Series Two, Episode One - Sophie Stone

Series Two, Episode One - Sophie Stone 

Theme Music

LAURA: Hello, it’s Laura here from the GEMA Collective. After a nice hiatus, we are back with the second season of our podcast and are extremely excited that our first episode is with the wonderful actor Sophie Stone. Georgia and I spoke to Sophie at The Globe where she was performing in the critically acclaimed ‘Emilia’ and had a fascinating and inspiring conversation about representation, equality and her experiences as a deaf actor in the industry.

We’ve also introduced and exciting new promotional feature this series, where we’ll be bringing in artists from female led and gender equal companies in theatre and film to advertise their work – so keep an ear out for that at the halfway point, and I hope you enjoy the episode!

Theme Music

GEORGIA: So we’re here with actress Sophie Stone, you’re working on ‘Emilia’ at the moment at The Globe, how’s that been?

SOPHIE: Yeah, yeah, it’s been amazing. Just a group of women in all areas of the artistic side, creative team, um, and it’s a story that has been very empowering for everybody who’s either come to see it or [been] a part of it. So, it’s sort of inspired me to do a lot of other things outside of the show, and believe in my abilities a little bit more. I think that’s true of quite a few other people within the creative team as well.

GEORGIA: Amazing.

LAURA: Wow, and just for people who are listening who might not know, could you give us a bit of info about what the show is about?

SOPHIE: Yeah, the show is about Emilia who we believe is the ‘dark lady’ that’s mentioned in Shakespeare’s sonnets. So he talks about being in love with this woman, and how beautiful she is. But also some of the characters, maybe Emilia in ‘Othello’, some of the things that were said might echo conversations that might have been had back then. There’s no real evidence of it but the clues sort of sew together enough to form this interesting backdrop to this mysterious woman. But she, herself, was an amazing poet, but was never allowed to have a platform or never allowed to speak or have her voice heard, so she did this underground, sort of ‘riot girl’, ‘fanzine’ type movement of pamphlets and tried to encourage groups of women to retaliate against the patriarchy and take back ownership of their place in the world, and their right to write. It seems a really good time to tell this story, so it’s about all of the voices that have been shunned or burned or, you know, not appreciated and listened to. So I think all the women in the audience feel this and they understand it, and the see themselves in that. And a lot of the men sort of recognising their own part in that and the oppression that has been on going – and what they can do to change it. So it’s quite uplifting, but also a rally cry for a group of oppressed women.

LAURA: And could you tell us a bit about the character you’re playing?

SOPHIE: Er, I play seven characters.

Laughter

GEORGIA: Just do a quick run through… (laughs)

SOPHIE: Yeah, and a lot of genders as well, um, so I’m a priest, and a drunken man, and I…. who am I? I’m a washer woman! Um, I’m…. I’ve forgotten half my characters! No, I’m a muse – but my main character is Lady Margaret Clifford, who historically was a big part of that movement of… feminism, I suppose. She was very wealthy and her husband prevented her and her daughter from keeping their money through a will, so she’s fought and fought and fought all of her life and then passed on the fight to her daughter who carried it on in order to get the money that was rightfully theirs back. Her character is so witty, and strong… um, and such an interesting character. And her fight throughout her life has been told in many stories and plays throughout the years, and she’s very much a real character, so I wanted to play her as close to her reality as possible, so she’s not a deaf character. So [it’s] interesting to be able to play non-deaf characters on stage, ‘cause normally you get given roles that are only allocated to what you can do with your hands or how deaf you can sound, or what’s your storyline as a deaf character? I don’t always want to play those characters, you know? I want to play a range of characters, and now I’ve got that, I’m knackered!

Laughter

SOPHIE: Twelve quick changes! It’s chaos backstage, it’s absolutely bonkers.

GEORGIA: So, let’s just rewind back, um, can you give us a background of where your from and just your journey towards drama training?

SOPHIE: It’s quite a long story really, but I’ll try to make it short. I was born in London, East London, um, and I didn’t speak until I was seven – which apparently, I’ve spoken to Mark Rylance ‘cause he’s in the building, but he says that he didn’t speak until he was seven either. So we share that, kind of, delayed journey of speech and how we get into acting. So it’s interesting that drama is a way of expressing and articulating emotions, so the way we understand language has taken us on the same path.

