 Welcome to our second of this lunchtime interview series. So, tomorrow we have Robert McBride from the Rockingham Museum and Arts Project. We'll be talking with Joe Chen from the Taiwanese company, Puppet, and it's double about making community arts spaces and access to the arts in the community, in Leeds Taipei, in Taiwan, and here in our own region. So, I hope you'll be back for that tomorrow, and I hope you all know and think here in the meantime what's happening for the rest of the day, so I'm not going to spend time doing that, I'm just going to turn it over to John. So, I'm John Potter, I'm the executive director of the Latchez Theatre, right up the street from where we are today, we're celebrating our 80th birthday today. That's the end of my shameless plug, and I'm thrilled to be here and thrilled to get away a little bit. But, our friendship with the Sanglass Theatre runs long and deep, so we're very pleased to be intertwined in working on this together. Arts like inclusion and diversity are on a lot of lips these days, people talking about the arts and everything else. As an example, Americans for the Arts issued a statement in 2016 that acknowledged, quote, cultural equity is critical to the viability of the arts sector. The Canada Council for the Arts, in its current strategic plan, identified as one of its goals, quote, to strengthen and support enabling a culture of participation, inclusion, and diversity. And Carol McCord of Alternate Roots wrote, I imagine an arts field that becomes a beloved community manifesting a culture of generosity based on principles of inclusion, diversity, and equity, and rejecting the politics of fear. There are many laudable examples of progress and practice of inclusion in the arts and elsewhere. I'll cite as one example, Moving Beyond Inclusion, which a collaboration which brought six of Europe's leading dance companies together, united by the fundamental belief that working inclusively produces more exciting and more enlivened artistic work. It's very encouraging to hear. Yet there is more to be done. As a 2014 article by Sean C. Harris titled, Diversity, Inclusion in the Arts Are Not Enough, reminds readers that many efforts, however well-meaning, are misguided. Quote, whenever people talk about diversity and inclusion, the underlying question seems to be, how do we get them to join us? The real question needs to be, how can we work in solidarity with them? Today we'll be examining the topic of changing our perception of disability through an inclusive theatre practice in the UK and Vermont. And with us are Ben Pettit-Wade, artistic director of hijinks, one of the UK's leading inclusive theatre companies, as well as Laura Lawson-Tucker and Darlene Jensen, co-founders of the Theatre Adventure Program of New England Youth Theatre. So we're very pleased to all be together up here. I don't think we can applaud enough for all these folks up here, so it's great to hear. I'm going to start with Ben, if you could shed some light on hijinks, what it does, how it does it and how you came to be involved. So that's a loaded series of questions. So I'll start with hijinks. Hijinks is a company that's been around since 1984, it was founded. Initially it wasn't an inclusive theatre company, so a company that works in the way we do now. It was a touring company going to small-scale venues. We're told to speak up. Do I need to speak up? Yes. I'm going to small-scale venues. About 20 years ago the company became interested in making inclusive work. We had a community group called Odyssey, which actually reminded me a lot of the group. Obviously you have a theatre adventure, a large group of performers, both with and without disability that simply had a passion to perform. That group still exists today as our community arm of work that we do, but alongside it we make professional touring productions that include casts with neurodiverse casts. To do that and to maintain the professionalism and quality we have our own training programme for our performers, which we call our academies, which we started in 2012. They meet two days a week throughout the year. It's an ongoing programme so it's not like a course where you're doing a year or two years and then we say goodbye to people, we're working with people in an ongoing process over a number of years. On those courses we have a pool of tutors that teach whatever their specialism may be, whether that's clown, puppetry, improvisation, movement, etc. We now have five academies around Wales. We've got two in Cardiff, one in West Wales, one in North Wales and one in Mid Wales. Overall we're working with about 70 adults with learning disability and autism on those courses. Here today actually we have Lindsay on the front row here, Gareth and Richard who are overjoyed that they get to spend the next hour listening to me. They're products and members of our academies, but also in the production meat bread that we'll be performing today. We then take students that have been embedded in the training to work in smaller groups to make the productions. All our productions are devised so it's a collaborative process so everyone has input into the making and then we tour our productions both nationally around the UK and internationally. Our aim, if you like, our vision is to change perceptions of neurodivergent members of our society within both our own country and others and to present a positive perspective, I guess, through the power and quality of the work that we're presenting. So that's our touring work. Now we also have a lot of other stuff we do as an organisation so we have a festival called the Unity