Unsinkable: A New Play + Lots of Bruce Ismay, with Writer Matthew Reynolds.

An exciting new Titanic project: "Unsinkable is a shattering new play from Liverpool creatives Matthew Reynolds and Joseph Winder, developed from a finalist piece at Tip Tray Theatre’s What Happens Next? 2025, now a full-scale production heading to Hope Street Theatre from 30th September to 3rd October 2026.

This is a project that already has momentum, from competition acclaim to a sold-out staged reading, and now needs your support to take this final step onto the stage.

We’re not waiting for someone else to make this happen, we’re doing it ourselves. With your support, we can give this harrowing untold story the attention it deserves."

Find everything about Matthew's work and the play + consider supporting it on IndieGoGo:

Crowdfunder: https://www.indiegogo.com/en/projects/unsinkable-play/unsinkable-play

Play Instagram: @unsinkableplay

Matthew's Instagram: @mattr.75

Media Inquiries: unsinkableplay@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, and welcome to a very special episode of Unsinkable, the Titanic podcast. I am, of course, Dr. L.A Beatles, and today I have on the program Matthew Reynolds, who is a writer and producer of a brand new play upcoming in the UK in Liverpool about Bruce Ismay, and it's called Unsinkable. So today is basically an unsinkable crossover event, which happens a lot because, as we discuss in the interview, I mean, the word unsinkable is just a part of the full lexicon of the Titanic world and used in many, many ways. Um, I did want to point out before I get you to the interview, which is honestly great and one of the best that I've ever done. I wanted to say it's such a full circle moment for me to be discussing Bruce Isme with someone who's working on a new project and something exciting like this, because I started the podcast with Bruce Isme. After I did my initial first episode, 8020, where I spoke about, you know, 20% represented like the iceberg above the water and kind of what we know for sure. And then 80% was everything about Titanic below the waterline, metaphorically, you know, everything we're still trying to figure out, the things we debate about. Uh, after I did that initial episode, my first kind of real episode was about Bruce Ismay. And it was a passenger deep dive. I was new to podcasting and I didn't realize how much work each episode was. So I put in, gosh, 30 to 40 hours, if not more, of research on Bruce before I even started writing. I mean, it was a full-time job, Bruce Isme. And so I am so proud of that episode. It was my first real episode. I encourage you to go back and listen to it. I put my heart and soul into it. I read every book about him. I read the inquiries cover to cover and took notes. And, you know, ever since then, I've never had, unfortunately, the time to quite put that much into an episode. I wish I did. Uh, but you know, that was during COVID when we were all at home all the time. And now life has has uh moved on and opened up, thankfully, in many, many ways. But I cherish that episode and it really represents a full picture of Bruce's life. So definitely go back and listen to that. This is such a full circle moment to be talking to someone about Bruce's legacy and how complex it is. So I won't delay. I'll get you to the interview. At the end of the interview, we talk about the ways that you can help support this play to get it off the ground via a funding site that they have going. So definitely consider after you listen, visiting there and maybe giving a little bit to help them complete this process of getting this play done. Uh, Matthew is so, it's so refreshing to talk to him. Uh, he is so dedicated to this process and he's bringing this refreshing um liveliness and just academic intelligence and uh I just an encouraging sense of excitement about telling the Titanic story in some new ways. And so I'm delighted to know him now. I hope to make it to the play myself, but if I'm not there physically in the fall, I have supported the play at the first class level. So I will be getting a recording of it. I'm so excited. So consider doing that as well. All the links will be in the show notes to everything we talk about, the funding page, his Instagram, all of that. All the info you could need. So check that out. And here we are with Matthew on Unsinkable. I will speak soon and I'm so grateful you're here. Thanks for sticking with the podcast for those of you who've been around for a long time. Uh, for those of you that are new and discovering it for the first time, welcome. There's a lot of you every day still, which is just such a delight. Um, yeah, so just enjoy and uh have a wonderful day wherever in the world you happen to be. We are here with Matt to discuss. I guess unsinkable meets unsinkable. It's sort of I, you know, in the Titanic world, it's it makes a lot of sense to use that title. So we share a title, don't we?

