do you know what I mean? We took all of, like the seriousness out of it. Anyway, the show was a brilliant show, it was a great success and it was really challenging for Steve. Actually, I didn't know anyone in the audience and we could fully see the audience because the way that it was lit. The Griffin Theatre is this tiny little space seats about 60 people. It's like one of those spaces in theatre history that you know the greats have performed at this tiny little hole in the wall.

Speaker 1: 34:36

Yeah, and, but the audience was lit up as well as the stage so you could see everyone. And every after every show I'd get off stage and I'd text my dad and I'd be like, oh, you know the actor who played Terrence in A Country Practice, he was in the audience that I could see him. Him, and you know Rhonda from the AMIA, she was in there as well. And then one day we were warming up on stage, the audience hadn't come in yet and the stage manager walked up to us and said, look, we don't normally give you a heads up when there's, you know, people in the audience that we know, but Kate and Andrew are going to be in.

Speaker 1: 35:11

So Kate Blanchett and her husband, andrew Upton, and we were like, oh, okay, and that was the year that she had taken home the Oscar. She was like basically the gold medalist of acting. Anyway, doors open and you know I can see her the whole time. I could probably just like reach out and touch her beautiful cheeks when I'm on stage. But I acted my little heart out that night I bet you did.

Speaker 1: 35:38

I just acted my little heart out that night and I could see, you know you could see other audience members kind of looking at her throughout the performance. She was just stunning and at the end of the show you know, as I have this story like I'm being- completely naked in front of Kate Blanchett. That's a great party story Standing there naked and then, yeah, the show closes, the audience left, but they stayed in and then they came backstage and, yeah, hung out with us when we were still nude and stuff.

Speaker 3: 36:06

You didn't have time to put your clothes back on.

Speaker 1: 36:08

She was so lovely, she was so Aussie. She said that we made her cry and that was just like oh, my goodness yeah he was the best actor in the world, telling me I did a really great job and that, oh my goodness, when I got home messaging Dad you will not believe.

Speaker 3: 36:23

Oh, no, oh, that's so awesome, isn't it? Yeah, that's a great highlight.

Speaker 1: 36:34

Yeah, so that would be definitely a highlight. So I was doing a brilliant show that I was incredibly proud of, and then getting to do it in front of her and meeting her afterwards was just amazing.

Speaker 3: 36:40

And then, what was the reception for that play in Perth?

Speaker 1: 36:43

It was great, yeah, and I actually all of my worries about being naked on stage had gone away by then, because I just trusted the show and everyone loved it. And so I mean to get your kid off for a show that people hate? That would be the worst scenario, right.

Speaker 4: 36:58

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:59

But we were really proud of that work. But yeah, and it was funny the night that my parents came, that was funny.

Speaker 2: 37:05

My dad stood up and gave me a standing ovation at the end which was just like oh bless.

Speaker 1: 37:13

That's so cool.

Speaker 3: 37:13

He didn't see me in my birthday suit because I was a bubba. You're so close to your dad, aren't you? Oh?

Speaker 1: 37:16

really close, yeah, and my mum yeah.

Speaker 3: 37:19

Yeah, it's a beautiful thing. I know that listening to the Barefaced Stories podcast, you always get your dad to do the ads for the gin that sponsor you. So it's just hilarious, it's just a love banter between you two and it's just precious.

Speaker 1: 37:33

He makes me laugh so much. Yeah, Actually, I'm writing a small piece for a show that's coming out for Black Swan, which is a bunch of writers responding to written works and Dad's story. He had a really, really challenging childhood, so the script that I'm responding to is about family violence and that was a big part of Dad's childhood, and so I sat down with him the other day and I was just asking him all about it and he was so open with me you know, he never like growing up he wasn't that open about that stuff.

Speaker 1: 38:09

I think he just wanted to shield us from anything bad in the world. He was like we're taking your kids, yeah, yeah, open about that stuff.

Speaker 3: 38:11

I think he just wanted to shield us from anything bad in the world.

Speaker 1: 38:12

Yeah, yeah, and actually the first time that he was very open about this particular story that happened to him when we confronted his father. He told on the bareface stage Wow, yeah, that was really amazing. That was probably one of the first times I was like, oh, we're doing bareface so well right now, if my dad you know true blue kangaroo country farmer can get up on stage in front of a hundred people and share the most intimate moment in his life, you're doing something right.

