Jennifer Irons: Breaking the mould, not seeking permission, and performing grief

Award-winning choreographer, dancer, and director Jennifer Irons shares her journey from immigrant beginnings in London to becoming a trailblazer in the world of contemporary dance and theatre. In this episode, Jennifer reveals how her experience as an outsider has profoundly influenced her work and led her to defy traditional expectations in the dance industry. From large-scale stadium performances to commercial music videos, and her own one-woman show, Jennifer's story is one of grit, resilience, and refusing to follow the conventional path.

Plus, get a glimpse into the challenges she faces in every project (dead cat moments) and how she overcame the biggest challenge of her life to perform her gruelling Edinburgh Fringe show.

Hosts & Guests:
Ali Godfrey (Host)
Unique Spencer (Host)
Jennifer Irons (Guest)

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Produced & Edited by: Ali Godfrey

Acting Strong is brought to you by Generation Arts and sponsored by the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
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Transcript

Hello, everyone. You are listening to Acting Strong. It's a podcast that helps explore resilience for stage ready, mind ready artists. It's brought to you by Generation Arts, and it's sponsored by Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. We are your hosts.

I'm Unique, a professional actor. And I'm Ali, founder of Generation Arts. In today's episode, we are chatting to Jen Irons, an award winning choreographer, a resilient, thoughtful, multidisciplined performance artist who is here to talk to us today about her one woman show and making her own work. Let's get started. How are you?

I'm good. How are you? Good. Lovely to see you. Lovely to see you.

Oh, thank you for having me. It's so nice to see your face. I haven't seen you in so long. I don't. No.

Thanks for it. It's been forever. So what are you up to at the moment? At the exact moment, I'm coming to you live from the side building at the Assembly Hall in Worthing, the side room and a cafe where all great shows are made, I think I said earlier. And and I am working on a new show and a project called Bad Immigrant, and it is a roller disco about immigration, obviously, because what how else do you talk about immigration except on roller skates?

And it came about so potentially probably going to be a one woman show, another one woman show, and it's a mostly autobiographical story in the form of kind of stand up comedy storytelling and roller skating. Looking at what has happened in the UK post Brexit and the experience of being quote unquote an outsider or a foreigner or whatever, and kind of looking at there was when it was all when Brexit all happened and there was these chats about there was going to be a new immigration system and it was going to be a points based system like they have in Canada, I was like oh I want to look that up because I'm born in Canada, I'm Canadian and I thought oh what what is this point system of which you speak and I did the test to see if I would have enough points and if I wasn't born in Canada if it was just me with my level of education or success and age and gender and marital status, and I wouldn't have enough points to get into the country that I was born. And it brought up a lot of questions, where I started asking lots of questions about who came up with these questions and where did the points get allocated and why are they those things.

And it's opened up a whole kind of world around all loads of stuff around ownership and how we choose to let people into something and why we keep people out. And it's partly a response to my utter disgust at the way the world is kind of going these days and how we treat outsiders or others in any sort of form and wanting to do something that I felt so moved that I had to have a response or do something about it but not do it in a politics way or because I'm not a politician. Yeah. So that was kind of the starting point anyways. And then long story very short, I'm basically trying to become Canada's sweetheart because one of the only visas I could get to go to Canada, is an an elite sports person.

And the last time I remember that happening in Canada was a woman who won the silver medal in the 1988 figure skating Olympics, and she became Canada's sweetheart, Liz Manley. And so I have taken up roller skating for the last two and a half years trying to become a championship roller skater, and that is the show. That is so incredible. Like, really, really incredible. You are just amazing, really, really amazing to to say, wait, this is how I'm going to deal with this issue.

This is the way I'm gonna manage this situation. Do you feel like when you were sort of put in that situation, your creative energy became more important than it had been before? I think so. I think it's, it's a bit of a double edged sort of situation, because I think on one hand, you know, I know right now at this moment, if I never got paid to be an artist ever again I still would make this show and that's the reason why I'm making it because I can't not if that makes sense. Like, I have to say I have to say it or do something.

At the same time, I work with a lot of people who are in a, like, a much more challenging situation than mine and I often ask the question, like, what's the point? Should we really be doing this? Like, shouldn't, you know, honor, like, our hierarchy of need? Are there other things that are higher than, like, a show or making a dance or doing something artistic or anything like that or being creative. And more often than not, the response back is, No, actually, we need it now more than we ever did because, yeah, we need food and shelter and and, you know, somewhere to live, but also we need to have humanity.