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Yeah, thank you for not setting your lawyers on me. I was glad not to be getting a kind of legal warning for stealing your title.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Oh gosh, no. I, you know, uh um a funny story is that years ago I had there's a podcast called Titanic Scene by Scene, or no, Titanic Minute, where they actually deconstruct the movie minute by minute. And it's been done for a few years, but it's a great podcast if people haven't listened to it. It's still up. And I had the guys who ran that podcast on my show because I just thought it was so fun. And they had a newsletter um called That Sinking Feeling. And I was like, that is genius. And I asked them during the interview, I said, can I use that for something? Or you feel you feel ownership over that? So I do have on record them saying, No, you can have it. So I was like that in that situation, I was like, man, that's so good. I want to use it. But um, no, unsyncable is just part of the, I feel like the Titanic sort of whole lexicon. It's just one of our phrases. So um I I'm really thrilled to have you here today. And I want to give people a chance to understand who you are, what you're working on. I think my listeners get sick of me saying this, but something new in the Titanic world, kind of new under the sun in the Titanic world, is really exciting because there's a lot of like the same old, same old. Uh, so this is, I think, just awesome. Um, so tell us first about yourself, a little bit about your bio, you know, and then kind of how you landed on the project. Just give us a little nugget about you to start.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Absolutely. So I'm a 24-year-old writer and director from about half an hour outside of Liverpool, small town called Ormskirk, but I live now in the city centre, right by the docks. So very on theme for, I guess, the maritime uh world. Um, I've been writing and directing various projects probably since my very early teens. Um, I've done a web series on Amazon Prime called Birchill's Paints, um, which was a bit of a comedy drama. Um, I co-wrote and co-directed a play in 2024 called Happiness the Ken Dodd Story. And that was a kind of very much like a biopic style play about this really renowned local comedian in Liverpool called Ken Dodd, and sort of his life story over the course of his life. So I've always had an interest in true stories and history and things like that. And I've been interested in the Titanic for probably, you know, most of my life, as far as I can remember. Um, I mean, recently in October, I hired out the rooftop of the White Starline Hotel, so the actual headquarters for like a big birthday thing.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

So I've been up there because I the last time I was in Liverpool, I got to tour the hotel. So I've been at the exact spot you're talking about. That's so cool.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

It's gorgeous. So like it's always been kind of like part of my life, and I feel like with Liverpool as well, we were the registered port of the Titanic, so you can kind of see the name right across the side of her. And um White Silum, we're obviously a Liverpool-based company. She never came to Liverpool, but there's no doubt that it had the maiden voyage gone uh better, I guess is the is the word, than uh she obviously would have come here. Um but it's really ingrained in the city still. We have like actual worn life jackets in the Maritime Museum. Um, we have a place called Waterloo, which is around the beach, and Captain Smith's old house is there. The house that Jay Bruce is may grow up in is right there as well. There's the Titanic Hotel, the White Star pub. It's kind of everywhere. The more I learn about Titanic, the more I notice little things in my own city that really link to it. And I just feel like it's not really explicitly talked about as much as you would think. I mean, Belfast has Titanic Belfast, this big um attraction. Liverpool does lots of little nods to it, but for someone like Jay Bruce Ismay, who was from Crosby, very much a Liverpudlian man, he's kind of been never really talked about until hopefully now. Umsinkable is a play about J. Bruce Isme. He was the chairman of the White Star Line the night the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. Despite most officials sacrificing themselves in the disaster, Isme found space in the last lifeboat to leave the starboard side. Drama of Survivor's Guilt, he has returned to shore to discover the weight of the tragedy has only just begun. Should he have gotten in that lifeboat? That's our little synopsis, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

And what what drew you to because I mean Ismay is, you know, and you know this because we've talked about the fact that you've, for example, heard my Ismay episode, and then you know, we've discussed off off, you know, before recording, but but obviously he's such a controversial figure. So it's not my question, isn't really why, because the why is kind of duh. Like he's come so compelling. Like I think it, you know, it makes sense that, but was there a moment that your attention went to Ismay? Was there like an artifact you saw, a document? Was did you just with so with having the interest and reading, did your brain just kind of uh you cycle, you know, right to like did you end up on him for any specific reason, or was it just like, wow, this is one of the most important figures in the whole story?