Speaker 1: 38:42

Doing something right. He felt like he went into so much detail in that story for an audience more detail than he's ever shared with me and my brother and since that time he's been so because he had people come up to him afterwards and said I've had a very similar experience and you know, it becomes this shared space and makes him feel okay with that history that he holds on to.

Speaker 1: 39:03

Yeah, yeah, and so he's been much more open about those stories as he's aged. But I just was reflecting the other day about how he's completely like. He's completely changed his life. You know, he could have just passed on all of this toxic stuff that he received as a kid onto us and he's totally broken the cycle.

Speaker 1: 39:30

Wow, like in a way that blows my mind, because we had the most blessed childhood, you know, living on a farm and just I don't know just the way that they would. My brother rode BMX and we'd pack him up in the car and we'd travel a long distance. We drove from Perth to Sydney so he could compete, you know, and we would borrow a pony, so I could have a pony and ride around and Dad would take, you know, borrow a float and we'd be off to pony club and you know it was like just saying yes to us all the time. Yeah, to give us those great experiences. It was amazing, yeah.

Speaker 3: 40:02

Yeah, it sounds very idyllic. Yeah what a special man, what a special parents you've got yeah, yeah. Oh, that's so good. So, coming back to barefaced stories, though, how do you convince people to stand on stage and tell their stories, like, how does that work? Or do you think that there's an innate thing in some people that they just want to be heard? They just want people to listen to their story?

Speaker 1: 40:25

Yeah, I think it's different for everyone. It might be a danger if people want to be heard and they want people to, because it can sometimes get a bit preachy. Yeah, I think it's important to you know the best way to kind of convert people to anything is probably to share your story and just let them make up their own mind. Many different ways. Sometimes I'm like twisting arms. I become a bit of a like like mother to them. You know, in that kind of coaching sense I'm pretty frank with them that it's a pretty terrifying experience and it's really not a natural space for the majority of us. I think it can, you can. Sometimes, if you think it's a space that you know is suited to you, you can kind of come off a bit arrogant, like I quite like the people who are a little bit more nervous and are honest with that.

Speaker 3: 41:22

Do they sort of script their stories beforehand. Most of the time.

Speaker 1: 41:25

Everyone's different. Yeah, Everyone's very different.

Speaker 3: 41:28

Yeah, they sound like they've definitely put thought into it. The ones that I've listened to on your podcast, yeah, Certainly people you know really have gone through like a storytelling process with you to actually come out the other end with this real gold story.

Speaker 1: 41:42

Yeah, I think you kind of have to do that. To keep it to this, like I say, prepare a six to eight-minute story. They'll tend to go for about ten minutes once they're in front of an audience, but to keep it to that time frame. I think it's important to to write it out, know where you're going to start, know where you're going to finish, otherwise it just goes a bit on and on, but that's also to just give yourself the confidence so that then you can stand up there and enjoy being up there.

Speaker 1: 42:07

You know, and receive like the laughs when they come, or you know the mm-hmms and people agreeing with you and yeah, because you don't want to. It's nothing worse than just being up there and being stunned by the lights and just get it out, get it over and done with as soon as you can. Yeah, I think it's important to enjoy it. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 42:25

And you have monthly barefaced events, don't you?

Speaker 1: 42:29

Yeah, so the events are every month. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 42:32

And every month you've got a different theme. Is that?

Speaker 1: 42:34

what happens? Different theme every month, yeah what?

Speaker 3: 42:35

are some of the themes that you've covered.

Speaker 1: 42:37

Oh yeah, we just had Celebrity in Stardom. We had Leap of Faith on Leap Year, oh nice one.

Speaker 1: 42:43

Our next one is One Small Step because we're doing it at the WA Museum under this huge, big replica of the moon. It's a seven-metre diameter replica of the moon, heroes and villains, what else? I try to keep the theme. It has to be good for marketing one and then it also has to inspire a bunch of stories. And I like to keep it broad enough that you know a lot of stories could fit underneath that particular theme.