Festival which we started about 10 years ago, it was going into its 10th edition in 2019 and that celebrates companies that have a similar ethos to our own from around the world so it's an international programme alongside workshops a week long in venues. That started originally because we're lucky enough to be based. Our office is in quite a prestigious theatre called the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff but at the time 10 years ago it was very difficult for companies like our own to get a platform in those sorts of spaces as sort of a mainstream if you like theatre venues. So it was an opportunity for us to form a partnership with one of those venues to present a festival. We were very keen on it and so each year since then they've been a partner on the festival and they basically give over a week of their venue to us to programme. And through the festival actually, that's been a big part of how the company's developed and how our work has become more international because obviously through running the festival we got to meet a lot of people, like-minded people like ourselves some of whom also would have their own festivals and so we created a little bit of an exchange between us and other companies especially around Europe to be able to start to take our work outside of the UK. So I've done the academy, I've done our tour introductions, I've done the festival and obviously Odyssey is still running which is sort of our community work. So we also have something we call drama foundations which is for adults that have an interest in drama but in reality aren't going to be able to kind of follow it as a professional sort of venture but it's a benefit, this kind of social and confidence building. So yeah, basically a drama group and we've just launched a film strand to the work we do. So over the next five years the students are going to have more of a focus in some of the sessions on developing skills for camera and there's a sort of programme put in place where we're going to produce a number of short films over the next five years to get those out to sort of film festivals and that sort of stuff. And the other thing we do, because actually the difficulty, the company has grown hugely in the last five years we've sort of quadrupled really in size of what we're doing and with that comes difficulties so to be working with 70 people that we're training around the country obviously those people, they want opportunities as well to go beyond that training to find work and the reality is as a company we can't serve all those people in what we're doing and give them those sort of professional opportunities that for example Richard Garrett and Lindsay have had with me Fred. We don't have the capacity to do that. So we also try to advocate and encourage external companies, whether theatre companies to work with us to cast our performers and we offer packages to support them through that process and also casting directors in film and television. So more and more now we're getting casting directors getting in touch with us because we have our own acting agency so on our website that's got a separate part of the website where each of the students have a very short show reel kind of introduction video for each one where you can click through and have a look and see and sort of meet online and arrange a casting and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, that's it. So that's it. That's all. So yeah, we keep very busy, it's very busy. And how did you personally find your way to this work? So I trained in drama in Liverpool. We finished in college. A group of fellow students performed our own company for a couple of years that toured. Through doing that I learned a lot both about the management side of kind of getting toured together and the funding and all that sort of stuff as well as small scale touring. But then I applied for a job in London for a company called Spare Tide Theatre Company who are a community theatre company. So they make work with all sorts of different communities within London. They work with older people with gay and lesbian community. And one of the groups they were working with was a group of performers with learning disability and autism. And yeah, before that I had no surreal kind of concept or thinking this is what I wanted to do. But walking into that room, what came across was the absolute, the welcome that you got. And from witnessing the work that the group were doing I became very excited about the potential and the creativity really that was in that room and what could happen if you allowed that creativity to blossom. So I worked there for about four years or so with that group. And then I took a couple of years just sort of out going and teaching English in Poland and moving around doing different stuff around Europe. Kind of not knowing, really not knowing exactly where I wanted to go from that point. But that time away made me realise that what I really missed was this group of performers that I had been working with. And so I took that time away and it took that really to make me realise that that's what I wanted to sort of carry on doing. And I applied for the job at Hygienx while in Poland and came back for the interview that was about 12 years ago. So I started in that role as what we call the Outreach Officer which was basically organising projects within the community and then have worked myself up to Artistic Director in the 12 years since being there. You made good use of your time away. I think having that space to sort of refocus and find that kind of realisation that that was the thing. Can you go to