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Yeah, there was actually this kind of like big moment. So I was at the Maritime Museum in Liverpool on the Albert Dock, and I was I've been to the Titanic exhibition there lots and lots of times, and I was just reading this piece, and I actually at the time it didn't occur to me straight away that it would make a great play, but I just remember seeing this piece about Jay Bruce Ismate. And I didn't even remember the name, but I remember it saying that he was the chairman of the whole company, and there was a quote, he repeatedly testified he wished he'd gone down with the ship, and I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. I just the amount of people that died on it, you would feel generally so lucky to have gotten off it. And I was reading that the owner wished he'd gone down with it, and just that sentence really stuck with me. And it was kind of after I'd finished my last play, I was thinking I would love to do another true story, but maybe about someone a bit more controversial. So I was just doing a lot of reading into this man, and the more that I read, the more I was interested. I was quite confused how you know, if you're a big Titanic historian or someone who has a big interest in it, you'll probably know his name. But probably the average person on the street wouldn't know his name, even if you lived in Liverpool, his hometown. This was the man who literally commissioned the Titanic, which everyone knows. Um, and it's probably deliberate why he isn't known. I feel like he might have been more well known if his life had gone better. And what really, really made me think that this would make a good play was the central moral dilemma at the heart of Ismay story. He decided to get in one of the lifeboats to leave the Titanic despite being the owner of the company. And it's one of those just classic dilemmas. I just feel like what he'd done either way would have been bad. He either dies or he gets in the lifeboat and lives the rest of his life in disgrace. And I was really, really drawn to that, and I wanted to play the sort of dealt with that because I've rarely ever seen him kind of be a lead character in the Titanic story. I've always seen him be in the background as a caricatured villain, which we'll talk about. Like twirly mustache. Exactly, turly mustache. Um, definitely not. There was definitely a lot more nuance to him than I felt had been portrayed in the past, and I kind of wanted to fix that.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

And where do you think, like when you started writing the play, um, you know, in any research that you did, books you read, you know, you're in the prep mode, where do you think you found him in the historiography? Like where, you know, like we'll talk about kind of the the themes of your play in a second. I would love to, but where do you like, because I, you know, obviously, like my listeners have heard me talk about it, but I they probably want to hear someone else talk about it. And you're kind of an Ismay expert now. And so, like, from your perspective, when you kind of found him, where was he? You know, like what from your perspective, like how have historians and Titanic people treated him in the past, heading into, I think we're kind of in a we're at the dawn of like a new Isme era in the, you know, in the historiography, but where did you find him when you started researching?

SPEAKER_01 12:47

I found very much that until relatively recently, the way he was treated was extremely one-sided, just that he was this easy scapegoat, this easy villain, the man who was responsible for everything, made this awful decision. Whereas I would say a lot of what I've read more recently is a lot more interested in breaking down the nuances of that. So I think Unsinkable very much follows from the kind of way that we're looking back at history and realizing there was a lot more nuance to it. Um, in total of what I think, I still don't know what I think of him, and that's what keeps me coming back to this story. We're not really trying to clear him. I feel like there's there might be an assumption that we're trying to, you know, defend him with this play. We're actually really not. We're trying to look more maturely at a really complex situation that's been done a huge disservice in a really biased way. So there's a lot of different kind of key things here. So I would probably say that he did what we all would have done. I'm not sure I really believe anyone who outright says they would have gone down with the ship. It is pure survival instinct to get into that boat. You're not gonna watch the lifeboat leave and just go, oh great. I think it's it's very, very easy to sit and judge someone who was in a situation that you will never be in.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Oh yeah. And I think I think people, yeah, people are very self-righteous in their uh confidence that they would have just stood up at the railing of the ship and like had a cigarette and gone down with the ship. And I I've always held your opinion as well, which is especially and I'm a parent, so I now see it through a parent's lens. I have a 10 and an 11-year-old. And I, I mean, if if I was on that ship and they weren't with me, I would do everything in my power to survive to get back to my children. And so for me, I immediately as a parent now see it through the lens of if someone was a parent like Ismay was. I mean, he had a child, he had a life, he had a spouse, he had, you know, you can't, I just don't feel like one of the components here is I agree. You can't really ever begrudge someone for simply wanting to survive, whether they're a man or a woman, whether they're wealthy, whether they're poor, whether, you know, it just doesn't, I feel like that's the part of his story that I've always had the most problem with people kind of getting on their high horse about. So I agree 100%. I think everything else is kind of up for debate. And I, you know, like like you say, you're not, it doesn't sound like this is a Bruce Ismay apologist letter. This is you, you know, really trying to figure out what kind of man he was and show him in not black and white, but in gray. So what was the what was the writing process like? Like, did you, you know, uh can if you walk? I mean, I think it's you know, a playwright. That's not, that's not something I do. I don't have any experience with that. And probably a lot of listeners are very curious about the process of that. So can you walk us through when you choose a new play topic, what does that look like? Like where do you start? Do you go to books? Do you go to films? Do you, you know, hide away in a basement for a week and just write? Like what does the whole process look like in that moment when you decide on a new project?