Speaker 1: 43:08

Like I'd probably never pick a theme like fathers, for example, because it would just all be stories about dads or being a dad. It would be like family matters or something like that. So, yeah, you could put a dad story in there. You could do a mom or cousin story, you know. So there's enough variety because there's six stories in a night. So you want to be a light and shade and you know the programming of those stories is really, really important. So people will submit stories. Sometimes I'll reach out to people if I know they've got a great story. Usually, if you've done a workshop, I'll know a few of your stories. So, yeah, usually kind of harass people after they've done a workshop.

Speaker 1: 43:44

Or some people are like when can I tell a story as soon as I've done a workshop? Yeah, some people are really keen, others are just curious and sometimes it just takes me just planting a seed, of just going. I'd love you to get on the bare face stage one day. Have a think about it and they'll go.

Speaker 3: 43:59

Hmm, and they might mull it over for six months and then email me, yeah yeah, yeah, I know a friend of mine did it and she was just then telling me it. She just felt so liberated after being able to tell that story.

Speaker 1: 44:11

Once people have done it once, they're kind of pretty quickly addicted to it yeah. Yeah, it's the real sense of pride you know that you have in yourself when it goes well.

Speaker 3: 44:18

Yeah, yeah, it's so good. I mean, I just love how you've taken the concept of storytelling and created a whole career around it, really, with the Think Back stacks, which is all about stories, you know, and with your bare-faced stories, which is all about stories, and then your writing stories in your screenplays and theatre productions. It's just, you are just the quintessential storyteller.

Speaker 1: 44:41

Honestly, sometimes it can be a nightmare to watch a movie with me, though.

Speaker 3: 44:46

Why is that? Because you can actually see the narrative arc is going just way off.

Speaker 1: 44:49

It's like well, it didn't get us to invest in that character. Yeah, you know like just yeah can poke holes in a lot of things, Of course, Absolutely, and as you should.

Speaker 3: 44:57

As you should if they haven't, you know, not up to scratch, that's right. Yeah, tell me about your TEDx Perth experience, which is about 10 years ago now. Yeah, that was years ago, in preparation for you coming, because I was so nervous about talking with you because I was just thinking you're just the consummate professional and so interesting. Honestly, andrea, you're so interesting and so I was watching this TEDxPerth and you had me in stitches Like, did you really do? Yes, can you tell us? Tell us the story that you shared on TEDxPerth?

Speaker 1: 45:26

Well, I worked for, oh my God, yeah. Okay, I ended up working at SDA Travel at Curtin University, which was like the travel agent that I booked my you know big trip, european trip on after I finished uni at Curtin. And I ended up at SDA because I'd done like an 18-month stint on the Breakfast Show at 96FM, which I didn't have a great experience. Oh really, it was just like third wheel on that show. It was you know the girl and can you talk about dating and all this kind of stuff, and it was just like ugh, gross. And so I ended up just working for SDA Travel for a year.

Speaker 1: 46:04

But I was in this office with all these other girls who were all partnered up, were all you know. Some of them were married, um, and I was the only single girl in the office. But this delivery guy used to walk past our shop front window every day. He used to wave to me and I used to wave back and it was pretty cute, it was very cute and we kind of just this would just happen, yeah, and it got to the point where it's like I had to make a move and but I was too scared to like, like, go outside and talk to him.

Speaker 3: 46:33

Imagine that, yeah, imagine that.

Speaker 1: 46:35

So I've made this huge, I've made all these like this huge, big signs that I showed in the shop front window.

Speaker 3: 46:42

And they remind me of if anyone's seen Love Actually, yes, and sort of the guy that turns up at the door and he has these signs that you know, sort of telling a story or the you know questions through the signs. Yeah, there was that sort of signs, wasn't it?

Speaker 1: 46:55

Yeah, yeah. It was basically just like today's, my last day at work. Will you miss me? Do you like beer? Wow, me too. And I'm just like and then it was said do you have a girlfriend?

Speaker 3: 47:09

No, do you have a Girlfriend, and then the next one was wife, I think Wife or boyfriend, yeah.