I believe in it more even though I question it all the time. And so just for people listening, if there's performers or artists, younger actors listening who maybe have passions or ideas, like and they really wanna make something. How do you get started? What is your process? How do you go from having passion or something you're angry about, something you wanna share, and then actually getting it up in front of an audience in some kind of format?

What advice do you give young people? I'm gonna contradict myself immediately in our first sort of 6 minutes of speaking. I'm gonna say I don't like to give advice, and then I'll give a whole bunch of advice. But I think it's not it's not as considered as that. I think it's in certain moments if I am with somebody and they're stuck on something or I'm stuck on something and talking to somebody else, okay.

How do I, like, what do I do to move this forward or start? And, I mean, it is really cliche to just say simply start. A lot of what I thought I say growing up, but in the last sort of 20 years, I thought there was a way I should do things because of what I had seen other people do. I thought there was a pathway that I should be on because that's what other people told me it should be, which is part of my thing about having reluctance around advice. And but it wasn't until about 5 years ago when I stopped doing what I thought I was supposed to do and started doing the thing that I just wanted to do and felt like I needed to do that more than anything else that it started to work and that I started to feel more comfortable doing the things.

So instead of being a sort of, like, shitty version of somebody else, I went, no, actually, this is, like, my version of it and I'm going to kind of own it. So, yeah, that's that's really interesting, so you're sort of talking about authenticity in your work. Mhmm. So what can you just talk about that a bit? So what was it that you felt you needed to be or and then what what was it that changed?

Well, I used to think I needed permission from somebody. I used to think someone you know, even if I didn't say that out loud, in my head, I thought somebody somewhere is going to proclaim me worthy. You now are allowed to make a one woman show, you are now allowed to take up the space of being on a stage with a microphone and being ridiculous, But no one's ever gonna do that, and so when I sort of realized that it wasn't up to somebody else, that was kind of a liberating moment, and when I wasn't trying to do the thing that I had been taught through my very sort of specific training, like, when I let that go and I kind of realized, oh, it's not me, and it's not that I'm bad at what I'm doing, it's that I'm just not doing me. And I think there's a kind of complexity around that because I think often, you know, we have to pay bills, you've got to do work, and sometimes that work isn't necessarily your work or the work that you're or that I was really interested in. And now I'm kind of at an age where I've sort of moved away from feeling like I need to do that so much, and I will rather go work in a bar and make money than do somebody else's work because I think I'm still making art.

I'm not. I'm making somebody else's art. So I've kind of come to, like, another place than where I was 20 years ago. So this idea that somehow I needed to do what somebody else had told me, like I trained as a contemporary dancer and the world of contemporary dance that I was in or the style, I call it the hotpants and high kicks gang, which more power to you. That's great if that's what you're into, but it isn't what I'm good at or what I'm interested in and I used to think that I wasn't very good and I'm making the bunny ears with my fingers because I didn't do that, because I believed that that was like the high, like the hierarchy was that that was the good kind, and that if I wasn't aiming towards that kind of pinnacle or definition of success, then I wasn't very good at it.

Yeah. And when I realized that that's somebody's version of good or success, but it's not mine, then I kind of was able to let go of a lot of the sort of internal dialogue, you know, telling me that I was shit at something, and was able to go, oh, that's just not my thing. And, like, that moment was such a revelation. And I felt like a sort of, like, a whole kind of my whole posture changed. So I was like, oh, it's not me.

It's you. It's like it's Yeah. It's so interesting. I really resonate with that whole thing about, like, listening to your your who you are and your your truth and your authenticity. And like you say, it's not easy because people have bills to pay, etcetera.

But I feel like, especially as you get older, it is something that you have to practice more and more and get better at it. I actually felt like that with this podcast a bit because I was like I had this idea to do a podcast because I was like, what can we do? How can we share what we do and what we do best in a way that's free and accessible? And it and it came to me when I was on a walk because all the best ideas do for me. And then I was like, yeah.

And you know when you have an idea and your whole body's tingling and you feel like, yes. This is this means it's a really good idea and it's right, and it feels right, and everything's in alignment. And then the next thing happens is the little chat box naysayer kicks in and goes, oh, no. You're not a podcaster. You can't do that.