the place of missing? Yeah. And that's very instructive. Well let's hear a little bit about theatre adventure in listening to Ben. Lots of similar ethos and basic principles. The shape of tap is different but the bones seem to be very similar to what goes on in Hygienx. At least my impression. Let's hear some of tap's story. Well Laura, this is Darlene. And Darlene and I met 19, probably getting close to 20 years ago. And Darlene has a son with various disabilities. And I had an early childhood program and Elijah was one of my students. And we both as educators kept talking. We both as educators kept, Darlene and I kept talking about because my orientation as an early childhood teacher was dramatic arts and storytelling and lots of movement and was always wanting to help my young children have lots of opportunities to work together as a group with their creativity and lots of drama. And so we started talking about Elijah. And Elijah, I really embraced this thought of helping Elijah enter my group of six typically developing children. And I learned so much. It was really my first experience, intimate experience of working with a person with disabilities. And so this is physical and cognitive challenges. And I think what that, and we kept talking about creativity and opportunities for people with disabilities and specifically in Brattleboro and in southern Vermont. And Darlene, we'll start talking in a moment, but Darlene was discovering sadly that opportunities that her son could do, Elijah could do, we've described as a tag along experience. So you talk the director into enrolling your child with disabilities and that director says, where are they? Well, okay. And not to blame anyone because it's lack of experience and knowledge. And then the parent or the caregiver is assisting that person to participate but never really becomes part of the group. There's never any, people didn't know how to accommodate and to tweak their program to open more doors for someone who had physical or cognitive challenges. That's why I called it tag along. It was like, yeah, great. Yeah, you can join us, but we're not going to do anything differently. So when we decided to have a theater program, we wanted it to be sort of what we ended up calling the reverse inclusion model of everything was determined by the people who had disabilities and what their needs were. And if typically developing people came into the program, they had to tag along with us. They had to adjust to come in with us. So we launched theater venture with New England New Theater. We talked to Steven Stearns, the founder, director, and women had to work very hard at all that we had this idea. And then we felt very strongly that to start a new program, to give it, you know, credence, to give it like value, we thought it'd be more powerful if we were part of a larger established program, I mean organizations such as New England New Theater. And Steven was very, very open as he is as a person and as an artist. And he said, yep, great, great Lauren Darlene. I'll find the money and you run it. And we're like, great, wonderful. So about four months later, he got the first grant of $5,000. He said, okay, go for it. So that first summer 2004 was a one-week program. And because we're educators, we were quite plugged into youth, children and youth in our area. And we easily enrolled. I think we had 12 that first year. And just dove in. I'm using borrowed space. This is before this building on Flat Street existed. And it was a one-week program and it became clear, oh my goodness. We have like the tip of the iceberg here. There was a groundswell of interest. And what I felt was, oh, I might get a little bit teary here, but what I felt was that there were so many people in our extended community with so much to say and offer creatively as a creative person that had never had an opportunity. And they were just like jumping at the chance. And so we dove into it and we learned tons. And before we knew it in a few years, I mean our peak of performances when we were like crazy, 2008 we had eight productions. And we were like, ah! So we went from a summer program, added a fall class, and added two more classes, and boom! And there we were. And we just, you know, we weren't seasoned enough to know it was this way too much. But what was great, though, was that so, like this momentum was developing and so many youth and then adults were coming forward and saying, I love to perform. I love this. You saw a little bit of that yesterday for sure. And so many of our students today had been with us for, whether it be 15 years, 13 years, 12 years, 11 years, because they're so dedicated. So that's kind of the roots of where we are. And we grew so much, we're still part of Normal Vivian Theater, but we moved to a new space that's really big. And we can practice in our performing space every week, which is essential. And that's at the West Village Manion House in West Brattle Grove. And that's the Unitarian Universalist Church. And this is now, we're just starting our seventh year in that space. And that's been really exciting, really exciting. It expanded. Being in the bigger space and being able to be on our stage every single class, our students taught us that they had more to contribute and more to the whole production. Because sometimes they would do something that very naturally, like we would say, you know, you're going to exit from over here and they'd exit from somewhere else. And it was just natural that that's what their character would have done. And, you know, we were more thinking, you know, this is the logistics of it. And then we're