Speaker 1: 47:16

But yeah, no, he ended up having a girlfriend. So I was kind of stopped in my tracks and I didn't have a plan B. I just thought that that was going to go so great and I kind of crouched, I kind of slid down the wall. But he came into the shop and then he gave me a bit of a hug and yeah, and then I think we didn't actually end up meeting up. Later I bumped into him at a pub I think. But yeah, I think kind of like it was that relationship that worked when we were on different sides of the glass.

Speaker 3: 47:51

It was a waving relationship, yeah when you take the glass away.

Speaker 1: 47:54

The relationship wasn't there.

Speaker 3: 47:55

No, no. But what I loved about you sharing that on the TEDx platform was then you talked about you. Can you know again? You can take a story and it can give you so many different meanings.

Speaker 2: 48:08

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 48:08

So you know the meaning was. For some people it could be like, oh my gosh, I'd die of embarrassment. That would be just horrendous and.

Speaker 3: 48:14

I'd never recover from that. You know you could take it down that path, but I loved how you took it down the path of yeah, okay, it could have been embarrassing, it was a bit embarrassing, but what I knew that you know there was courage in there and you gave someone the best story that they'll be telling for a really long time about this girl at this travel agency that had these signs for him so. I just love how you turn that around.

Speaker 1: 48:39

Yeah, and actually I did. I remember getting tagged in stuff on that day when I told my TED Talk, where it was like he was being tagged this is the girl. So he obviously had shared that story with his friends.

Speaker 1: 48:51

Yeah, Little did he know one day it was going to be like a TEDx talk hilarious yeah yeah, but I mean I had I'd emceed a couple of the TEDx Perth's before I had done that and when they asked me to do a talk of my own I was a bit like, ah, do they? You know, because they wanted it to be on storytelling and I for a long time I was like going to try to just nut out a talk on this is how you tell a story. But it ended up like the process of that is very dry. It's actually really boring. You know, just talking about the process of writing. You can do it in a workshop, because that's what people want.

Speaker 3: 49:27

But in terms of the stage.

Speaker 2: 49:28

I was just like.

Speaker 1: 49:29

I'm just going to tell a story and I'm going to show, you know, how engaging a story can be. You know, and I do, you know I'm very honest in it and I say that at my grandma's funeral that's what was left behind. It was all her stories, you know, and that's what we do leave behind. So it's kind of just like keep telling your stories, yeah.

Speaker 3: 49:48

It's really important.

Speaker 1: 49:56

And in fact, you do some work as well with Mental Health Commission, Is that right? I did, yeah, yeah, which can be a pretty difficult space to work in, so I did a bit of like touring through the Southwest, yeah, and it is. I mean, you're getting people to talk about some really really difficult times and quite often in a space where they are still in a difficult time.

Speaker 4: 50:14

It's not reflective, it's actually very current yeah it's really hard.

Speaker 1: 50:17

So I mean, what I would do in those spaces would be to get them. I would use my ThinkBack stack and I would get them to talk about things that perhaps weren't related to the mental health challenges that they were going through. So, just to give them you know, I would give them a reminder that there are other things that have happened to you in your life. Your whole story is not just about the fact that you have severe OCD, like it's you know it's a part of the story. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 50:42

And that's what I was going to ask you know, with our theme of hope, you know how much hope do you think there is in the act of storytelling?

Speaker 1: 50:55

Well, hope for me. I mean, the story that I tell in my TED Talk is all about hope. You know, like I set it up, like I'm hopeful that this is going to be the beginning of a great romance for me, the problem with hope is that you very rarely get what you imagined it to be. You know you get byproducts of that, I suppose, but it's very rarely exactly what you had imagined. Even if it's close to it, it's not going to be exactly. So I think hope is good for kind of propelling you with optimism towards something that you might want, but then you've also got to get to a point where you just like trust in yourself. So, yeah, I mean I would. I've been thinking about, like when I've been so hopeful, like I wouldn't as an actor, I wouldn't stand on the side of the stage going, gee, I hope this goes well. Like I would be panicking if I had that thought.

Speaker 3: 51:46

If hope is your only tool in your toolkit. You really need a few more things. Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah.

Speaker 1: 51:52

I would be standing on the side of the stage telling myself trust in yourself, trust in the process, trust in the hard work, and let's see how it goes, you know.

