 This afternoon is called Podcast People, which I think that's what this is about, the conversation is about. I'm going to introduce our guests here. I'm not going to give you their full bios, you'll be able to see those on the folder.ca website. But just starting here on my left, Chris Tauley from the Play Me podcast. I'm Bailey Johnson and Via Simone Bowen from the Secret Light of Canada. And here Michael Cruz, type of walk. So we're going to dive in. I think I'm just going to keep moving in that order. And we'll play a little snippet from Play Me. Chris is going to start talking over the music. Actually, I'd love to play it in just a second. Okay, you tell me when. You cue me. I'm very good at taking directions. First of all, I have to say just how excited I am to be here. Because I think we're on the cusp of the beginnings, the birth of something pretty spectacular. The idea of digital platforms were really in the early stages in which we're trying to figure it out as we go along. And it's right now really, it feels like just nothing but opportunity and possibilities. And I may be like just bitter in five years time, but right now it feels like this is going to be an incredible transition that we're all witnessing at this point in time. So it's great to just have an opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences. I'm going to talk a little bit about Play Me and what we've learned over the past two years. I'm going to talk a little bit also about the challenges that we've had trying to figure out this new method of delivering theater and performing arts. A little bit of background. I'm a co-artistic director of a theater company called X-Fact. And I work with Laura Mullen. We're both writers and directors. And one thing that we love about theater is the seminal quality. And that city at that time to see it, and once it's done, it's gone. And that's the beauty because it's magic because then it's a communal experience that you're having with a small group of people. But it's also a drawback because you have to be at that city at that time to catch it. And if you're not there, proof it's gone. And maybe it will get a remount but it's difficult to remount shows. So there's not that many opportunities after that. And we also seem to be working very much so in regional silos. I know that there are some cultural warriors. I know Jill at the NAC is one, people who are trying to break down those silos. Magnetic North, what it was and hopefully will be again really did that as well. But those are exceptions. I think in many cases it's really hard for people in Toronto to know about the amazing stuff that's happening in Halifax. And for people in Vancouver to know what's happening in St. John's. And Laura and I have a bit of a background, a bit of work at CDC radio drama back when there was a radio drama department. And we also have an incredible passion for podcasts. And we thought, what if you take all this and sort of mush it together and bash it around? What will you get? And what we ended up with was planning. So I'm wondering if you could justify that little bit of a clip. Absolutely. So what Plainey does, and this is just a little snippet of it, is we take theatre pieces by our partners and we partner with theatre companies all across Canada. And we take the best of the best and we transform them into contemporary audio dramas. We record them in studio with the original actors. And then we podcast them free on a weekly basis. And it gives an opportunity for people to hear some work that's happening across the country. And it also archives it so that it's there forever. We add sound effects, music and foley. So we're mashing up contemporary work with an old art form. And this is from Iceland. And then there's no more shouting. It's quiet. I hide in the bathtub, but it's not a good hiding place because the shower drape is clear plastic. You can see right through the door opens and I think it's the John coming to get me, but no. It's a woman. It's a wife. She walked right past me like she doesn't see me. It's hard to not notice someone sitting inside of the bathtub, but she doesn't. Instead, she pulls up her skirt and pulls down underwear and sits on the toilet in your maize. And then she does some of these things. So we're trying to take contemporary work and fuse it with the old art form of radio drama. So when we started this two years ago, it was very much an experiment. We had a lot of questions. The first question was, would people listen to Canadian theater? And there's a short answer and a long answer. So the short answer is yes. To our surprise, our numbers have been higher than we expected. We've hit about three quarters of a million listens. And the thing that really surprised us was four out of five people who listen are international. And what that tells us is that there's a hunger for Canadian stories, for Canadian playwrights and for Canadian actors. And I think we sometimes forget that when we're in Canada. And what we need is we just need a platform to be able to get it out to a global audience. And I think digital is the answer. Digital is that opportunity to get that out to a global audience. So that's the short answer. So the long answer was nobody listened at first. We had 15 some days. When we first launched, there was a lot of buzz and we had a lot of media. And then it sort of trickled off and we had some days where we had 15 listeners. So we then learned that you really have to do a lot of the hard work, a lot of the grunt work on the ground. So that meant connecting with communities, listening to the audience. So we did Better Angels, which is actually about a guy who needs nanny. But we had a huge spike in people from the Philippines listening. So we went, okay, yeah, we've got to listen. Yes, exactly. So we connected with the Philippine community. And all of a sudden we had people who were traditional theater-going audiences connecting to this theater piece. We also created strategic partnerships. Spiderman show was one of our, well, was one of our first partners. And it gave us an opportunity to connect with an audience. Well, you guys, we also connected with the playwrights Guild of Canada. And that gave us a chance to partner with writers. And that also gave us an opportunity to write and put together contracts. Because that's another thing that we just didn't think about, which is this is new. So there are no collective agreements. There are no people, everybody's trying to figure this out. So how does that deal with rights? How do you deal with just fees? How do you deal with the global reach of podcasting? So we spent about nine months working out an agreement with Aptra. And to their credit, Aptra was, they worked hard to make this work. They were very careful to protect the interests