like, oh, yeah, right, that makes sense. So then we realized we had a more collaborative process going on, either, you know, by all different ways of communication, or just by doing what they felt naturally, or saying, oh, I think this, or I think that, or what if we did this, what if we did that. So it was just very interesting to be open to that and find how, you know, even moving a space brings out new creativity and new expression within people. I think one of the things, as I listen to both your stories, thinking of the initial walking into the room for the first time or the first gathering, and right away the mindset is, you know, we're not serving creativity to a population. We are in the presence of creativity, and we are to stir it up and inspire it and let it out. And to me, that feels like a barrier that other people would not get to as quickly as you did, but that was sort of day one outgoing. But, you know, let's talk about some other barriers to, you know, that you've encountered as you've created work, made work, and then tried to bring it to the wider world. And I'm also intrigued with what Hygiene's does on creating a sort of professional development and support around that, and that must be a barrier-leading endeavor as you get your folks working. Yeah. Yeah, what it starts. I mean, in terms of the process of making work, you know, the way that we believe is the most accessible is to devise our work, which is why we do it that way. The script-led process, for me, is something that is just unworkable for many of our performers, which is why we choose to start with a blank page and to ensure that the text that does become part of our productions is the text that's spoken by those performers, so it's spoken in the way that they may speak. And then, you know, you ensure then that everyone kind of has that ownership of what the story is and where it's going and who they are within it. So that's one kind of barrier, if you like. The thing about the training and opportunities, our work is in the UK, there's still a stigma attached for a paying audience that, you know, you're asking people to come to a production and there's still that thing of, okay, it's a cast that includes performers of all types, and neuro-typical, and it's the attitude that the quality is not going to be there or this isn't going to be for me, or it's in some way not going to live up to the ticket price. Or uncomfortable. Or uncomfortable. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, I mean, that's a battle, and it's one that's improving for us as our kind of name becomes more known, I guess. But it's something that's one of the reasons as well that we started the festival. And that's what festivals are great for, is building those audiences and changing perceptions in that way. But it's an ongoing sort of battle, really. And it's the same as any theatre company. You need to develop trust in your audience to get them coming back again and again. But it feels like it's a harder task for companies like ours, because it's all kind of mixed into those perceptions that we're trying to change. But in terms of our performers working both for us and for external companies, obviously, there's a whole package that needs to be tailored in terms of a person's support to go and work outside of the company. And for us as well, I mean, we've got another production on the road at the moment in the UK with, obviously, an entirely different cast and three very different performers from our academy who have very different support needs. I mean, Lindsay, Richard and Gareth, you've been on the road with Fred to all sorts of places and they're incredibly independent. Is that true to say, you guys? They're saying I probably am. Yeah. But still, if we're in a big city or something like that, obviously, we take on a lot of that support for making sure people are safe going out and around and where you are and all that sort of stuff. Things that you don't necessarily have to think about if you don't have a neo-revolutionist cast. So on our tours, we always have to ensure that there's a dedicated member of support worker on tour with the production and in the kind of climate we live in where you're making small-scale theatre work which actually, financially, often, is very difficult to justify to have the additional cost of a support worker on tour is a tough thing and to then try and encourage an external company if that's what they need, if they want to employ one of our forms with learning disability and autism, then there's another barrier there for that happening. Yeah, does that answer my question? It is. It was a sweeping question. John, can I pop your... A little story popped in my head and this is around barriers, like if I think about our barriers, there are probably two biggies and the first one is, of course, the attitudes and attitudes toward folks who are different from the mainstream and the others' money. But I'm going way back early, early on and in our early period, we did not charge admission very early. And so then I got connected with, by chance, with a director in... Rhode Island. Rhode Island and of a company for adults or children with disabilities. And so I think he happened to be in Brattleboro and was visiting an EY team so then I got connected with him that way. And so I called him because I really wanted to find out more about his work and what he was doing. And he was great. He was very, very open. And then he started asking me about theater venture and this is probably five years into it for us, approximately, or less. And so... We got into pragmatics and then he said, because he