You're not a Steven Bartlett. You know? And you start coming in with all the all the doubt. But I feel like I feel like if we are aware of that process, that if something feels right, then follow that. And just be mindful that the negativity will come in, but don't pay mind to that.

For sure. Which is easier said than done, isn't it? And I think that's part of what experience brings is knowing that you're gonna survive if this show isn't great, or if there's a bad review, or I flubbed up the lines that night in that show, or the disasters, you know, I call them the dead cats, or they're part of it, that you have to have the things that don't work in order to kind of come out on the other side of them. And, you know, the more times you have those things happen and you realize, oh, well, I'm still here and, like, I've people are still hiring me and I'm still, like, I'm still a good person or whatever it is. Part of it, I think, being able to not ignore that voice more, but sort of acknowledge that that voice is there and continually work to tell the voice to shut up, but also recognize that it's there for a reason as well.

And sometimes it can be helpful, like, it can help guide. Oh, I'm nervous about this thing. Oh, it means I really care about it oh maybe I should stay up a little bit longer and work on this bit and it's there for all of us it's not like one day you wake up and go I am now free of an internal chaos. Like, I've won. That doesn't ever happen.

It's just I get better. I feel like with experience, you get better at recognizing it, acknowledging it, and then having a strategy for putting it in a box. Do you think having, like, many different avenues to work on, so, like, you direct, you write, you do movement and all of the different things. Do you think that that's helpful for you to keep exploring different avenues of yourself and not get stuck in, like you said, the view of what you should be because you're always constantly moving and evolving? Yeah.

I think the when I'm in a good place, me, I think, oh, yeah. I'm gonna totally sing in this show. I'm terrified of singing, and I hate singing. But when I think about I don't hate singing I love to sing but I always have thought I've been so bad at it so why would I subject a fee paying audience to my terrible singing and then when I flip that and go no I am gonna sing and I'm gonna sing terribly and I'm gonna do it on purpose and this is gonna be about singing terribly and I'm gonna do the thing that terrifies me so much so that when I do it I'm like, okay well I did that, okay well I just did a terrible song, okay, you know, like again I'm still here and in a way it means then I don't I don't hold on too tight, I guess. I don't feel the need to be perfect at it before I do it, whereas before I used to feel so freaked out that I had to do it right, I had to do it in the right way.

I had to have these people tell me that I had done it well or in the right way, and and I needed the validation from somebody else to tell me that I'd done that in order for me to believe that I had done it and then still would go like, oh yeah, but it wasn't really very good or the only reason you got that was because of this. This and I think now again kind of is that sort of getting older thing so like the new show you know I've like proclaimed publicly I will now learn to become a championship roller skater It's absurd, it's the most absurd thing to do at the age of 47, you know, I'm going to do this thing now. And it is absurd, you know, but immigration policies are absurd, so, you know, it works. There's a metaphor there, trust me, it works. But part of that is because the last show, I sang terribly, and I was like, well, okay.

Like, I do you know what I mean? Like, I survived singing terribly, and I was really afraid of that thing. Whereas now, I'm like, well, if I don't become a championship roller skater, I mean that's great for the show like it doesn't it doesn't have the same kind of need for it to be good or right or perfect or for me to be the best at something, and I'm much more comfortable going, well, now I'm gonna try this and see what happens. And it's happened quite a bit recently. I feel more comfortable.

Some people call it like taking risks if you're filling out an artist council obligation, taking a risk and you know I started like I started doing stand up comedy thinking I was gonna hate it so much because it's so scary to be, you know, I thought the worst thing in the world would be like quote unquote dying on stage when people don't laugh, and now I've discovered that actually it's just a science experiment. Every time you get up with, like, that microphone and you've got to have 5 minutes of jokes, oh they didn't laugh at that one, okay I got to reword it, like it's this amazing, we call it precision engineering I'm gonna reword that joke and I'm gonna put that bit earlier and I'm gonna move that around it's this incredible once I've taken out the like needing to be good although that it's nice right when they laugh it's oh well this is a possibility that wasn't in my kind of toolbox before and so I could do something now the show could go in a place that I never would have imagined 10 years ago because no I'm just a dancer and I think about if I had held on so tightly to that particular identity how few things I would have done that I'm doing now ever would have happened if I had been so if I had so needed to kind of hang on to that as being the only thing or what I'm focused on and that's not for everybody but for my brain I think it is better to being open to trying stuff because like who would have guessed you know who would have ever guessed One of my favourite things about kind of still going is the what could happen next.