of their performers and their members. But they also made sure that we could figure something out to make it work. We also worked with the playwrights Guild. I'm actually on the board of the playwrights Guild. So we were able to work something out. And from that came a new digital contract for playwrights for podcasting. And right now there are no contracts and no collective agreements around the world that deal with this. And Canada's the first. And the playwrights Guild is using this and spreading this out around the world as a template for other countries and sister organizations to use that. So eventually this contract could be used around the world and it will be a Canadian initiative through the playwrights Guild. Chris, I'm going to jump in here. Sure, yes. Because I already have so many questions. Sure, yeah. But I want to introduce these folks over here and then we'll circle back. Absolutely. Especially this contracting business. Okay. That's cool, though. Yeah, absolutely. That's really great. I wonder how that's going to affect us. So my name is Kayla Johnson. I am originally from Six Nations Reserve, which is in Southern Ontario, about an hour and a half outside of Toronto. I'm Mulfunken Tuscarora. So that makes me cool to show you. So welcome to my land. It's really nice to be out looking at this body of water, which is a pretty important body of water to my people. One of our early stories is about a man called a peacemaker who took a stone canoe across the water and went into upstate New York to unify the five nations, which eventually became the six nations who are my people. So this is really lovely. It's really nice to be able to look at this body of water while we sit here. I am half of The Secret Life of Canada, which is a podcast, but prior to podcasting, I was a theatre nerd. Still am a theatre nerd. I went to George Brown Theatre School, graduated in 2005. I was an actor for a little while and then sort of transitioned into put more playwriting. And that's primarily what I do now. I started doing some directing in this last year. I just finished directing my third show this year, which all three were my own writing, which I don't recommend doing. It makes you feel weird about yourself. But now I am really focused on developing and working on this podcast with Lulia. We've been doing it for almost a year now, so I feel like we're still relatively new at it. And we started, feel free to jump in at any time. I know it's because we're partners, so we don't know exactly how we should talk when. I like hearing your voice. I think we started in, the idea happened in March of last year. And then we launched the podcast in September of 2017. And I'm also a playwright and all that, too. My name's Lulia. And the podcast started because we would meet. We both work on plays that deal with a lot of historical moments and history. And so we would meet every now and then and talk about, like, oh my God, I was doing research for this thing. But I found out, like, did you know that this stuff happened here? Or, you know, we would, our sin existed. Yeah, this person's connected to this person. So we'd have a lot of really nerdy playwrighting conversations. And then last year was Canada 150. And so we had a lot of discussions about, like, did you hear this guy funded for this thing? And it's by all, you know, white people. And they're doing an Indigenous show. You know, like, it felt weird. It felt that the stories being told through Canada 150 were the same stories that we've heard over and over and over. War of 1812 and Johnny McDonald did this thing. And, you know, those types of stories, and while those are part of our history, obviously it's not the full story. So we, you know, kind of thought, why don't we try and do a podcast? It will be immediate. We're very used to playwriting where, you know, it's like a five-year development. And then 60 people come and they're all your relatives and you know, all of them are 50% of the house. And so we decided we went to a, so we were like, we're going to do this podcast, but then we realized we don't know anything about podcast. Yeah, after we looked at each other, we were like, I have no idea. We are, I mean, mostly digitally enact when it comes to editing. And so we went to a two-hour workshop for, it was specifically for women and people of color that was hosted by Katie Jensen. And she's a producer. She's worked on every, mostly all of the podcasts in Canada. And so she gave us this workshop and the end of the workshop was to produce like a 30-second trailer on your show. And we knew the name of it. We knew, we even have the episodes plotted out. So we did this short little thing. And she called us, or she emailed us two days later and said, would you mind if I produce this podcast? And we're like, after you, please produce this podcast. I don't have to learn anything. So we recorded the first episode and the first episode is on BAM. And we decided the first season was going to be on places kind of tourist destinations. We were effectively trying to ruin tourist spots in Canada or reframe those spaces so that while you're looking out at your, you know, beautiful lake from your content. Your content. Your content. Your privilege. Essentially. But also, you know, not to totally make people feel like shit about themselves for having that space, but you know, giving the, our mandate was sort of just understand the space that you're in and know all of those things about the history so that while you're enjoying those things you're aware of the land that you're on and the history that you're standing on. Yeah. And so we, Katie told us, you know, the first episode, usually a Canadian podcast and indeed Canadian podcast, it's going to get like, you know, maybe 2,000 listeners. That would, we were like 2,000 listeners. That would be amazing. That would be more than anyone's ever seen in our works. She said, but it might be even like 100 people are going to listen to it. So we did the BAMF episode. We put it out. We put it out over the, it was a labor day. And we watched it, like get on the iTunes chart and we're like, ooh, it's number two. Like that was huge for us. And then it went up and up and up and up and it went to like number two. We didn't beat out, this American one. No, no, no, no. No Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan. And that episode had, like I think half a million people listen to that episode. So we were like, hey, so, it was weird. It was really weird and it gave us major pause. But we were emboldened to go forward and tell these stories. So we do have a clip. One of the clips that we have is an episode we just did that we said we weren't going to do we said, we're going to do untold and undertold stories. But we, you know, as we tell these