SPEAKER_01 15:55

So I think research is absolutely key. So I didn't want to be, I mean, the whole idea of this is to kind of bring Isamai story to a new audience. So I really think that most people who are in the audience need to um, you know, a lot of people in the audience will be hearing this story for the first time, but I also knew there will be a lot of people who really know their stuff about the Titanic that are in the audience. So I really needed to do that justice and do my research. The first thing I realized was I could not believe how well documented the Titanic was. I actually could not believe it. There are things that happened last week that are less well documented than the Titanic.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Given that it was in 1912, I've always just assumed that we know that it sank and you know there was an iceberg and things like that. But we know exactly who was in which lifeboat. We know the exact minute they were each raised. We know exactly what every room at the ship looked like. And then with the inquiry as well, obviously, our play very much follows the aftermath. Every single word at the inquiry is documented. You can go and you can read every single panel testimony.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Yeah, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

I just I couldn't believe it, and it was just an absolute gift, honestly. Um, it kind of gave me a real starting point because a huge thread of the play is Ismay in the inquiry, and he's being questioned about things, and then it might do a flashback or it might do a flash forwards. It's kind of the main thread that it goes throughout the play, is the inquiry. So I think a lot of it I would draw from exact things that were said. I'd say not too much word-for-word stuff has made the play, but it was very much used as a skeleton. The actual inquiry transcript was used, and then we're going to be great to then thread and explore into this, for example. Or there might be a different thing, and then it's we need the context of that. Um I think the hardest part was probably choosing what to leave out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Exactly. Yeah, I mean, how do you I imagine it was hard to decide what to include from like the voyage itself? Because if you're if you're basing it, if you're anchoring it in the inquiries, how much do you flash back to the actual ship? How much do you flash back to the sinking? Like, I'm sure narratively, those are very hard decisions with so much information.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Really, really hard. And I feel like there was such a temptation just to throw everything that's interesting about the Titanic into this play that people might not know. I think what's so interesting to me about the whole thing is all of the little side stories. So, like Officer Blair taking the key to the binoculars, meaning he had none to spot the iceberg with, or Father Brown who got on and he took lots of photos, and he got off an island, and then he just had this treasure trove of photos. Um, the drunk baker who was drinking, which helped him survive the cold water.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

I mean, all everybody you're mentioning could also be a play.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