So, watch the space. Ventriloquism. Can we just rewind a bit to talk about your background? So how did you get into this whole world in the 1st place in terms of your training, where you grew up? You grew up in Canada, in the Yukon, Yukon, and then you came to UK.

So could could you talk about that a little bit? So I was born and raised in a very isolated part of Northern Canada and, pre Internet, so there was no incoming culture. There was no dance. There was you know, we got one show every year at Christmas, which was The Nutcracker, and we got one big show every year which was the Super Bowl halftime show and that was my limited understanding really of what things were out in the world And I always was putting on little shows, you know, interrupting my parents dinner parties and kind of getting all the kids on the street to do a show and basically ruined their social lives for about 10 years. And that was always like, you know, when I was like, I'm gonna be a dancer, when I like, nobody was surprised.

When I was 7 or 8 or 9, that wasn't a job. That wasn't a thing you could do. But I did spend a lot of time, like, making stuff and wanting to put on stuff and getting people together. And I my kind of first sort of professional job really was a can can dancer in a casino out in like this place in the sort of old Goldrush area and it was really, like, in a bar. You were, like, bar entertainment, right?

And so you would get tips would be, like, poker chips, people throwing poker chips on stage. But I thought this was, like, I was, like, oh my god, I've made it. I'm a dancer. I'm, like, I'm a dancer. I'm a kinky dancer.

I've made it. Like, I've my dreams have come true. And I ended up leaving that place. It wasn't my place, and I found it quite challenging for a lot of reasons, but it's quite isolated. It's very kind of insular.

Now it's probably changed quite a bit, but back then it was very homogeneous. If you didn't sort of fit in, you know, you really didn't fit in. And it had all the kind of issues around long, dark, cold winters. So people, you know, it's drugs and alcohol and long, dark, cold thinking. And unless I wanted to kind of go down a pathway that I had seen a lot of other people go down, like, I really needed to get out of being in that place.

So I left and I kind of went as far away as I could and I tried backpacking and worked at weird places in a petting zoo. I've worked at, like, the most random places. I worked in a bank. I had to wear a wig so that they couldn't see my fluorescent red hair. But, yeah, like hustling, right?

Like, so And I kind of understood that I could make money to go do the next sort of adventure. And I traveled for quite a long time, so that when I arrived in the UK, I kind of was a bit like, who knows what'll happen? I'll just, you know, I'm kind of backpacking. It didn't really I just didn't want to go home, basically. And I'd been sort of on the road for a couple years at this point.

And when I was here, I had started to see London. Right? There's theatres and shows and all these things. I was like, oh my god, like, I had no, you know, it's just not a Super Bowl halftime show. And so I was working in events management again you know getting people together to do a thing and it was like sport events or music events all this kind of stuff and I kind of realized that very very late in the day that I was going to end up working my butt off no matter what I did so I might as well try to do the work that I really wanted to do, which was dancing.

I loved dance. That was it. And I always thought that I couldn't be a dancer because I didn't have the discipline. And I still think I don't really have the discipline to be a dancer, even though I've somehow managed to do it for a while. And so I did, like, night classes.

I went to Hackney College and did the foundation course with this wild sort of experience of being from this little weird place in Northern Canada, and then I would go through, like, a gun detector every day to go into my dance class and was, like, this is very different. I was doing night classes in a ballet that I had never done before. I didn't know any of the names of the positions, but knew if I wanted to go to a dance school I needed to kind of learn how to do this stuff and then auditioned and I went to in the end I went to London contemporary dance school which is very you know straight contemporary you know hotpants and high kicks kind of style and in a way kind of thought that that was it, like I needed this technique, and when I did that I was 25 years old going in, so I was as old as some of the teachers. So yes, that was kind of how I got into it but I was also an international student so I was the only person I think for sure in my year, maybe even in the whole school that had to pay international fees and it was like £11,000 a year and I don't have that kind of money in my life And so I was working every night and I was working in bars and I was working on weekends and again it was that kind of like I had figured out how to like work at a job long enough to get me to the next adventure.