was very much part of theater organization and they fully funded everything and salaries and so forth. But then he came back to me and he said, well, Laura, tell me, what are you charging for admission? And I kind of stammered and said, nothing. And he said, why are you not charging admission? Are you... Do you feel that your actors aren't good enough? And I stopped dead metrics. And what he was really helping like with a mirror, he was helping me realize we do not need to make excuses for our actors. Matter of fact, we need to promote them and over the years, and I'm sure this has happened for you too, then, we've had many audience members say this is like the most exciting theater I've ever been to. So it's not that we need to prove ourselves what we partly do, but more let's show people these possibilities like you guys and me, Fred, which I can't wait to see me, Fred. And so it really flipped me around as one of the directors of this program and I embracing the attitudes that I want other people to embrace. And so I totally changed my thinking after that. You all have used the phrase changing perceptions and that includes your own. Yeah, absolutely. We've learned right along with our troop. The troop teaches us, we teach them, we're all teaching each other, and that's really the joy of the work and the depth of respect for each other. One of the things I encountered, even from people writing or thinking from a fairly sensitive point of view to this was there's still a transactional nature. If you are inclusive, then donors, audience, funders will line up to you and that's a good reason to do it. And I think advancing beyond the transactional nature into the fact that it's a practice or the experience of it being a continual practice, again, you were already practicing it and you had your perceptions change, flipped deep and broadened. And that feels very much, it's not a deal that you're making, but it's a practice. And to me, that seemed like an important aspect of inclusive theater. I wonder if any thoughts about that particular notion. The importance and in the absence of that, can you speak to Elijah's experience and the experiences of other folks you've taught, worked with? My son Elijah has cerebral palsy and he also has cognitive challenges. We use, I mean, I always say he was born to be a teacher when he was 11 weeks old. We were in a body, mind centering movement, therapist's workshop retreat and he was the teacher and he's been the teacher ever since. He teaches us every day. We use him as our role model to say if Elijah doesn't get it, we've got to figure out another way to teach it because he lets us know. Right away, if he's bored or whatever. But I'd have to say it's a non-probable. Elijah reminds us, don't just work with words. It's really important to put words aside, because we're so word oriented. When our very first troupe that we had in 2004, what Emmaus May was, I homeschooled him, but we did a lot of working with educators from the University of Vermont and one thing they said was, he needs to have some adult driven activities. He just can't rule everything because he needs to learn how to have attention. Well, here we are, 12 students, we're going one by one by one. They're all sharing something that's important to them each day. My son, who is so distractable, is sitting on the edge of his seat like this, looking at everyone go around the circle for, what, 20 minutes? I was just like, I'm going to get a picture of that scene. I mean, so every day he teaches me something and he's learned more words. You know, he's just in totally engaged. He kind of tells his caregiver when it's, he knows when he needs to go out for his part, for his character in a show. He's like, up, ready, come on. And she's like, oh yeah, right, right, right. We're going on in a minute. So he intuitively has learned, you know, 15 years. I think this has been the best thing. When I finally took him to school, I just said, it's not an option. Just put in his IEP, whatever you have to do. But this kid's going to theater adventure as part of his educational program because he's going to learn more there in three hours than you guys are going to see tomorrow day. I'm sorry. And you know, and it's really true because that's what speaks to him and his way of learning. And we've seen that. My deep quote is that one day we were practicing and one of our students who rarely spoke, he has autism, he rarely spoke to us. And his character was going to sing Hakuna Matata. And I put the microphone in front of him. He sang clearly, articulately and on key. And all this commotion's going on and Laura's like, cut, quiet on the set. Do that again. And you know, and so right there for me, a whole, you know, I mean, so I learned about cerebral palsy and nonverbal communication and cognitive, you know, disabilities and everything. But still for me, learning about people on the autism spectrum or a student who's deaf or a student who's blind, that's all new learning just because I have one kind of a son that doesn't mean I know everything. And so that's been very exciting for us to learn. So right there, my whole idea about people with autism who can't speak, you know, what are they taking in? We don't know because sometimes it's hard to understand what they're understanding. It was just blown out of the water with that young man singing, no worries. And I would just add to that that Elijah has helped remind us a lot that we all learn. And it's so often in our society we might think someone, they'll never be able to blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's so not true at all. And