stories, the same names, Samuel de Champlain, John and Donald, these guys keep cropping up because they're part of history. So we wanted to look at the most popular statues in Canada and kind of deconstruct those figures and really talk about the good and the bad. But it's hard history. The thing about our podcast is we deal with really difficult, traumatic experiences. And so one of the things that we try to do is we subvert the history, but we also want to frame it in a palatable way so that people can get through it and really hear it. And it's also for us to get through it because we find it hard. So this is the way that we're framing the statues episode. Each person's history and then decide if they, so we will have an all-indigenous jury decide just like the Canadian justice system. No, not necessarily. We are going to take a look at a bunch of people who have monuments and we'll look at the good and the bad of each person's history and then decide if they should still get their honor. To be fair, I've modeled this proceeding after the Canadian justice system. So we will have an all-indigenous jury decide just like the Canadian justice system if these folks' honors and accolades are warranted. If that jury is hung, meaning I can't decide, just like the Canadian justice system, exactly like the Canadian justice system, a black female judge will help decide. Yes, Phelan, you will be the all-in. Yeah, so Phelan was the all-indigenous jury and I was the black lady judge. So that's how we frame that because the, especially Johnny McDonald's history is so difficult and it took us, it was really hard to do the research and tried to disseminate that information without re-traumatizing the people that were perpetrated against, right? So that's how we try to do it as gently as possible but without pulling punches, which is hard. So that's our podcast. Michael. Yes, so I am probably the only amateur here on the panel. I use that term because I'm not, this was a community project for me. And the stories I was concerned about were the stories of theater history, specifically told through the histories of design in Canada. This started for me, I had the fortune of being heralded until then in 2008 in Toronto. There are a number of theater awards. There are several heroities here. So actually, and it occurred to me, these are the alternative theater awards that started in 94 and they're different than regular awards. They were handed down from person to person each year. So they weren't necessarily for us specific work. They're for a body of work and they're for everyone who sort of gets the award has a connection to the person who got held over the year before. And it struck me, which is probably obvious to everyone, this was that these lineages were not just a different way of honoring each other for the work that we do in the community, but they told the story about Canadian theater history. And I thought while I was working in a completely different job than theaters, I left the business basically in 2004 that this would be a great book on the history of theater in at least Toronto, with a very specific focus of the second wave of kind of alternative theater in the late 80s and early 90s. The same way that sort of started the fringe festival and some of the works and rhubarb with buddies and sort of new fire under different ways to tell stories. I'm not a writer and that proved to be something that I couldn't wrangle, mostly because there are, at that point in time, a huge matrix of people that were involved in the heralds and pinning each one down to sort of figure of their own histories was something that was beyond me. So this kind of started to be this idea that we're losing history. And it was actually the unfortunate early death of Gina Wilkinson, right? And she was quite young when she passed and it struck me that we're losing our history. And because the theater community in Canada is fairly small, I think that the work we produce kind of hits above our weight class, certainly. But it's almost not considered important enough to collect the smaller stories. And we tell the stories to each other orally and these can get lost. And when people start to die, we're gonna lose important history. And more specifically for me, because I was a lighting designer for 10 years, design history was one that was almost never recorded. And talking about the ephemeral nature of theater, at least after a play is produced, if you're lucky enough, it gets published and other people will reinterpret that work and do it again. And that kind of history, this isn't better than the company, but design work really is ephemeral. You can see it in the dumpster in the back at the end of the production. And when you talk about sound or lighting or projections, that stuff is lost for good. And production stills and production videos don't really capture the moment. And so I thought it was important because I had the opportunity to have some spare time and a willingness to start to capture these stories. And what is great about the digital age is that any idiot can have a podcast. And you can bare minimum, record something in your phone and post it on to some sort of free website. It won't necessarily be consumable because it has a high quality audio that people want to listen to. So I had made equipment to sort of make an initial investment in small audio equipment and I enjoyed the sort of technology of that. To sort of make sure that people knew was listenable. I knew that if I listened to something that had a horrible audio, I just turned it off no matter how compelling it was. So I was focused on that. And then obviously exploiting my network to give them the opportunity to tell their stories and encourage them that it was actually important for us to tell their stories. I know one of the sort of resounding themes and getting people on the show is to reassure them that their history is important and that people want to hear it. There's a couple of designers that I've been trying to convince them for several years and they're like, no, no one cares. But you're like the top designer. People want to know your story and they don't want to tell it. And you can't really force people but at least I can encourage people and take it to tell their stories. And I think that people have responded to it. I was talking to Chris earlier about sort of the way that I work and I'm more or less a one person show. Lindsay Ann Black. I was a former props person, designer, who now lives in Stratford, manages my social media for me. I've been able to do that because I can't. There's just, that's just a bridge too far from me and the break is the guy with other things that I do. So by interviewing people, editing the show, getting it to the web and the analysis sort of me and that