I said this was the work I could be able to train. So I did, like, dead contemporary degree, and then I went bankrupt immediately after I graduated because it was so, so expensive to do. I mean, a degree in contemporary dance, come on. What, you know, $70 by the end of it is in debt, and then it's not like you're going to go and make that money. I'm quite sure in 20 years since I graduated, I still haven't made that back.

Like, so that was quite so it was a very sort of roundabout sort of way to get into it. And then the people I trained with, like, I had been here in London, and I met other people, you know, and networks and all that kind of stuff. And so then I've been here sort of ever since, and that was like 24 years ago. But I never went I will now go to London and train to be a dancer. It was the sort of like one thing happened and another thing happened and I just, I had a teacher from home, a dance teacher from home in Canada who just constantly was at me like you really need to go to school, you really need to go and do the training.

And she would send me these things of like top ten reasons why you should go to dance school. Often, right? There's that one teacher who, like, sees you and she saw and she was like, you're what are you doing? Go. Go.

Yeah. I think everyone needs that person to to see your talent and to see what you could be capable of doing. I mean, everyone knows that person for me is Ali. Like, Ali is the one that push push me to go to to drama school. And obviously, that's where I met you, Jen, at Generation Arts.

All I can remember from Jen was that she never made you feel like, oh, you don't have the training, like, you don't have the technique, like, you don't know where it originates from, like, this isn't for you. It was always that, So let's just start where you're at. Let me just help you where you're at. And I think to come across people like yourself that have obviously been through these challenges and obstacles and then to get where you've got to. Do you see yourself reflecting that in the people that you work with?

Like so for instance, like young people, the the immigration across, like, gender and identity and all of that. Do you do you sort of seek that out more because you know those people have less of an opportunity to to come across, like, the amazing companies like Generation Arts and amazing individuals like yourself. Make me blush. That's very sweet. I think, it almost gives me more credit than I deserve that I somehow get to choose my jobs unless, you know, I think I say this sometimes, because I'm like, you know, the career progression of somebody in the arts is, like, never this straight line, right?

Like every job gets more satisfying and pays better and the, you know, it's like this backwards 4 steps ahead, fall over, stumble. You know, it's kind of all over the place. I think it's more the other way around is that when people meet me, go, oh, actually, I think you would fit well with this kind of and so I think after a while people start to get to know who you are and then you kind of get referred or I think it's a little bit comes from a bit of a chip on my shoulder that I think again, like, who are you to tell me that I don't belong here? So I'm going to prove to you that, like, you don't own this space. That is part of the thing that when I do work with other people is that I also am not the gatekeeper.

It's not up to me to make it to give you permission either, it's just I have, oh I have an experience that maybe is helpful. If it is, great. If it's not, also totally up to you. I don't have the answer. I want people who I don't get to see and hear from on my TV and on my movie screens and in my podcast because it's been very much a particular kind of thing for such a long time, that's not my thing, so I want to hear and the only way that's going to happen is if there's more people able to do those things and these kind of like organizations or structures or, institutions that have these sort of gatekeeping kind of ideas on them.

I just don't it doesn't gel with me. I think the generation arts thing too, just on that really quickly, I think that is one of I say to you every time Donna Allen, like, I will work with you guys forever if you'll have me back. Like, the bottom line is, it's good. Like, it's good work. You're making good work and you're doing good work.

You just happen to be doing it with people who possibly wouldn't be able to go and do that work somewhere else. Like, the work is great, and it's because you've got great people and because you really are. You're not gatekeeping. Yeah. Mutual backslapping society now, but I think the other that's, like, the reason that we work with the reason we work with you.

Slap it. There's so many things we could talk to you about. Your career is so diverse. You've done so much. You trained in a kind of fairly traditional way, and then you've done commercial music video stuff.

You've done a lot of mass movement. You've worked overseas in in different developing countries. You've worked on a lot of digital stuff, and then you've been moving into doing one woman self devised work. Anything kinda stand out as, like, a a real challenge where you thought, I don't know if I can do this anymore or any point where you thought you were gonna give up? The most recent one, and I do talk this is the thing earlier about the dead cats as well, that there's always, like, on any project or anything, there's always, like, a dead cat, something.

Right. Somebody's cat dies. It's just life. And we imagine there's this world where there's, like, a unicorn project where nothing ever goes wrong, but it doesn't exist because that's not how the world works. And so instead of being really overwhelmed and upset and overcome when something does go wrong, it's re reframing that, oh, this is the dead cat moment in this project.