Speaker 3: 52:01

So I think, if you do the work in the right direction towards the thing that you are hoping, the outcome that you're hoping, then yeah, I do like that imagery of hope being the propeller, yeah, sort of like propelling you forward towards something that you then build all your skills around, yeah, but you know, just being that real sort of pushing you off that inertia, yeah, and being open to you know, if you get to the point where you haven't got what you had hoped for, being really open to receiving byproducts of that.

Speaker 4: 52:33

Yeah, I like that, yeah, things that you had never expected.

Speaker 1: 52:37

Yeah, I mean that's been my whole career. Yeah, I mean that's been my whole career. Yeah, I would have never expected to have done half the stuff that I have done. Yeah, and I can't, I don't know. It's so an unpredictable career that you kind of can't pin your hopes on things. It's not. Yeah, I mean sometimes you get it's not a linear career is it.

Speaker 3: 52:55

It's not. No, no, no, no.

Speaker 1: 52:57

And actually, after I did do that one in Sydney because it went so well, I was thinking this is the next step for me. You know, like you know, kate Blanchett and Andrew Upton were running Sydney Theatre Company at that time, so I was like I'm going to be cast in a Sydney Theatre Company production after this. You wait, you know, I had in my head this kind of almost like a corporate ladder, which rung am I going up next.

Speaker 1: 53:19

But it just does not happen in the arts, so you just become I don't know if resilience is the right word. But you just become a bit more relaxed about what can happen and what can't happen. It doesn't mean you don't have high hopes.

Speaker 3: 53:35

I think you become very you know multi-talented in so many different ways you know you'd have to like. You know multi-talented in so many different ways you know you'd have to, don't you? You need to draw on so many different elements of the arts which is so broad and beautiful. Yeah, like improvisation. I want to talk about that because you were one of the you know first improv type of people in Perth, weren't you?

Speaker 1: 53:57

Yeah, well, I was in the first kind of the first group of the big hoo-ha. So we used to perform at the Fremantle Hotel and that was a little pub before it got turned into Notre Dame and we literally would be performing in front of five people. It was like the tiniest audience.

Speaker 3: 54:14

Very intimate. I think it's called intimate audience.

Speaker 1: 54:15

Yeah very intimate, but it was so much fun. And you're just mucking around on stage with your mates, really, yeah, and I learned a lot off Sam Longley, damon Lockwood I met, you know, that's where I met Kerry O'Sullivan, who became my best mate, who, yeah, started Barefaced Stories with me. Claire Hooper, tim Minchin yeah, jumped up on stage with us. So, yeah, it was a lot of fun. A lot of fun, yeah, terrifying, but yeah.

Speaker 3: 54:42

And I'm actually reading a book, as I was showing you earlier Aidan Date, another WA guy who's written a book about improv called Funny Business. So I'm reading his book at the moment and learning a lot. Like I didn't realise how structured it is and how you know there's so much to improvisation and the history of where it came from. Like all of that, I'm fascinated by this book, yeah, but yeah, how structured was your improv?

Speaker 1: 55:07

Depends on how you would play it. Really, yeah, I went over to Canada and studied with Loose Moose Improv, so it's kind of like the way I like to explain it to people is it's pretty much like a game of football. There's rules, right yeah, and you know how to kind of bend some of the rules. You know how to use some of those rules to your advantage if you're a good player. Yep, that's exactly what it's like. So there will be rules for a particular improv game and you know how to work that game to get the funny and, yeah, to make it fly.

Speaker 3: 55:41

The rules are there to kind of help you to help the scenes, yeah, to guide you, otherwise it can go into free fall.

Speaker 1: 55:45

Yeah, yeah yeah, but then the scene can be about anything you know, yeah.

Speaker 3: 55:50

Yeah, is it a little bit like? You know that fabulous show on TV. Thank God You're here.

Speaker 1: 56:01

Is that improv or is that a different genre? No, that's improv. Yeah yeah, pretty structured improv, though They've got a lot of tools to work with and what they would be doing in that scenario is really supporting the person who comes into the room who has no idea.

Speaker 4: 56:11

Yeah, you can see that coming.

Speaker 1: 56:12

Yeah, yeah, so they're just like feeding them and responding to them.