That's the thing. They kind of make their own story.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Yeah. It's yeah, it and it's I think it's um, I think it's oh, are you there? I think I lost you.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Yeah, sorry. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Oh no, you're fine. Um, no, I think I I mean, I I I need to check my data, but I think I've heard that it's the most researched and published about topic besides World War II, I believe. I think I read that somewhere recently. Um, but you're absolutely right. There's there's too much. Um, and I, you know, people ask me all about this all the time because I do this podcast. Uh people come to me, have you read this book? Have you read this book? There are sometimes like 15 new books a year published on Titanic, and it's it's increasing. I mean, I'm working on one, so I guess I don't have like a lot of room to talk, but um, you know, I can't even keep up. I mean, I have I have a closet. I should just take a picture and put it on my Instagram at some point. I have literally a closet of Titanic books that have been sent to me, recommended to me, I've purchased, found at used bookstores, charity shops, and I haven't gotten to half of them. You know what I mean? Like I those are ones that aren't even on display because they aren't my nice, like hard back ones and things like that. So yeah, I just I don't envy your task, like coming at it and looking, like wanting to come at Bruce Ismay surgically and then having to wade through absolutely everything. Um, did you, you know, in the I mean, I don't want to give too much away because obviously we're gonna talk about, you know, this play is is coming to fruition and people are gonna get a chance to see it. But were there any really weird nuggets of information that you came across in the research? Anything about Ismay that was really just like shocking and crazy, and you had a moment of like, wow, this is I definitely picked the right person to delve into in all of this.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Gosh, um there's quite a lot. I think he was genuinely such an interesting character. At first, I thought he was interesting by virtue of the fact that he was chairman of the White Star Line, but there were just so many little little strange things. I think I realized I'd picked the right person a few times. So um, I know in your episode about Isma, you talk quite a lot about the emotional affair with Marion Thayer, and that's quite that's quite a big part of the play.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

Okay, I was curious about I didn't want I don't want to ask too much because again, I don't want to make you feel like you should have to give away too much.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

I feel very welcome to. I mean, it's already happened 14 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Well, that's right, it's already been performed, correct? In in in one capacity in some ways, yes. In some ways, and it's still okay. Um yeah, I'm very I was very curious about that. So that is in there. So you do address the Marion Thayer situation.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

We really do, and um, there's not many characters that we because I try to keep the amount of characters down, so I was really selective with who was going to be in it and who isn't in it. So you're probably interested to hear who I did choose. So we have Ismay, we have Marion Thayer, we have a fictional character called The Inquirer, who's obviously based off Senator Smith and Lord Merze, who did the British Inquiry. Um we have Margaret Brown, we have Violet Jessup, and we have Florence Ismay and Officer Charles Lightola. And I feel like through the course of those pieces. There's enough dynamics to work with. I think I couldn't have a cast of you know 2,000 people, however many were on the shit, you know, so I had to choose people who would represent the different fields. So this is probably I would say for a play that um you know I would I would say for a play about a true story it is very accurate, but it's also probably where anything that the real Titanic fans will notice is inaccurate. So there might be a bit where it's something that Officer Lowe said, but I make it so that it's Light Holler that says it because having two officer characters just wouldn't make sense for quite a short time. Yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

I think that no, I think it's a good decision, and I think people in the Titanic world need to be more it's getting better. Traditionally, you know, really hardcore Titanic people have been well, any representation in media must be down to a T, you know. But I think we're entering a new era in the Titanic community, the Titanic world where people are being more creative and bringing it into new spaces, whether it's film, TV, plays, writing about it in different ways. And so I actually think that's fantastic because you, with something like Titanic, you would never be able to achieve full accuracy anyway. And people have tried, and every time people try, they just get pulled apart and people find problems anyway. So it's really a fruitless endeavor to try to do it that way. So I think like the way that you're going about it and focusing on themes, and you know, yeah, okay. So I'm gonna combine two of the officers, and you know, one of them might say something that technically the other side, I think that's fantastic from an artistic standpoint because you're taking the time to focus on like what you want to do thematically and you're not getting lost in the weeds of these specifics. Um, so okay, so we have the cast. That's amazing. I like that Violet Jessup is in there.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Um so walk me through where you are in the process because we're gonna tell people how they can, you know, find you online and support the play. But tell me kind of the evolution of what's happened so far. So you wrote it, obviously, and then it's you said it's been performed, it's been kind of has it test been tested on audiences? Like what part of the process are you in right now?