Here it is. Okay. Yeah. We knew that was going to be something. Okay, so that's going to impact like this, and so this is how we're going to do this differently or respond in this way.

And that it doesn't completely, like, scupper the whole thing it's not like this big dramatic oh my god we're all done for. First of all, I don't think you could get very far if it was like that but I think there's a sort of overarching thing that really sits so when I do have bigger stuff and I know you saw the last show Ali which was I had made a sort of big statement after doing all these big mass movement shows and I had just finished a big one. I think it was like 1500 dancers and it was across 3 countries and it was like huge 18 month production and I made a joke that saying oh my next show is going to be a solo show because surely it'll be easier than this and it was sort of a bit famous last words and I went into making this one woman show which was a bit of a semi autobiographical but kind of looking back at this place that that I came from and, like, why are these people so bonkers? Like, it's just a mad place. And in the middle of us making the show, my writer who I had worked with for, you know, 18 years, we were really good friends, I think we'd made 8 shows together, and he got sick very suddenly and he died in the last sort of 2 weeks of us making this show, right as we're about to go to Edinburgh Fringe.

And I went straight from his funeral to the hotel airport and the next morning got on the flight and went to Edinburgh because our tech was the next day. And the show that was about survival, the irony being, so it was a show about survival and so it when he got sick and, you know, he had called and said I'm not going to make it back in, you're going to have to finish it without me, you know, it was a sort of like it was a very fast process, it was like 3 weeks, but it was also really kind of like a slow motion thing of, like, him becoming less and less present. And when he did die, I had a sort of 3 and a half second moment in my head of, Do I not do the show? Like, do I quit now? Because the show wasn't finished.

It wasn't done. Do I bail? And it was literally like a 3 and a half second thought, because, no, that's the stupidest idea ever. Like, you have to finish this. You've booked it.

You've made the flyers. You've got the apartment booked for a month. You've got the venue. You like, we've, you know and by that point, we'd been working on it for about a year, and so much kind of effort and time had gone into it. And the reason I think it was just a three second consideration was because of all of the times before the bad review or the whatever and I still survived or the whatever, it was the not doing it would have been more devastating after all of that time and work that we put into it than the doing it even under sort of terrible circumstances and the show that we took to Fringe in the end, the one that we did, you know, finished, but I got up every day and I did that show.

And in a way, the getting up every day and doing the show, I couldn't do anything else. I couldn't fly or I couldn't do anything. Like, we, you know, like, I'd open the show every day. It was this moment where I'd, like, look up. I was in a parka, and I'd look up, and I would see how many people had bought a ticket to the show.

And, like, when we'd start, it was like, we're gonna sell it out. It's gonna be an award winning show. We're gonna get 5 star reviews. Right? You do the whole, we're gonna do fringe.

And then it got to the point where I was just, like I would come out in this little park and I'd look up and I would see how many people were in the audience and it would be this it was a 100 seater and they're like one day I had 2 and a half people and so it was having to go with 2 people and a photographer so that half person was like they were their official business but those 2 people you know and they know right they know that like there's a hundred there's 98 seats that there's no one in and those 2 people I mean it was one of the best shows I think we ever did because those 2 people were like we're here with you, we're in it, we're with you, we're gonna we're gonna go through, we're gonna we're doing this together. And so the process of doing the show every day in the midst of, like, quite sort of shock, right, that this has all happened, was, again, like, another one of those, Well, I'm gonna make it through this thing. And off the back of it, that show in the end, and when we got back and I had a break and sort of worked through it and, finished the show kind of properly, and it toured for 5 years, and it was, like, the most quote unquote successful show we ever made.

What happened sort of became the show, and that sort of autobiographical slant sort of became what it ended up being. And if I had just packed it in at that moment and walked away, all of that would have been lost. And I just think, well, that's my that is my unique space is to be the person that's going to be I'm going to talk about it I'm going to do it and we're going to talk about loss and grief and We're gonna do it in a silly way so that you're laughing and then you sing a song and, you know, that is part of the bigger picture of it's just if I'm if I'm still around afterwards, then it feels like I did the I was honouring the work that we had put in together. And if I hadn't, then I felt like that was a disservice to him. And then and then on the end of it, still here, right?