so the belief in that we're all learners and that means the teacher is still. Yeah, I bet. In terms of whether I see it as a practice, I think definitely. Making inclusive work as a practice. Again, that's one of the reasons the festival is to try and sort of show that it's not just us, there's companies all over the world that are making this work and sharing this practice. But in terms of my role in the room as director, when we're devising our productions, I very much see it as being able to design a show that is going to show each of those performers in sure their strengths. So that's where it becomes, you know, a practice. And it's like you say, it's that ability to be able to recognise suddenly, okay, wow, you're doing that. Okay, how can we use that? How can we use that? And being open to that. And being open to the surprises. Yeah, absolutely. Students will show things that are like, whoa, like you described, like that's amazing. That happens all the time. And I mean, for example, in Meet Fred, and this is very much a part of the show for those that have seen it and those that will see it, is from the beginning, I always wanted one of our Academy students to be one of the puppeteers on Fred. And we worked through puppetry for months on end with the students on the course and some of them became very good at it. Actually, I had one student who was probably achieved the most in terms of technical ability. And I had turned and I asked him, look, do you want to join us on this production? And he said, no. I said, why not? I hate puppetry. So he refused to do it. He wouldn't do it. So, you know, so he didn't come and join us actually in making the show. Our other students did and he was also very good. But to have the skill to be able to maintain the style of puppetry we use in this show over an extended sort of hour and 20 minutes is a lot of focus and a lot of sort of cognitive ability and discipline. So that's why in the end, and it's this thing of making sure you're working to people's strengths is the decision was made that we would have the Academy student play in characters alongside the puppet and our tutors being the puppeteers. But those are difficult decisions that sometimes you have to make if you're going to commit to everyone being able to play to their strengths and produce the best show produced with that group of people. Yeah. It's like a good time to have you elaborate a little bit more on Meet Fred once about and how did, you know, you weren't primarily a puppetry company so the decision to make that foray as part of this was good. So, yeah, I mean, primarily as we've been speaking about we're an inclusive theatre company but we did a workshop in 2014 with a company called Blind Summit who are a fantastic puppetry company based in London, in the UK. And we learned in that week about the style of Boonraku puppetry that they use so they have sort of cloth puppets that they use as training puppets. So what that meant is that we got a chance to both kind of observe and perform on these puppets. So I got kind of to experience what it is to be in that puppet working alongside two other performers and improvising in the moment. And it's very kind of, it's a wonderful feeling and the inspiration really from that was just to kind of in some way make a puppet show using one of these puppets. We went away, we ordered like we had seven or eight Boonraku puppets made for us by Blind Summit and then I came back and we worked for seven, eight months kind of a day, half day a week training with the students on the academy and exploring what worked, what didn't work and some, meeting some characters through the puppets. Some of the sequences that you see in the show kind of first starts to take form through improvisations within those sessions. And then we kind of went into more focused groups of like eight performers, some of our academy students alongside some of the tutors to continue to sort of explore some of the themes. And at that point, what became clear was this, the relationship between the puppet and his puppeteers and how the puppet, you know, the puppeteers give the puppet life in simplest form without the puppeteers the puppet doesn't exist. And then the parallels between that and the reliance that many of our performers have on a support network to be independent within their lives and live full lives. And what happens if that gets taken away? So at the time that we were making the show was austerity, was a big buzzword around Europe, the crisis and the government was making a lot of cutbacks to services and people's benefits. So people, this support was being taken away and through various bureaucratic systems whereby people were asked to re-apply the different benefits and through that process we're losing their benefits. So a lot of our students were going through this change. It was a big stress in people's lives within the disabled community. And that whole atmosphere I guess started to lead into the work that we were making in the room. So that's what the show became. So Fred, I mean Fred, but we always explored it through the puppet so it was never, you know, there just were themes that were bubbling around but it was always about, you know, okay, so if Fred wanted to live in the real world as a puppet, you know, how's he going to do that? So that was always the approach. But then the similarities were obvious. The parallel issues. Yeah, I felt that, just your little demo the other day. I was like, oh yeah, that's our life in a nutshell. And people brought their experiences to the room so Fred has to go to the job centre, you know, and go through