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Yeah, so Uncyclable came about originally as a little 20-minute extract, and it was kind of a very short play, but you can see that it it wanted to be bigger. And I submitted it to a writing competition in Liverpool called What Happens Next. Uh, we got selected into that. We then got basically as part of that competition, you get your play um stage as and then into like a little tournament format, and we ended up getting to the final. We didn't win the competition, which would have gone on a full-length show, but it just kind of the audience reactions were just really, really lovely, and we just got the most amazing feedback, and the casts that were in it were just absolutely fantastic. So, Joseph Winder, who plays who played Ismay in that version, we just got talking about some happy accident. He's an extremely talented producer. It's not like he was cast, he was cast because he's an extremely talented actor. It just so happened that producing was also one of his big skills, and we just got talking about wanting to keep it going. There's no reason not to, you know, a lot of people will get disheartened by not winning something. Whereas to us, it was like, no, we probably benefited from that as much as anyone else. So I ended up developing it into a full script, and we did a staged reading with Upfront Northwest, which is another theatre company, in October, and it ended up selling out. So we had the full caps there, we had them in costume, sort of in front of an audience reading it. So it wasn't directed, but it hopefully felt like a very good taste of the play. You were hearing the script from people in character, in costume, um, everything like that. So at that point, we were thinking we have some traction here, you know. We've um we've managed to sell out the reading, so hopefully we could bring this to a theatre. Uh, we were going to lots of different theatres, and we kind of realized quite quickly that no one was going to hand the opportunity of just a full run of this show just straight to us. So um we have decided to crowdfund the play, and we've booked a run at Hope Street Theatre, which is an absolutely incredible little fringe venue. I've been there many, many times for lots of different plays. Um, and it's running from the 30th of September to the 3rd of October later this year.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

And that is in Liverpool. That theater is in Liverpool.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

It is in Liverpool, yes.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

Okay. Um, well, I I mean, I really would love to be there. I'm gonna make it my goal to get there for it, honestly, truly. I um I have my um, he's honestly almost my co-host at this point, but my friend Pablo, who comes on um the podcast a lot to talk about the artifacts and things like that. And we've been doing the what if series together. He actually lives in Manchester, so it makes it makes it easier to get that way because I have a free place to stay. So it's so whenever I whenever I want to pop over to that part of the world, it it makes it easier. I love Liverpool. We were talking before we recorded. Um, my whole family loves Liverpool and my whole family has spent time there. So I personally am really going to try to make it. I would love to be there. Um so what we'll do is, you know, for listeners right now, listening to this podcast, you know, in real time, you are you are fundraising for this. So people can follow the link that I'll put in the show notes and they'll be able to go right to donating. Is that correct? So yeah, you can send me all the info and I'll make sure it's all in the show notes. Yeah, and on Instagram and such as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Absolutely. So we're raising the money for the rehearsal space, the props, the costumes, the set design. I think the world of Titanic is really, really immersive and it's something that we want to make feel really lived in and gripping. Um it's a really, really important part. So we've already raised 55% of our goal in the first two weeks. So we only need about another 300 pounds, um, which is not too bad. Um we have different donation tiers. So we have first class, second class, third class. I love it. And the more you donate, the more kind of rewards you will get.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Yes, like perks. Okay. So if you want to, I'm kind of putting you on the spot here, but if you want to walk people through what the tier perks are, that would be great. If people have, you know, can go into or can like end this having a sense of what those are. That's really exciting. So, what's like the first class perk when you do when you donate at that level?

SPEAKER_01 28:23

Yeah, absolutely. So, our first class perk will get your name kind of sheltered in the program of the player. You get mailed assigned poster, you get signed up to our newsletter, which gives you weekly rehearsal updates from each cast member, you get a personalized thank you video from all of us at the team, and you'll also get sent a video recording of the play, which is really useful for international fans who aren't going to be able to attend in person. You will get sent the video of it. So you'll just hopefully get to feel like a part of this journey. But we do have a lot of lower tiers as well. So third class is only 10 pounds, and that gets your name thanked in the program. So you can be a part of this for you know, not much more than a couple of coffees would cost.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

Yeah, well, I mean, in the US, that's really one coffee.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