So, my mother tried to drag me along to drama groups that she was a part of ‘cause (she’s not an actor in any shape of form) but she just wanted to be a part of local groups – art, theatre… She used to take me along, so I got into that and I realised that was a place where I could express, and yeah… not have to rely on one particular language, it was a language of your entire body and it made sense to me. So I sort of went down that path, but throughout school I never considered it as something that I could do as a career, but it was only when I was told that this can’t be a job ‘cause deaf people don’t work in that profession – I’d need a proper job – that, being the rebel that I was at school, I just thought… nah… nah. I’m gonna see where this takes me. But then I got pregnant when I was still as school, so I was a young mum and I left school with a child, and no real hopes for a job or my prospects, because I was always told by society that this was my lot and I didn’t have anywhere else to go or anything to do –

GEORGIA: - because of having a child? That was why people were like, ‘that’s you now.’

SOPHIE: Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Every conversation I ever had throughout being a young mum was, ‘your dreams are shot. Everything that you wanna be is not possible now. You know, you’re working class, you’re a young mum, you’ve just come out, so you’re just making life very difficult for yourself. There isn’t room for people like you.’ And I thought that was really interesting, but a challenge, and I don’t like being told that I can’t do something and I don’t like to be told that this is my lot. So I just keep pushing and pushing. When my son became, I think… five? No, four. I, he was going to a sort of primary school, nursery school and I thought, well I’ve got a bit of time on my hands, what do I want to do? How do I want to be… when I grow up? And I thought, well I’ve always loved acting, it’s always been the thing that sort of allowed me to be myself, and, um, has never shut the door on me. So I just thought, I’ll pursue that and see where it takes me.

I applied for RADA, but because I hadn’t done anything professionally, and I hadn’t done anything other than be a teenage mum for those years out of school, they said, ‘go back into the world, get into the loop of theatre and art, read plays, watch plays, join drama groups, get your confidence back up, find out what it is about theatre and the arts that you love so much, and then come back.’ And I spoke to other people and they said normally they don’t tell you to come back unless they believe that you’ve got something, so I spent that entire year applying myself to everything, I did loads of workshops, I did plays, I read everything, I watched everything, I… you know, I wrote, I just really applied myself because I wanted it so bad. And then I tried again the next year and I got in. And so three years of juggling a five-year-old to and eight-year-old, so it was those three years. I didn’t live in London, I lived outside of London, in High Wycombe, which was about a two hour journey, and I was commuting everyday, and I was a single mum, so I had… I had to juggle child minders, babysitters, breakfast club, afterschool club, my mum… so it was a bit of a crazy time! But I wouldn’t change anything because in my final year, when we were given our certificates when we graduated, um, my entire year stood up and gave a standing ovation, um, because they knew how much I had worked and how hard it had been, um, and training with very limited, you know, resources. I got a lot of sponsorship, I got a lot of funding to help me get support, so I got interpreters, note takers, um, you know, support workers who helped me get as much training as I could. Um, support in my training, so I didn’t miss out, so it was incredibly intense and demanding process, but coming out of that, I think it’s made me… it’s a cliché to say ‘a stronger person’, but it made me see that if I can do that, then I can pretty much face anything that the business throws at me. And it’s not just me, it’s other people who have difficulties with finance, difficulties with juggling parenting, or difficulties with disability within a training establishment… um, if I can do that, with all of the odds stacked against me, then I think anyone can. But it’s just about finding the right people, the right support, and there’s always going to be somebody who will give you those opportunities and who will help open those doors for you, but you’ve just got to find them.