Yeah, still here and stronger if you come out the other side. Well, something, and then thinking nothing of doing, like, a roller skating show. So if I can survive a method and the fridge, you know, and I don't recommend it, like I don't recommend operating from ground 0 grief. I don't think that's the best, like, You know, I don't think it's the most It doesn't make for maybe the best theatre, but I do think, you know, people understand that. And now, we just finished the last show, it was in February of this year, and after shows always, always had people come up and talk to me about, Thank you for talking about it and putting in a place where it's like, a because we don't talk about death we don't talk you know and I was with my son who knows that I just lost my mom last year and he and I had a hug afterwards we never would have had that if we hadn't come to you know you know, earlier the question, what's the point?

Why should I be doing this? Is this, like, really ridiculous? It does connect to people, and it does make a difference somehow. And so if I'm not doing it in my ridiculous way, somebody will do it in their way. And the only way I can do it is in my ridiculous way.

So Always do it in your own way, I think. Always do it in the way that best represents you. Because at the end of the day, that is the only tool that you have in this industry is yourself. That they can't take away or or change. Do you know what I mean?

Like, you have control and ownership over it, so you have to make sure that you honor it always. Well, that's the thing, isn't it? When you're and people always say just be yourself and you just always think, oh my god, just be yourself, like what does that even mean? The more and more and more I see it is the people who because there's a confidence, I think, an internal kind of self belief that comes with it, and acknowledging, like, I'm not going to be everybody's cup of tea. Like, some people are going to hear about, like, that roller disco about immigration and be like, Oh, oh, that's the worst thing I've ever heard.

That's totally cool. But I'm not gonna not do that in order to try to be a sort of palatable cup of tea that more people enjoy. I'm not helping anybody. I'm not serving myself or anybody by doing that. So it is the be yourself thing, isn't it?

Like, so cheesy, isn't it? Oh my gosh. It is. It is, and it takes time. It's not an overnight thing.

It's not you know what I mean? It's until the end of time that you keep on finding that self. Truth speak. One thing that occurred to me when you were talking as well as that incredibly unbelievable situation with your writer, and your friend passing away and all of that. It was the other thing you were talking about as well.

It's just which is really common of the Edinburgh experience of playing to 2 people. I just wondered if you could talk about what that's like because, most people that have done an Edinburgh show have had that experience. It's doing the fringe for was it the whole month that you did it? Yeah. I did the whole thing.

Yeah. Edinburgh Fringe is like a giant game show. Nobody knows what the grand prize is. Like, nobody quite knows what it is you're meant to get out of it, but everybody's like playing their hearts out. And it's this incredible thing to be around thousands of other people who are just, you know, we've got a thing, we're going to get it up, we're going to do it, we've worked this hard, we've had all of these sort of challenges, all these pit, everything that's happened and, like, somehow we're all here.

It's really amazing to be around and I think that was part of when I was off stage being around all of the other performers and writers and everybody else who had their own very circuitous and difficult journey to get there and that, you know, people like that their savings, you know, it's a huge sort of undertaking. Even at the best of times Edinburgh is like this sort of endurance challenge. Challenge. It is like, you know, if you're gonna do that full month, the playing to 2 people thing. You know, I heard other people say things, oh well we don't do it if there's less than 10 people in the audience, And I I was like, What?

Really? And I never, in all of my the whole time I was there, despite all of what was going on, did I ever even consider that I wouldn't do a show? Because those 2 people paid their £12 or whatever it was. They deserved the show. They deserved the best show that I could do on the day in that moment.

They didn't deserve less of me because there weren't 98 other people there. And part of the reason I love live performance is because you are in a live situation with the kind of strangers, and what gets made isn't what I do on the stage. It's what happens when I do what I'm doing, and they're doing what they're doing. It's the thing we make together. And I think 2 people deserve to be a part of that as much as 90 8.

So, yeah, it's hard going, it's worth it to do, I think it's very humbling. It's also a little bit you're really in the depths of sort of the capitalist infrastructure of, like, I must sell tickets, otherwise I won't eat next week. Like, that's also a pretty scary place to be because it's just so, so expensive. Even I now, having done a month, even with this show, if I was going to go and do it, I don't think I would do a month simply because I can't afford it and I think that's a little bit of the problem with the barrier rent to entry is that the whole idea of the fringe is that you should be able to if you've got enough sort of, you know, gumption or whatever they call it, that you're gonna go and do the show, then you should be able to go and do the show. But I don't think that's necessarily the truth because of the cost of it.