sort of goes to the ease with which this can be done. Obviously the most important thing is to have a compelling show. I got about 2,000 subscribers a month which accounts for mostly most of technicians and backstage people and designers and now building audience of directors and scholars as well. Not a very big, but I think from what I can tell, because I don't do a lot of audience in polling, that they value it and it's been growing certainly because of the social media work that Lindsay's been doing to promote the show. But also because I managed to continue doing it over the last now four years. So the show basically is an interview show. I didn't bring audio clip because it's very straightforward. We have a discussion from sort of beginning of career to the current point. I've certainly found a way, I certainly have a pattern now where we go through the early history and sort of pick out the things that they, the designer feels is important and then talking about the design philosophy and ultimately training too. The audience I see for the show is talking to the the studio, the young studio artists for the young university, currently enrolled in the university, learning theater or the theater student. And that's what we're talking to on the show. The audience is beyond that I think, but that's, I think that that goal is really important to me. I wanted to mention a couple things. In the Martha Mann interview that I did, Martha Mann is now a retired designer who came up through the 50s and 60s, worked at CBC and did a lot of upright television and other theater. What was very important in that interview was the identification that Canadian theater is rooted in community theater. That Canadian theater, the modern theater that we know that came out of things at the Sears Drama Festival and the UC players in Toronto and the Alumni Theater. And those were community projects. They fostered a lot of the playwrights and other big ones that we know from the beginning of modern sort of Canadian theater, but they were an amateur process. And my fear in producing this show for the last four years is that we've got a lot of good things about that. We share, we still hold on to a lot of kind of amateur things from that as well. And I've been trying to sort of get to the roots of those things in the podcast and in the interviews. And I think that that's something that we don't maybe talk about openly enough. The show can become a bit pessimistic at times. People talk about the economics of theater and how do you build a career in theater. And I think that's also important for people who want to enter the business to sort of come in with their eyes wide open. And we've been, at the same time, trying to capture what the artists love about their job as well. And I think that I've accomplished that. Again, I toil the way, much like I did as a letting desire, I toil the way of my little office making these things and then I put them out there and hope that someone listens to them. It's much the same experience as a designer sort of interacting people sort of talking a little bit and then going back and making a thing and then going, is that okay? And so it seems like the same experience. I wish I could build an audience in the Philippines. That sounds like a big argument I should be thinking about. I suspect it's not going to be the same thing. So that's basically the show. We've also, I've also started producing the Bellos, which is a local Toronto round table that meets once a month, probably eight months of the year, talk about production and focus things. And that really is just a, again, attempt to build community and to connect people and not rally people to silos. For example, I learned a few weeks ago that there are at least five or six designers that work out of the Yukon quite regularly. I had no idea that there was a theater community that is going strong up and why didn't I know that? I know there's a touring house up there, but that's about all I knew. So I think that hopefully in the future I'll be able to sort of start picking up those communities and then tying everyone together so we can all understand how it is a large and united community across Canada. So that's basically how I guess I'll move forward in more discussions. Thanks, Michael. Thanks to everybody for being here and for giving us an introduction to your work. Unbeknownst to you, I've given our participants here a secret task which was to think of questions to ask of each other. So who wants to jump in? I did it too, but I'm looking to you for it. You collected me. You started talking, so it's you. I know, right? I guess. I'll give you a moment to think if you want. No, this is, I don't know if it's any good or not though. So if it's not just, you know. It's just gonna be live streams of them, right? Yeah, I don't know if I'm gonna make it to the end. For me, I guess because I never, you know, the podcasting came pretty quickly. For me, I have loved them since I discovered them, haven't listened to them for years, had always been sort of interested in it, but just assumed that it would never be a path that I went down with, then I ended up in that path. But I'm curious for everyone here, how do you find that theater plays into your podcast work? What are your skills you have from theater or have from theater? Did they feed into what you make or how do they feed into what you make? Chris? No, that's great. I think it all comes down to storytelling and one thing that surprised me is if the script is really good, if the dialogue's really good, you don't really have to change anything. Occasionally we have to substitute the word, why did you pick that up with why did you pick up the night verb? So that's a little over dramatic, but they're very, very rare. So I think it's storytelling and if it's a really good story, it will translate and you can shift it into different dialogues. I agree, I think I found it early. I'm not a trained journalist or interviewer, but you get a sense when you're talking to somebody where the story is going and that there is an arc in when there's a rest and when now is the time where we transition and that is something that occurred maybe about four or five interviews in and I kind of realized what the structure was because I really just made it up because I went along and the other thing I think that was really kind of important is that even though we all have our own personal stories that we think are very individualistic or very mundane because they happen to us, of course that happens, but everybody's story is interesting and it almost doesn't matter, it almost doesn't matter what the subject matter is. The, we all have, you know, turning points and twists in our life and decisions we made and crises and how we face them is universal in