GEORGIA: So did you feel, because you said you had interpreters at drama school, did you feel that it was a good conversation between you and the school in terms of what was needed in order for it to be accessible? Because I know you were the first deaf actor to go to RADA…

SOPHIE: Well, when I first started they had asked me what I wanted and what I needed, but because I had never had that kind of support before, I didn’t know. And they didn’t know. So we sat down and talked about a potential first term, covering all the classes with as much access as possible, um, with all the funds that were available to us. And then we could work out from there which classes I could manage without somebody, or which classes I would only need a note taker for, ‘cause there’s a hierarchy or classes where…. Er… there’s a lot of physical stuff happening that might need more, um, sign language interpretation. But then there would be smaller group discussions, maybe a one-to-one, where I would just need a note-taker, and they’re a bit cheaper! So we had to try and work out where the funding would go. It was very limited, but Snowden Trust stepped in and said if I go over the government funds, they would help pay for more. But I was very aware at the time that, because I was the first, whatever conversations we had, or whatever we set up would be, sort of, laying the land for anyone who came after me. So I’d have to be very careful about the language that we would use and the spaces that we would make available. So, for example, I couldn’t participate as much in choral singing because I can’t hear the different levels and tenor… and… yeah! I don’t remember anything! But you know, if I can’t fit myself into any of those, it just becomes a wall of noise, so I didn’t benefit from any of those classes – but I would ask to take myself out of those classes and maybe have extra voice classes, so that I could work on breath support, or a one-on-one singing class so that I could work on projection and placement, which benefitted my voice on stage. So singing wasn’t just for singing, it was for everything else and it made a massive difference to my training to be able to, sort of, be flexible within those classes. So I’m really grateful for RADA to allow me to have that. But I am aware that quite a lot of drama schools are based on the voice, on speech, and I know that my privilege as a deaf person with speech is that it’s easier for me to get into drama schools than it would be for somebody who doesn’t use speech. And I think that needs to change, and since graduating, I’ve been asked to go back as part of the Conservatoire of Dance and Drama Governor Board, so I’m on the board of Governors, and I have been for a year or so. I would love to be able to do more. At the moment, all I can do is keep raising the conversation about access and about making sure that the doors are left wide, wide open for people with disabilities, and anyone who identifies as different genders or sexualities, and BAME artists and… you know, all those things are considered very much within the Conservatoire, but my role in there is always to keep asking the question, ‘have we done enough? Are we doing enough? Can we do more?’. And, you know, I’d say things are slowly starting to change, and I know RADA has joined up with Deafinitely Theatre to create some teaching within a hub of deaf actors. So it’s training people outside of training, in order to get them to maybe where they need to be. But it also teaches the drama school how to adapt, and to see more deaf and disabled people within their establishment.

But it’s disheartening when you read articles in papers and stuff where they say, ‘Oh, if we do that then we are dropping the quality of acting within drama schools.’ One – it’s a school, you teach people to be better at their craft. Two – how do you know what their quality is if you don’t see them or let them into a room. And three – how can you say that,,, this blanket idea of anybody who is different from the default must be of a lesser quality. It makes me so angry, and I’m so glad that we are of a generation where we can talk about this and we can talk about it angrily, and we can keep raising conversation, and hopefully push for change whether you’re in the machine or outside of the machine. Conversation has to keep going. I believe that things will change, and equality will not drop. And if anything the quality of work out there in the profession after graduation will be better, because it will be more diverse, more rich, more interesting, and pushes the boundaries of what we consider is the ‘norm’. But the norm doesn’t interest anyone any more.

GEORGIA: It’s not the norm.

SOPHIE: I know.

LAURA: It’s just what we’ve all decided unanimously is the norm, or standard, or default.

SOPHIE: The default.

GEORGIA: The default is so upsetting. That it’s so white, and so … yeah.

SOPHIE: It’s flat, it’s beige, it doesn’t interest anybody. I just hope that we’re not gonna become a fashion, you know, a fad — something that is tokenistic. Because I’m noticing that sign language in films and stage is becoming a little bit tokenistic, and I understand that sometimes that’s where you have to go in order for there to be recognition, for there to be appreciation, for there to be a conversation about it and for it to be artistically recognised. But it’s still being piggy-backed, it’s still being used in a way that benefits the privilege rather than the people who need to be on that stage, who need to reclaim their voices and say this is my voice, hear me. Don’t hear somebody mimicking me. That’s the same for quite a lot of areas of conversation, I think, whether it’s trans actors or butch lesbian actors — you know, all of these people who are so underrepresented everywhere. So I’m glad to be part of this generation, really.