all that kind of ridiculous trying to be made to get a job, none of which are appropriate for him. But always with the threat of losing some of those benefits if he doesn't agree. I mean, definitely that's something that, you know, that was an experience, Richard, your experience with the job centre is something that kind of was very pertinent during the making of the show. Do you want to? The truth behind the job centre scenes was that because in me, Fred, don't give any spoilers yet, I played a really horrible character who's worked at the job centre and basically in real life I was at the receiving end pretty much. I was the one who was the one who was like going to the job centre, going to these interviews and the benefit offices and that. And they asked me stupid questions and they took away my benefits because they learned that I was because of the fact that I said I was learning to drive. So, because, yeah, naturally Eurodivergent people can't drive naturally but, I mean, yeah, they took it off and so... So you had to fight for it together recently. Yeah, I was frightened. So the first thing that happened when I found out that they took it away was I actually text Ben and Dan swore out of fear as well. I was like, oh my God, my Ben has got what am I going to do? That's all that. So when I came to forming this character me, Fred, I just wanted to put as much Ben as I discussed into that role as much content as I wanted to throw in there. So, yeah, hopefully a little bit more of a realistic interpretation why I felt like being in there and being, like, interrogated I think is probably good words to describe it in that particular situation. So we just follow the story through, you know, kind of always, as we were making the show, it's, you know, what's the next logical thing that could realistically happen here. And, you know, I won't give much away, but we'll see. Yeah. One other area I'd like to quickly explore is changing perceptions in the wider community and how you feel that's going and, yeah. I think it's, and certainly this show as well is the show that's really taken us, you know, beyond just being able to visit the similar sorts of festivals that we run, those inclusive festivals where, in many ways, you're already in an environment that's preaching to the converted, if you like, to more mainstream festivals that aren't, you know, where audiences, you know, are coming already prepared for what they might see here. And I think that's when you start to sort of, yeah, start to really hope that you're making, starting to make that difference because you're reaching the people that, you know, you want to reach, exactly, yeah, exactly. It's such a difficult thing, though, and to have as a company that aim and vision that we want to change perceptions within society, it's an impossible thing to actually quantify, you know, when you're succeeding in that and what exact impression you're having without, you know, giving out various questions. It's with the obvious questions in there where you're not really going to get a realistic closed path, you know. What does 20% more open look like? You can only hope, really, that that's the case. And, you know, we get, sometimes, there's feedback that, you know, it's offered from people, which is lovely. But, yeah, we hope we're getting there. We can only hope. And how about for a further year? We have felt that with, as I said, in our early days, you know, our audience were families, families of our students. And over the 15 years, our audiences have really grown a lot. And we have sold up audiences now, but that's 15 years of doing the work. But it's very exciting. And it's very, very exciting. And we get lots of comments from people. And, yes, absolutely, we want to do what we can do to help shift thinking and really open people's minds to thinking differently. You can't make that happen, but I think it's all by invitation. And I think it sounds like hygiene is definitely, and I think theater venture, a quality of the work that we present on stage, I think, is invitational. It's presenting actors who are passionate about what they're doing, which automatically sets a tone of, and opening. But you can't make that happen. I think it's the power of theater is what kind of boils down to. Now, I understand hygiene's got to come to theater venture. I have a little interaction. How did that go? He was great. And I was going to say, Jenny, one of our students at the very end, I was so taken. She just very freely raised her hand. We were in a circle. And Jenny said, this was really great. I am so glad to know there are other theater companies for people who have disabilities, or however she says. Yeah, especially in another country. Yeah, my hope and sort of wish, as I was talking with all of you, is what can we do to clone you, bottle you, franchise you, turn you into seeds that could be cast out. I appreciate hearing that you have added other locations and have grown. It's gone beyond, it's gone out. We went to China in May with this show. And we have an organization in China, AC Orange Theatres. They're the second largest theater group in China. I don't know how many theaters, ridiculous amount. But they, they're, the moment they're trying to basically buy rights to run what we do in China. So we have this ridiculous, we have no idea what it's going to lead to. I mean, they want to buy the exclusive English language version rights to meet Fred. An exclusive Chinese version meet Fred. And they want to buy exclusive rights to all future hygiene productions to tour in China. And exclusive rights to run the training that we do. You