many ways, right? So it became easier after I realized that like this is just another story that I'm telling and that I'm here to sort of encourage them to tell me what they think of the world and as long as I remain curious and everything's gonna be okay, you sort of let yourself go into the story and what is really funny is that I don't edit the podcast down, I don't, I had, that's not entirely true. Jim Plaxton's interview kind of went in many different directions. He's a great guy, but we had to be very kind of tangential conversations so I had to sort of like think about the story and move things around, but most of the time I don't edit very much at all, I edit from space maybe. I just let it go for the whole, every single time though, two hours is about as much as we can talk about a story, but someone's life and it was really interesting to sort of discover that. So you're a podcaster on average two hours long? Or two hours long. And people listen to them in chunks? I used to chunk them in hours, like I used to go, the first six episodes are one interview that's chunked in two, but first of all that's twice the work. And I got things to do. And people I discovered were more, like one hour in itself is even too long so people were chunking that up into different listening things. So I just thought I'm just gonna do the whole interview and they will listen to it over a series of weeks or days and I'll let them interact with the story as they will. What's more important to me is to capture the entire story and not just edit it down into a compelling 15 minutes because it's a historical artifact, it is important. I have a question. It's actually about Secret Life of Canada. Well, one thing I have to say, I listened to that episode last night and listened to the trial of Johnny McDonald and then walking down to here and walk by the statue of Johnny McDonald and it gave me a whole new perspective. And I think the thing that's so refreshing is you're hearing an indigenous perspective, you're hearing a person, color's perspective. You don't hear that a lot in podcasts. Even though the audience is young, the audience is more diverse, you're not hearing that. So I guess the question for you two is what changes need to be done so that there are more perspectives out there? Well, I definitely think one of the reasons I thought, I think do a podcast is because we only started really listening to podcasts in 2016 during the election. So I was like, what is happening in the States? And then when that got too much, I was listening to all these politics podcasts. I stopped and I just started doing deep dives and I discovered this huge array of black voices doing podcasts and black podcasts for black people. They were not for white audiences, even though a lot of white people listened to them. I just found it fascinating, you don't hear that in Canada a lot of just a story for the people, your stories for your people kind of thing. And so that was definitely one of the reasons that we wanted to do this podcast and reframe history from our lens. I think what needs to change for more people is just, it's a cycle, it's more of us doing this and more people of color going, oh, I can't do that because that's the reason I thought I could do it because I listened to the read and I listened to the not and I listened to all of these podcasts where I was like, these are just brown people, black people doing this. And it's not, it is not a huge, there are access issues in podcasting but I believe they're not as big as they are in theater. They're not as big in a lot of art forms where access means usually you have to have some sort of training and there is a lot of structural barriers that prevent people from being able to fully participate. So I think that's a great thing about podcasting is you're right, you just need your iPhone and you need a laptop to go to the library. Toronto Library has podcasting equipment and sessions so it is accessible in that way. Yeah, I think mentorship, access to resources to be able to do it. I know that there would be some kids and seeing young people on my reserve who would love to do it if they felt like they would. But I feel like it's still such a new form that a lot of people still don't understand how it works exactly. Like I know kids on my reserve who DJ on Seafare's E-Boys of the Grand. And so I know that there is some interest in the form of storytelling in an audio format but I don't think that they know that they can yet. So I think things like Ryan McMahon does workshops and things like that in community and I think those kinds of things are those seeds that specifically for indigenous people will help to create that. I mean it's always going to be a challenge when you're looking, when you're on a reserve where the internet is good in some spots, maybe if you're lucky, terrible in other spots in some places don't have it at all. So then how do we get those stories out? But I think once we do it's really going to change the way that, hopefully, the way that we view this place called Canada because we're not hearing those stories enough unless really well-meaning journalist travels up and hangs out for two weeks and then leaves. I have a question about economics. I don't need, I have a small revenue stream but it's, you know, supports it kind of. There's a core few lovely people who support our Patreon, who are mostly my friends. But how do you, did you guys find the resources to actually produce this? This is obviously taking a significant part of your time and we're talking about producing like a radio drama. A lot of resources to see the time and actors and the context and much of the evidence. How did you, I mean, how do you meet those needs? Thank you. For us it's a combination of, we've been very, very blessed, we've had funding from all three levels of government for, and I think it's an easier sell because you're saying, look, we're taking theater, established theater, transforming it into this new platform. And also we have operated funds as a company so we're able to put it towards that. But it's a challenge because that's not gonna last forever. So how are you going to be able to create revenue? And that's the big question for us. Like how are we able to bring enough money in to not only keep this going but grow it? And that's one thing we've just recently received, one of the Canada Council digital grants. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go through and test a whole bunch of things, a whole bunch of options for revenue and then record that information and then put it together in something that we can share to the sector. So that's the big thing. How do you, how can you bring cash? I'd love to hear how you guys are able to. It's been an interesting roller coaster. So really briefly we were really lucky that we, our first three, well first four, fourish episodes were sponsored by Passport 2017, which was a Canada 150 initiative run by a media company called St. Joseph Media. And so they were just trying to push out content, Canada 150 content. They wanted our producer, Katie, to do a history podcast at 22nd, like old-timey, like radio, like well, the war's over. Okay. Old timey white guy stuff. Yeah. And so she pitched this idea to them and they were like, oh, okay, we'll do that. So we were funded through them. I mean, it was small, it wasn't a lot, but it helped and then they offered us to do more episodes, but they unfortunately didn't wanna really pay us anymore and they wanted to really restrict, start restricting the content and let's push it over. You know, like that whole conversation started to happen. So we decided, look, money's nice, but we have to, the core of this podcast is this thing and we can't compromise on this thing. And then so since then we've been supported basically through our patrons on Patreon. We have had offers from media companies, but the interesting thing about Katie Media right now that we're learning through a year of doing this is they're also behind on podcasting. So they're like, we would love a podcast. So we say, great, we would love to work with you. And they say, we don't have any money to pay you, but we can really promote you through all these, and these are like big companies with money, or at least we thought they had money. So that's been interesting to see because I feel like in a lot of places that you think are money for podcasting, they're actually quite behind in trying to catch up and they don't have the contracts in place and they're like, well, just sign this contract that we get to journalists, that says we own everything for all time. And we're like, you can't own, I'm just like. So it's been interesting. So we are supported through Patreon right now, and yeah, see a question here. Yeah, I was just, you know, you get half a million, listen, what does that look? I mean, just pure dollars and cents. So the thing is, is that in, here's the thing, the podcasting phenomenon or the structure right now is a U.S. structure. And a U.S. podcast that is doing pretty well gets two million, three million, five million for episode. So when Canadian media, a lot of the media that we've been talking to says, well, we're gonna try and put it into the U.S. structure, see what they say. I'm trying to be very nebulous and not know names. And like see if we can get you sponsorship and see if we can get someone to, you know, to buy an ad. And then they say, oh, well, we've pushed it out, but you're gonna need five million listeners, perhaps. Yeah, sorry, me and these is just not on board. Five million listeners. Yeah, we say, you know, but it's Canada, like we don't have the population. So. But there's a strong arming of getting your content for exposure while they sort of hold the carrot in the distance. So I think the biggest thing that we've learned from doing this is you need to read contracts so very carefully. You need to put your own language in. And I mean, we are also both producers and I produced for about 10 years. And really for that time, I thought producing, I was like, why am I doing, why am I doing this? I don't always say that to myself. And it has been my greatest asset because I can read a contract and I know. And they don't think we know. They don't think we know because we're us, right? So I think for a lot of artists, there are a lot of artists right now that are getting taken advantage in this new digital age because it's content, content, content. You assign a thing and they have it, they have you forever in that way. So you have to be really careful. So I don't know what the answer is to have a million listeners. It means a lot to us. And it, yeah, it means a lot to us. And it means that that story is out there in the world in a way that it wasn't before and it still kind of shocks me that people don't know at least some of those things in the community about that. I mean, I'm just grateful that that's getting out there into the world. So I guess it's worth all the good feelings. So you don't want to sell products? No. Yeah, I need to match his back. Yeah, I mean, it's also about like in terms of selling, it's also we are three people, two people writing a podcast and then you really need a person, another person to do that. Like we are trying, but you know, it's just like theater, right? It's like we only have as many people to do this thing. And then you just get used to doing everything and you really have to do it for the good. I have a question here. I have a question. I say, I mean, mostly I work in marketing, actually, really. So of course I'm always interested in, okay, here's a direct question, two questions. Direct question is, do you feel comfortable saying how much you actually bring in from Patreon? Do you? Not really. I leave it up to her. That's me. And then the second question, just because also it's being live streamed. So I don't, for people who are trying to advertise, then we are fair enough. This is called internet. And then the second question, this is for you. Thinking about your audiences, I'm kind of curious, not knowing enough about the power of the equipment you use or the data that you can harness. So you know, you get a certain amount of data that you can look at it. Like here's our listeners from all over the world or wherever, more local perhaps. Do you, how often do you look at that? Do you decide to inform your progression of story? And like it might be when you were talking about your initial story there. And in that question too is, I guess the question is, how much do you listen to your audience as well? Under the cap of your topic and your, I'm kind of curious for anybody. Yeah, we listen. We get a huge amount of response after episodes and we get a lot of emails and a lot of suggestions. And what we very quickly, we're kind of horrified to learn. And then we went, okay, well, we need to talk about that, is how many kids, teachers play this in classrooms like junior high, high school, university. Oh, we're using, we met someone who said, I use this to, she homeschools her child and she uses it as curriculum. Like for her to explore. So that was a bit, it was great. Yeah, no pressure. So we have changed a bit in that the first couple of episodes, I think we swore a little more and we've tried to, nothing else is changed, but we've tried to stop swearing. You guys just mean it. Yeah, cause I thought, well if the teachers would say, oh, we listened up until this part and then skipped over this part. We were releasing bleeped ones too and there were swears sometimes. Yeah, for the episode on slavery I swore a