LAURA: So going back — it sounds like you had a really good support system in place at RADA, what was your experience after graduating RADA and did you feel like there were enough support structures still in place?

SOPHIE: It’s a difficult question, really. It’s been quite varied. I’m very aware that the amount of support I had at drama school and the encouragement and belief in my abilities and my potential was very much my safety net at drama school. I knew that as soon as I left, that would be taken away — and that was a massive fear. But I found security in having an agency who  chose to take me on and carry me throughout my profession right from the very start, which I know makes a massive difference to somebody’s journey.

But in some ways benefitted from being a deaf actor, because I knew that there were a lot of d/Deaf companies, and a lot of theatre that wanted to engage with sign language and d/Deaf culture, and making theatre more accessible. So there was always work given to me in that area, and there were deaf storylines, deaf theatre, deaf-led stuff that provided me with work. And then there was mainstream work that provided me with sort of physical theatre, playing mutes, playing characters that didn’t have to speak or playing deaf characters. And I was grateful for all that work, but after a while I became frustrated that that was my … I’d spent three years being taught how to use my voice, and then for the first few years out of drama school every role I was given was of someone who doesn’t use their voice, or needed their voice to be more like a deaf person who hadn’t had voice training. So I had to adjust my voice or take it away in order to play these characters, and it was quite frustrating because I felt like my training was slowly dispersing and I didn’t want it to disappear. I wanted to use it while it was still in my hands, if you like.

LAURA: That’s interesting that you say you went into a lot of deaf companies — at what point were you allowed to branch out into other sorts of roles, after that period of frustration that you weren’t being allowed or able to play them?

SOPHIE: I suppose having an agent who understands my journey and wants to push outside of that default, if you like, who encouraged casting directors and directors to allow me into a room and show other things I can do. So the character might not be written as deaf, but could happen to be deaf, or I could try and play characters who were hearing. So I would go into a room and do the best that I could, and if I got the job and I got given the opportunity they would allow me to have options. So I could sign if I wanted to, or I could be as truthful to a hearing character as I wanted to or that I could. So having my agent support me on that journey meant that I could get into rooms that probably wouldn’t have seen me otherwise. I wouldn’t say though that it was easy, or that every person who saw me was as open to the idea, but I do hope that whatever they took from me has helped open minds to the other people that they might have seen, or looking at a script and thinking maybe we could have somebody deaf to come in and play this role, and not make it a part of the storyline. They just happen to be deaf, and the world happens around that — like I do every day. And I think we make too much of a thing of the people that we are, and I don’t think it needs to be that at all. There’s too much emphasis on the person that comes into the audition room, therefore you can only be that person in the play or in the film or whatever. And I hope that every time I go into a room I change it a little bit, even if I don’t get the job — and I don’t mind that. But I have been given better roles to play — and I say better in terms of more imaginative roles to play, so people aren’t making an emphasis on or pigeon-holing or stereotyping or anything, so they are improving. And it helps me to improve my craft, and stops me from playing this one narrow train of roles. I dunno, I’m hoping that it allowed me to grow as an artist. When I look back on all of the roles that I’ve played in the last few years, I feel very fortunate that they are so versatile. I enjoy that. And if I wasn’t allowed to — and I say ‘allowed’ — but if I wasn’t given the opportunity to, I probably would have given up acting a while back. I know that a lot of the conversations that people have at the moment about acting and being able to play all different kinds of roles, it’s a very interesting conversation, because people who fit the default are saying, let us play trans roles, lesbian roles, gay roles, deaf roles, disabled roles — let us play that, that’s called acting. Okay, well let me play a hearing person, let me play a straight person, let me play this person or that person. Unless the playing field is even and every actor can play every role, then that doesn’t fit. It doesn’t make sense. Unless you play it the other way around, it’s not an even playing field, and there’s not enough disabled people, not enough ethnic minorities, not enough gay people, not enough trans people and deaf people being seen for a variety of roles. And unless we’re seen for a variety of roles, stop taking our stories.

GEORGIA: When you were talking about being able to play roles that aren’t necessarily — being deaf is the storyline, I immediately thought of gay storylines as well, and the fact that in plays that’s often the crux of the story, the coming out. And actually it would be so nice to have those people represented, and just talk about something else.