know, it's a world we have no experience of or concept of. It's very exciting. It also throws up lots of questions about control and all that sort of stuff. But the spirit is that they want to be able to, you know, offer more opportunity for their communities with disability in China, which is great, very positive. Yeah, that's very important. Interesting concept to franchise in a contractual way. Things that happen organically. Exactly, yeah, absolutely. That's an entire condition. Are you engaged all in training future trainers and artistic directors and directors in your work as well? Not so much. We certainly have a lot of interest in our academy, often so people come and visit and we're very open to having people come and see how it's run and look at it as a model. I mean, the actual model of the academy was something I spent three months in Spain with a company in Seville called Danza Mobile in 2010. And it was there that I observed they had a five day a week training course and professional performance companies alongside it for their dancers. So it was that model that then we modeled the academy on. So we're in turn very open to coming to visit and really learning sort of more in depth about how it all works. That's good. We are so small. I know, I know. But what I do want to give a little shout out to very quickly to a couple things that are currently happening for theater venture. A few things that are currently happening for theater venture that's really exciting. And one of those things is that we did get a grant from the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council and it's called SEATS. You just mentioned SEATS. And we have mentors who are actors in the Thursday troupe and they come in the Wednesday troupe and they help role model. They help modeling, acting and being friends and buddies and so leaders and leaders. And so those four mentors are being trained to be trainers to other adults with disabilities and we're using theater as the vocabulary, as the context for how we're teaching some of these leadership skills. So we're in the throes of that right now. And so we're going in the state. We have two sites here in Brattleburg. Family's first inclusion center. The Ross went up to Springfield and Bella's Falls, ACRS. And so we'll be working with adults with developmental challenges. So our mentors are learning to be the leaders in that. So it's very exciting. And related to that is a training guide and we called it a training guide. It's not a good name for it, but a book. And it's a book about future venture but it's very practical. And it's a book that we hope with the final chapter to write is now about the SEATS grant. And it's a book that, and it's very specific about not just our history, but how we do what we do. And so the goal is to get this finished this year. And the idea is to send it out to communities. And knowing that their inclusive program won't look like ours. But this is an idea that helped people get started. That's wonderful. We have time for a question or two in the audience. Anybody? I've actually seen the show and I want to say when I first saw it I really couldn't tell who there was no difference in the actors to me between people who were neurodiverse or not. And it was very impressive to see that whole the acting, the story. It's a very compelling show and it was very fun. And I was just so impressed by the quality of your performance with the actors. I was so impressed and I wish this was after so I could talk about it more. But that you put out some challenging attitudinal things about what's going on on stage. And I think that it makes a lot of people uncomfortable like trying to figure out how am I supposed to feel about this. Because it's very challenging. And I'm really curious to hear how other people will respond once they've seen it here. Because it's excellent. And Ben knows I've been a big supporter of theirs since I first saw the show. Thank you. Really quickly, what's next for theater? When can we see you next? Ben and you guys got a little taste of this. The Thursday troupe ten years ago did a show called Raising Our Voices which was a show about them. And it was a great show. We really loved it. But they were telling us they didn't really want to do a show about them. And they want to be in stories. And so we had done ten years of that. Lots of different stories. And so the last three years we did Shakespeare. And we did some pretty exciting Shakespeare. And at the end of last year's season, many of the students said that was great. But can we move on? And so what we came to was Raising Our Voices together. And we're going, it's a totally different show from ten years ago. But it's about them and it's a musical. And the music Ben and your troupe got a taste of. We're beginning stages with it. We're just launching it right now. But some original music and the themes that we got from the students that are important themes in their lives are independence, working, friendship and romance. And so those are the topics that will be approaching and addressing. And we'll have a preview, which every year we have a fashion show. And so that's coming up. And there's fashions of the spring production. November 9th. And so this Raising Our Voices together will be the focus. And give a little preview of what's to come for our spring show in April. And we have a Rack card over there that has a bunch of information about us and our shows and so forth. Thank you to all of you. Really appreciate it. And thanks to you for being here. Really appreciate it. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having us.