So that's it's getting that way here as well.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Yeah, I'm trying to my listeners know I'm trying to come live over there because yeah, that's pretty much one coffee here, unfortunately. Um, but yeah, no, I mean, I I would say that's a very small, yeah, it's a very small amount of money to be part of something so cool and important and big and to get, you know, into the program. That's really awesome. And I I think the the the first class tier that for international people, that is amazing because not not many people, you know, it's not realistic to say, like, oh, if I live in Wisconsin, I'm gonna easily get to Liverpool in September. Or, you know, not a lot of people because of work and children, families, cost, like can necessarily travel for things like this. So I think that's really cool that you're able to bring it right into people's homes. Um, so yeah, I would definitely encourage people to consider that because that way you'll be able to actually see this play lived out without traveling to Liverpool. I do hope, I do hope to make it, but I will have I'll I'm gonna do first class and I'll have the recording no matter what. So that'll that'll be my backup. Amazing. Um, but no, I I think it's, you know, people that listen to this podcast are Titanic people. And this is something new and exciting. I love, I mean, I'm not that old. I'm older than you, but I I love seeing a new generation of Titanic people, um, just being creative with it, trying new things on. Um, the Titanic world stagnated for a long time creatively. It's one of the reasons I started this podcast. So I would really encourage people to check out, I'll put everything in the show notes, you know, your Instagram, all the info there, the ways they can donate, how to get directly to that. Because if Titanic is going to stay relevant and the study of Titanic is going to keep modernizing and keep being relevant to artistic endeavors, we need projects like yours. So I just think it's really cool and I encourage people to check it out. Um, is there anything? I'm trying to think, is there anything else that we didn't cover that you'd like to mention?

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Um I think gosh, I feel like with Isme, that's just an absolute.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

I mean, we could we could talk for 30 minutes about the whole Marion Thayer situation, for example. Um, do you, you know what? One more question, and this is just on the fly and it's just kind of thematic. Do you, I was thinking, I was on like a walk earlier, just while I after I ate lunch, I like went on a walk and I knew I was going to talk to you, obviously, and I was thinking about it. And do you think that the trend to investigate Isme more? And I was part of it, you know, in my episode, there's the book that Cliff Ismay, you know, published a couple of years ago. There seems to be a little bit of a trend to not necessarily clear his name completely, but to give him a little bit better of a representation. What do you think is driving that? Do you think that's just sort of the just, you know, younger people attitudes are changing, looking at people, you know, more in the gray and less in the black and white? Do you think that's just like human beings evolving? Like, what do you think is the impulse behind that, if you have any ideas about that?

SPEAKER_01 32:13

I think that's an excellent question. I think it comes out of a fondness for the Titanic and the White Starline themselves. I think people really they connect with the legacy of this ship, especially if you are into ocean liners in general. You would probably quite respect this man for having built this incredible ship. And I kind of saw this in my research. I would like, you know, I didn't just want to read historical records, I wanted to like scroll down Reddit forums and just see what people were saying about him because it's really important to find weird um kinds of points of view. And you know, this really became apparent to me. Someone on Reddit years ago had posted a thing and they were saying, uh, you know what, we should all go to we should all like team up together and we're gonna sue all the tabloids that defames J. Bruce Ismay in the 1910s. And then with the money that we get from the legal case, we're gonna build the next Titanic. And I was like, this is this is like this is like a cult. Yeah, it is sometimes like like you you've never met this man, and you're like trying to sue these tabloids that he probably did deserve to be sued, but um, yeah, I think it comes out of a fondness for the story, and I think people would like would rather be on his side than the side of you know, I mean, some of some of these newspapers that defended him back in the day are still going and and they're awful. There's a there's a line in the show actually as well, where Isme said, sorry, the um the inquiry is like, I I see you don't believe everything the Daily Mail says, and everyone in the re through laughed, and I was going, no, that's that's direct from the inquiry, like that was said in 1912.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

That's not me, that's not my modern sensibilities, that's actually real.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