lot. And so we did, we released a bleeped version of that episode. Cause I was like, oh, I want the kids to hear it. You know, yeah. So we do, that's how we respond to it. Okay, can I jump in here? Cause Chris, I'm curious how listenership might change, how do you program it? Yeah. How do you choose? I think the stats are like crack. It's really dangerous. Cause you just keep wanting to re-embrace and see. Control yourself more because it's more to life. Oh, like your family. Yeah, but yeah, you can get a lot of information. You can't actually get stats like demographics, et cetera, from the audio file. But what we do is we have a listen page. And I think that skew is a little bit older because you would access it through browse or whereas I think people would listen on Spotify or a little bit younger. But it gives you sort of a rough picture. You can see, you can get a lot of data and a lot of information. So you can get things like the percentage of women versus men who are listening. You can get interest. And of course you get geographical. And you can actually tone, like you can dive down into what part of Ontario is listening. So we take that in and it does impact our programming. And also what we try to do is we try to go, okay, this is going to get a big audience. This one is not going to, but it's an important piece and it needs to go out. So then we will also take that into account on how we program it and how we put it in the stream. So hopefully the bigger number one will be. I don't, I am using Squarespace as a platform to distribute. And unfortunately with the, there may be a paid version that I don't subscribe to but the stats I get are very general. And I basically look at RSS feeds. Like who's subscribing every month? And then combine that with some of the smaller, couple hundred people who actually access it through the web, to the page. But I don't, I mean I like to see that go up, but it's a very niche podcast, right? So I don't get a lot of feedback, which means two things. I mean, one, people don't hate it. I think I would get like, what the heck are you doing? And I've gone on some rants because I've been gripped by maybe things that have happened in the business. And just because, you know, it's my show and I'm the only person doing it. So this is the thing that's important for me. And like no one has written me any hate mail. So I think that's good. I do occasionally get some good feedback from educators who have used it and assigned it. And it's being used I think as a resource for, you know, people who are studying design. I know that Dave DeGro, who's now doing his doctorate at U of T has used the Jim Blackston 3040s thesis. Guess it's, there's no data. Like what happened past my 80s? No one knows. People who do know, probably don't remember. It's all a big hate, I think. So when you see them remember, you know, how the space was configured, which is important to like a few people, but is interesting to those who want to know how they mail those decisions, that weird space, that you can go to the podcast and find out. And that's, and so he's used it there, but I don't pay attention to, I remember the audience, like I considered the audience in every single interview because I'm talking to people who have a certain depth of knowledge and who have a certain interest and it's not a broad audience, I should say. So I keep in mind that, but I don't look at, I look at the stats for my own kind of, you know, verification. And I mean, I can't think of good enough things about Lindsay and Black. Like I was at 600 people every month and then I hired her and now we're 2,000 every month. So even just that little bump of social media has helped, but it is a very niche podcast, so I don't want to get the granularity of that. Nor do I need to, because I'm not selling anything on it or farming it out of town. It's not my goal. It's not my goal. Yes. Just one other question I had in my head as a theater artist is I'm sort of starting to dabble live streaming and broadcasting myself is, you know, how much is this sort of current obsession with going digital, just a big audience development exercise as opposed to a true artistic meditation on why we exist, which let's all be honest. We all exist as performing artists to have interactions in a public space. I'd love to hear your thoughts because it's like I'm agonizing over it and I feel like I've come to this festival to share this question with all of you, panelists and audience alike. Like why are we really doing this? Are we super insecure that we're just not accessible enough and we got to get our stuff out of the market and then we put stuff out of the market that just sounds like a radio play as opposed to a podcast because we just want to be online. Like how are you answering that question for yourselves about why you're doing it? I'd love to answer that. We really have one goal and that is to get bums and seeds for theaters and that's how we see, that's what we see on purpose. And it's audible. It absolutely is, yeah. And also I think, because theater and what I love about theater is as a sector we know that our audience is getting older and our audience is predominantly white and we need to refresh. And I think podcasting is a brilliant way of being able to do that because the audience is young, it's more diverse and also we can easily get sort of sucked into this little world where we're just putting on shows for each other and we have to start to put on shows for people outside. So ultimately, why are we doing Play Me? It's to try and build the future. Are you concerned about when that audience you might be looking for a podcast discovers a play that's been recorded? That it's also gonna re-confirm like, oh, I'm not into theaters, it's so not, do you know anything like that? That's my other concern is that sometimes we can just re-confirm people's perceptions because also it's not being experienced live so we're not getting that direct thing. I think that perception can be perceived by more than a live show. Like there can really control how people perceive art essentially, right? Yeah. I mean, I think for our podcast, we just really want these stories to get out there. It's not necessarily connected to, I mean it is our art, but I don't feel like it's connected in that way. I really just want people to know these stories, to know these people's names to walk down the street and see that John A. McDonald statue and go, you know? There is also something in the fact that we are these amateur historians who do a podcast but we're playwrights and everything is always framed as playwrights so that comes up a lot in the podcast like a theater thing that we've worked on or a directing thing or a show. Like it's interwoven into it so it's almost like, yes we're doing