Speaker 3: 56:16

And when you've got a really good person who comes in the room, it just actually floors all the ones that are prepared.

Speaker 1: 56:23

Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, they're having to like run around and pick up the pieces, exactly exactly.

Speaker 4: 56:27

And that's their game Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1: 56:28

They're just going to be like I'm going to make this chaos.

Speaker 3: 56:31

It's just fun to watch, yeah yeah, do you do much improv now.

Speaker 1: 56:35

Well, I would say that a lot of my emceeing barefaced stories is improv, probably because I spend a lot of time helping out the six storytellers that we've got. So by the time the show comes around, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm emceeing tonight.

Speaker 2: 56:50

What am I going to talk?

Speaker 1: 56:51

about. But I can kind of get away with doing little snippets of stories in between them and yeah. So I'll be kind of like free-balling when I'm up there, but in them. And yeah, so I'll be kind of like free-balling when I'm up there, but in terms of like improvving with, like team members and things like that, I don't really do that anymore. Um, yeah, even when I'm like, even when I'm in a scripted show, there's not a lot of that. Maybe there's some like theater, sport games that we'll use for warm-ups and things like that. Yeah, but I haven't done improv in a long time.

Speaker 1: 57:19

The big who I was trying to get me back for ages and ages yeah, I don't know what it is. There used to be this format that we would do God, what was it called? I can't remember what the night was that we made up, but we would do 20-minute improvs, okay, so it would be you and another actor and you would just go for it. Be you and another actor and you would just go for it. So that was like some of the big hoo-ha, just two people, just two people for 20 minutes.

Speaker 1: 57:42

That sounds exhausting. Yeah, it's pretty exhausting, but it's amazing the stories that you can create and it can still do. You know, it can still say scene and then start another scene. Yeah, but, you're creating like this 20-minute story, just the two of you completely making it up on the spot. It's really like it is terrifying, but it's so great to watch yeah.

Speaker 3: 58:01

I'll bet it is. I'll bet it is, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 58:04

So I love doing that. And then, yeah, when I was in the States, I did a little bit of improv. I did that stuff in Canada, but then I did a little bit of improv in America as well. They had this really great format where they would get an audience member up to tell a monologue and then they would do an improv scene around that. That was really fun. I remember a girl getting up and saying my grandfather killed my grandmother. It was this accident where he accidentally reversed into her, but then it was really interesting to see how the improvisers dealt with that yeah.

Speaker 3: 58:37

Interesting, oh gosh. So what do you hope for next? Like what's next for Andrea? I know you're writing another play at the moment, yeah, but what else? What do you see yourself doing in the next few years? Well, what is hope going to propel you towards?

Speaker 1: 59:00

Well, I'm definitely okay, film towards film. I'd love to do more writing for film, yeah.

Speaker 3: 59:10

So Barracking for the Umpire is going to be? Is that your foray into that world?

Speaker 1: 59:13

I'm hoping so, yeah, yeah. So I want to keep writing, even though I hate it and it is very difficult to do. I'm going to stick at it. I'm just going to back myself to do that. And, yeah, I am interested in film and what that might look like. That's a new world for me, so I'm very excited about that, yeah.

Speaker 3: 59:39

And telling real stories through your writing.

Speaker 1: 59:48

Well, yeah, the writing that I do is not for real stories, but it's heavily based on reality and the struggles of reality for people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Reality and the struggles of reality for people, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got asked the question like how much research did I do for barracking, in terms of like talking to my dad and my brother and I used to phone them up all the time and I used to kind of like secretly record them?

Speaker 3: 1:00:13

That's illegal. It is illegal, but they're family. Dad's very proud of me. He'll understand.

Speaker 1: 1:00:20

But it was mostly to capture their turn of phrase. So there's a lot of like reality in when I can write dialogue that is, yeah, steeped in reality and the way that people talk because we don't always.

Speaker 3: 1:00:34

We don't all sound like abc presenters right. So no, no, no, it's getting the lilt and getting the intonations and where you know, I always find, if I transcribe a piece of voice, you'll find that there are ums and there's repetition and it's really sloppy. Yeah, yeah, it's really sloppy often, yeah, when people are just talking naturally and then you're transcribing it and it really doesn't look pretty on a page, it doesn't.