Exactly, exactly. So I think people would rather be on on his side than on the side of the people who, you know, were promoting these. I mean, a lot a huge theme of our show is obviously masculinity as well. You should have gone down with the ship, you should have died. They sound like really cold, brutal people that were against him. So I think to the idea of being on his side is is more appealing in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Yeah, I I think I think you really hit the nail on the head. I hadn't thought about it that way. I think it's it might even be thematically part of like a bigger impulse globally to, yeah, to sort of make sure one is not on the side of these, yeah, something like a a tabloid newspaper that um really digs into exploitation. And you know, the equivalent of that online would be like something that's very click like clickbaity, you know. And I think, I think people are sort of fed up with that mentality. I think you're right. I think it's definitely representative of just wanting to align with the more sort of human story behind something like this and kind of re-investigating, re-litigating, um, and not taking everything at face value. Because, you know, the the whole, I mean, the day Titan, the the minute that the news hit, Titanic was sort of up for debate. I mean, it's you know, it's not, there's never been one set story of Titanic because of the way that the new, I mean, you know better than anyone having just researched all this, because of the way the newspapers were at the time, it just was immediately, you know, 13,000 versions of what happened. So it's never been a set narrative of what happened. It's always been, you know, up to the end up to whoever was writing about it. You know, there's so many. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

And we all know that the man who was writing about it, William Randolph Hearst, who's kind of the Reaper Murdoch of his day, he was an old, old friend of Isme's back in the day, and then they fell out because Isme didn't want to be part of the newspaper empire. He had a grudge against him. As soon as he saw that he got off the Titanic, he wrote, so that's that's another big part of the play. There's quite a fun scene where we get to see these newspaper headlines realize. So we see him kind of like pushing children out of the lifeboat, dressing up as a woman, and we just kind of love the accusation. It's a bit of comic relief. We just can laugh at the absurdity that certain things happened, or at least he was accused of having done.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

Yeah, I think that's that's brilliant. I can't wait to see that because it's yeah, I mean, like the accusation that he dressed up as a woman, for example, like how? I don't I can't imagine, you know. I just I imagine like people think he went and found an outfit and got a wig, or what you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

Like, I think the mustache was too big as well. I think that would have been difficult.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

Um, I think that's genius. And I I do think you're on to something. I think that's a real part of it. I, you know, I think like I did an episode recently about Archibald Um Gracie, who was one of the really prominent survivors because he was a first-class band that survived. Um, he actually died just a few months later of his injuries, but he wrote one of the memoirs. So he's really held up as um one of these heroic first-class males. And I don't ever try to judge whether someone was heroic or not. That's not my business. But I did find it interesting when I researched his family that, you know, what no one ever has talked about is that he, you know, came from a family very involved in the Confederacy that was very pro, was very pro-slavery and on the complete wrong side of history in, you know, the 18 and early 1900s here in this country. And it just, you know, we have to pull out to these bigger themes. It sounds like what you're working on is is, you know, an effort to always keep bigger, like it's like, you know, micro out to the macro, like always keeping these bigger themes, making it presentist, making it relevant, um, which history obviously 100% is. And that's what I always try to do. So I really I appreciate that. I think you know, we're kindred spirits in that way. Um, yeah, so cool. Well, thanks for joining us. I'll like I said, I'll make sure that everyone's got links and um I can, you know, put reminders on my Instagram too, um, and push those through on my stories. Uh, but yeah, let's get you to 100% or more on your fundraiser so you guys can get done everything you need to and let's stay in touch. And I definitely want to try to make it for sure.

SPEAKER_01 38:19

So that'd be absolutely amazing. Um, yeah, again, thank you so much for having me on. Like, obviously, as a listener, your Ismay episode was huge in my research. Like the way you had such a it was really, really nuanced. At the start, I thought you were going one way and then you were like actually going to complete the other. It was really, really useful. And, you know, that's uh always a way to um look at him for sure. Um yeah, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 38:40

Oh, yeah, of course. And I I will say about that episode that I think that's my that one of my it was the first real one I did that was a passenger deep dive. And I think because I was new to the process and and just it was during COVID, so I had a lot of time. I I could never replicate that episode now. I mean, I think I put 30 hours of work into that one episode because I just was at home all the time. I was at home with small kids and we were stuck inside because of COVID. But I'm very proud of that episode because it did, I did spend, I read every inquiry cover to cover, and you know, probably did a lot of the same things that you've been doing recently. So that's a huge compliment coming from you since you've you know worked with us so directly. Um awesome. Well, we will stay in touch and yeah, thanks so much.