this podcast but this is who we are. Like we are playwrights who are doing this podcast. So it's normalizing theater in some way, you know? We walk among you. But in a way, you know, because I think, I don't know, I think probably all of us in the room at some point have presented what we chose to do with our life because it's so hard and it takes so much work and so much heart and then sometimes no one becomes. So I think in a way, you know, we talk about being playwrights or artists and that feeds into it. And I think it just has to feel right for you. If it does not feel authentic for you to put it online or do a podcast, then don't. Don't do it. I think people will feel that. I think the reason our podcast is successful is because we have a lot of passion for it and we feel really deeply about the stories. But if we didn't, I don't think it would be the same. Yeah, you cry like every time. And not on air, I cry my own time in front of Ellen and they send it to them. I think that's why I'm doing it live, like doing live recordings and getting a live audience for your podcast. Yeah, we want to. It's definitely, it's something that Leah's really been done, of course, since we started a live show. So there are some ideas picking around. It's really funny that you mentioned that because our next session is with Michael Wheeler and Jesse Brown. We're going to talk about Canada Land, the podcast, and how that's translated to being a live show. So stick around. I'm not wrapping this up quite yet, but that is a consideration, like how does it translate? How does it change? Can I just add one thing to your question? And that is we kind of see it, we talked earlier the session before about disruption. We see things potentially shifting more towards the music bottle, where music is available for free, but the artists make their living through the concerts, through the live events. And we kind of think that maybe theater can shift in that way. You get an opportunity to listen if you've never heard of Hannah Moskovich, and then suddenly you get a chance to listen to Bunny. And then maybe the next time her show comes along, you're going to be willing to take that leap to move your house, to buy a ticket, to go and. A gateway drug. Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah. I'd like to throw in just an audience member for all these podcasts, too. And towards this question about how the forms work and interact, I feel like there is, like as an avid podcast listener, and then also watching emerging forms, like at least in Toronto, there's a rise in storytelling becoming more of a craft that's getting the respect and that kind of thing. And there's this like, for me, there seems to be a shift in intimacy of performance that happens with podcast. Maybe it's the closeness. Donna was talking a little bit about that with the microphone, too, in studio. So that intrigues me as the potential that maybe there's some kind of practice happening there. And I will say absolutely to the point, like Quiver, the podcast episode of Quiver, listening to that, I actually didn't know that much about the play, I knew a lot of it. But then listening to the podcast and realizing that Anna does this as a solo show, because there was already a performative question, meant that I was so much more attracted to see that play. I heard the play, I heard the story, I could understand how it was created in the studio, but to see somebody actually bring this into a live medium and to perform all these different characters and personas through like modification. It was like, this is a cyborg play I need to see in a sense, right? And so that becomes a really attractive thing to me in gaining a familiarity with it. So, it's cool to put out. Can I also mention as well that even though the idea is that you guys are looking for a broad audience for these stories, that there is something to be said for looking for your own audience. And especially if it's something that's very niche, you may not be able to build an audience live in Kingston or in Ottawa or in Toronto or Halifax, but you can build one online and still be successful. Now, I'm not a model for making money out of this kind of prospect, but it doesn't mean someone else can monetize it. So, I think audience building aside, I think that the idea that you could take this form and make it its own thing. And I think that theatre people are probably equipped to do that really well and tell a very specific podcast or kind of all medium story well. So, embracing that kind of brave new world of aspect that it was probably equally as well. I think we're willing to question who invents the story more than we have in a hundred years, right? We're in a time of multiple perspectives. We're in a time of reevaluating the story we've been sleepily following along as just the way things are. And I'm speaking with dressed in my skin. But I'm saying that the beautiful opportunity is that we do celebrate while we're looking for collective narratives. We're ennobling individual narratives. And that's how we're shopping. And so, the artist in the, whether it's in the theatre or through song or even visual arts, is always questioning what is personal and collective about me and shops it in their community. And the podcast is kind of like a perfect, very accessible platform for shopping your personal collective experience with the community. And it's beautiful to hear everything you guys are all doing. So, thanks. It does strike me that the flip side of that is that we're further apart from our own little cavities of agro. So, I'm divided in my long piece. I'm like to be able to make your story universal and still make it personal, I think, is the, you know, the role that you have. I don't know how to do that, but I'm hoping that I still continue to do that work. And there's a ping-pong effect, right? We bounce, we bounce, we bounce from one place to the other and bounce back. And I'm gonna bounce down to the clock now and see that I'm gonna bring this conversation to a close up here in this format, but the conversation can continue amongst you. We have, I'm waiting with bated breath on slack. For the moment when I get the, I've got Jesse in the car at the train station message. So, we're gonna start our next conversation about 15 minutes with Jesse and Michael. But before we do that, I want to give a big thank you here to... There's a really nice cafe next door if you want to grab a coffee or a muffin, because we're not at lunch until one. So, if you're a bit peckish, just rate down there. And if not, we definitely are gonna start at 12.15 because we're gonna put Jesse back on a train at 1.40, so everything's very close. And if you haven't already, please reserve a spot for good things to do there. Yeah, thanks everyone. Thank you.