So it's a lot. It's a huge undertaking, and I think if you ever are gonna do Fringe, I'm, here's an actual piece of advice. The sooner you start to make decisions to do it, the better off you'll be when you're there, because it's such a huge undertaking. You almost only learn how to do fringe after doing it, and then even after doing it still don't quite know what it's all about but there's so many first times so many questions so many things around because you're doing everything you're doing your marketing and you're doing your flyers and your press and you're like it's a production you are managing a huge production in the midst of you know 2,000 other people managing their productions and then the however many millions of people coming to watch so it's an adventure, take your vitamins, get some sleep, don't drink too much, wash your underwear on Monday, you learn a lot. And it's also the thing as well, of just doing a show 22 times in a row, that show becomes something as you go along, you know, that in itself was incredible, and I'm so glad that I stuck that because I think that is where I became actually a performer.

Even when they weren't very good, it was me having to learn to, like, you still have to show up. Even though I'd been performing for years as a dancer, this was a totally different thing because it was me and it was my show and it wasn't 500 other people. It was me having to be the one dying or not on stage and then having to get up the next day and do it all over again, and not take in the feelings I had from yesterday. And it had to be a brand new show. And you can't get that anywhere else.

You can't train for that. You can't. I think that it's important for people to know that, like, 2 people in the audience or or a 1000000 people watching you on Netflix, it's still the same buzz. Like, it's still the same buzz and and and if that buzz or that value is put on the number, you're gonna sort of find yourself in a really sticky situation because you can't control the number ever. Mhmm.

And I think now we're in a place with this generation with the YouTube and the Instagram, and it is all about numbers. And then that is their validation. Don't worry about the 2 likes. Or do you know what I mean? The 2 YouTube comments, because there's somebody out there that sees your value and sees the story that you're telling.

And and and those stories are really, really important, and those are the ones that matter. A 100%. I, one time won an award, the choreography award. And when it happened, it was, like, this really big like, it was a it was, like, success moment with, like, flashing lights. And then I Instagrammed the shit like, put it on the right?

It was on the social media. And the next day, I was washing walls in an apartment in North London because I that was the job that I had to make the money. So this thing that was seen in the world and my reality were so disconnected from it. So the likes, you know, the like meant 0 to I have to pay my rent. So I think it's also getting caught up in the needing to have that stuff takes away from the doing of the work and the finding the place that's meaningful What's the point?

Why are you here? What is it you wanna say? And what is it you wanna say in your very own particular way that nobody else is gonna say it? That's what I wanna hear. No.

It's so it's so important. Thank you. Everything you've said, how would you distill if you had to give one piece of advice to young performers starting out? Everything you said, the whole podcast is just absolutely packed full of advice, so much meaning in everything you said. So I don't know if that's even a question I can ask now.

What I wish somebody would have told me all that time ago when I was like, I'm gonna be a dancer or whatever, is it never on the outside looks like it is on the inside. And when the Instagram gets turned off or whatever, and know as we were just talking about, every time I get to know somebody I admire or their work or I meet them and find out about them, No one got to that place just magically. They didn't just wake up one day and they're doing the thing that they really want to do. They got there because of all of the things that went wrong and the sideways and the dead cats and all that kind of stuff. And they kept going and they kept going.

And I think that really is, again, like a super cliche, but it is the everyone isn't quite sure what they're doing. It's just like you've like everyone doesn't like no one's got it figured out. And I just that was what I wanted somebody to tell me like oh by the way that person you think is amazing they don't actually know what they're doing either they just have more experience doing it so they maybe make a few different decisions but that is it That's the only difference. So, yeah, nobody's got it figured out. If you're doing it, you're doing amazing.

That's it. Keep doing it. If you're doing it, keep doing it. Keep doing it more. Keep doing it more.

Keep doing it more. And that's it. I don't think anything else needs to be said after that. I think This has been incredible. Thank you so much, Jen.

So much. It's so nice to see and talk to you both. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Jen. I know. Honestly, I feel like I should be paying to be here. 

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The lineup of guests have all tested their resilience, so come see what you can learn. Thank you for listening, and see you next time. Bye.