Speaker 3: 1:01:04

You actually want to go back and you want to edit it, don't you, and make it into proper sentences and with a proper structure. But that's not how people talk. No, which is why when you see good scripting, it's just so engaging.

Speaker 1: 1:01:17

Yeah, it's usually very few words as well, depending on the character. But yeah, I mean it looks ugly on a page but then when you start to get around a table and you start doing table reads, it's this, oh the authenticity. It just like reeks of reality, which is like I'm very interested in that, like real character dialogue. So that's where, yeah, the kind of like the real stories come from, I suppose.

Speaker 3: 1:01:42

Yeah, they do. Andrea, it's been such a delight to have you around the warm table today. I'm so glad you were able to fit our conversation into your very busy and very exciting world that you live in. I have to say the arts is so important. The creative industries that we have in WA are so fundamentally important to our humanity and I love that you're part of that and not just part of it, but actually a pioneer of it in our state and that you chose to stay here in WA and create that. So I'm so thankful because it just means that you know it makes us better, you know it makes our communities better. It makes us in touch with the vulnerability and the rawness that we need to actually survive the tough days but also rejoice in the really good ones. So thank you for everything that you're doing and bringing to our communities. Oh, thanks for having me.

Speaker 4: 1:02:43

Hi, I'm Kelly Riley, creator and head coach of Females Over 45 Fitness, or FOF as we are fondly called. Our studio is located in Victoria Park and we are also online all across Australia. At FOF, our members range in age from 45 through to 84 years of age at the moment. They're amazing examples of hope. Let's meet one of our members now and be inspired by her story.

Speaker 2: 1:03:12

Hi, my name is Chrissie. I'm approaching 70 and, at an interesting point in my life, a number of things have changed for me in the last year or two. Significant things. I've recently retired and, as a mother to two sons, I finally accepted that I no longer need to play that role, obviously always a reference point for my sons, but given that they're in their 30s, late 20s, living their own life, I need to move on from that role. What I realized some months ago is that for much of my adult life, my two major identity reference points were my career and the fact that I was a mother to two boys, generally a single mum. So those two aspects of my life took up most of my time, all my energy and my identity. That was me, and in the last 12 months or so I've had to face the challenge that both those roles, the challenge that both those roles, both those identity reference points, are gone and who is me apart from those reference points. So it's been a challenging and interesting time and I think I see it as coming home to me and finding out who Chrissy might be, apart from mum, worker, you know, juggler of a million things, to actually who I am, and I still don't know. I'm still on that journey.

Speaker 2: 1:04:51

One of the most interesting and, I think, revolutionary parts of this stage of my life is coming to realise how much I have rushed and hurried and stressed for most of my adult life, holding down a full-time job, raising two kids on my own.

Speaker 2: 1:05:14

I look back and realise that most of those years I was just racing from one event to another, trying to keep the show on the road, trying to ensure that everything happened as it was supposed to happen, and what I've given myself permission to do in the last months a year is to let go of all of that.

Speaker 2: 1:05:40

To let go of all of that to actually try and be in the moment and give myself the space and time to stare into space, to wander, to potter, and it's in that space that I'm finding myself again. An important part of where I've been and where I think I'm going is actually the FOF exercise program All female, older women, and I find it incredibly inspirational I've got some major medical issues that I'm also dealing with and to be in an environment that encourages me to explore my strength, my resilience, my discipline to stick at a program, but does it in a way that is incredibly supportive and actually very inspirational. I look at women from in their late 40s, 50s, 60s and for me, especially the women in the program who are in their 70s, and they truly are inspiring. I think ideas we have of ageing can be questioned and what I see happening in the FOF program is powerful ageing and I really love it.

Speaker 3: 1:06:52

Thanks for joining us around the warm table. My warm table is produced, hosted and edited by me, sonia Nolan. It's my way of amplifying positivity and curiosity in our community. I invite you to share this conversation with family and friends and follow my Warm Table podcast on Facebook, instagram and LinkedIn. Also, you can subscribe and follow my Warm Table on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and maybe even leave a review, because it helps others to find us more easily.