SOPHIE: We talk about social media as an echo chamber, we tend to have people that only agree with you in your immediate circle, but I’m interested in having conversations with people that don’t agree, and making them absolutely justify where they’re coming from to the point where I have nothing to say back. And so far that hasn’t happened. I don’t want to stop having these conversations, I don’t want to feel like it’s us and them, constantly. What are you so afraid of, what are you frightened of? What stops you from recognising your own privilege and opening the doors to other people who aren’t let into the room?

LAURA: I think people get so used to seeing themselves reflected back at them in everything that they watch, whether that’s on television or in a cinema or at the theatre that when that stops happening it becomes very difficult to compute.

SOPHIE: It’s strange. Because you just have to go — that feeling? That feeling? That’s what these people have been feeling for thousands and thousands of years, and you’re only just experiencing it. It hurts doesn’t it? My son, who I’m very proud to say is trans, he is going to go into the film industry and I know that he wants to train at university to become a film-maker. I’m always looking for opportunities or spaces that he can be a part of, and then I feel strange that I’m looking for those spaces.

GEORGIA: Specifically for a trans person?

SOPHIE: Yeah or, queer, or identify as people who don’t feel they have opportunities or a place in the profession. So I know that there are companies who encourage and fund and help give those opportunities and keep doors open for them. And I think it’s great that they’re there, but it’s a shame that they’re there. You know, every person should be given the opportunity to be part of — I say ‘mainstream’ but it’s one of those words that’s very closed off. Only certain people can be considered worthy of being in the mainstream. If you’re an outsider artist then you do niche work, you do specific types of work for a specific audience because you are a specifically identifying person. And they’re great, if that’s what you want, but if you just wanna make a Hollywood film or you wanna do something for a big mainstream company, then do it, without having to be judged or pigeon holed. I hope that by the time my son graduates that the world will be a welcoming place, because everybody brings something different. They have an edge or an eye or a style that might stand out, and it might not stand out because of who you identify as, it might stand out because of what you understand of that world, or what you’ve seen that other people haven’t seen, or what you’ve experienced that might influence and inform your work, and it becomes a style. But it’s got nothing do to with you as a trans artist. It’s just your personality, and your personality has helped influence your art. So everything is indirect, everything that we experience and we do we put a little bit of ourselves into our work. I don’t think I would be doing half the jobs that I do in the way that I’ve done them if it wasn’t for my deafness, so I don’t apologise for my deafness any more. I used to. I spent many years being sorry that I’m not what you hoped, or what you expected, or what you would have wanted if somebody else had played it. But I also hope that what I’ve brought to the role, or to the company, or to the ensemble, or the theatre, or even to your own experience, is something deeper, greater, more interesting. I mean this is what theatre is for, isn’t it? We talk about politics and holding a mirror up to society, and to ourselves, and questioning things and challenging things — and that’s what I love about theatre and if we don’t do that and we only feed what we think the audience want, nothing changes. And nobody will want to go to the theatre any more. We all have a responsibility to tell those stories, and my son and myself are part of those stories.

GEORGIA: When it's not what people were expecting, or it's not the norm, people either don't want to see it - I feel. You know, I think about gay films and I heard a podcast the other day with Alia Shawkat, who wrote a film called Duck Butter and originally it was a male and female love story and they fall in love and they have 24 hours together, and they auditioned man after man after man for this role - she was the other role - and it just didn't work, so eventually they'd got this other actress that was playing another part in it and they were like "It's her! It should be her!", so it suddenly became two women, then all of the sudden the demographic of who were their audiences...

SOPHIE: Yeah

GEORGIA: ...went *makes whoosh sound* to being queer...

SOPHIE: ...oh really

GEORGIA: ...this is a queer film now. And who is actually interested in a lesbian storyline? The lesbians are! And some of the gays and some heteros but not everyone is interested in it. And it's, like you said, it should be. Like when you talk about your son, it shouldn't be a thing that limits anything.

SOPHIE: No

GEORGIA: And it shouldn't actually be questioned and I think the same with [being] a woman.

SOPHIE: Yeah

LAURA: Yeah, I think we're all conditioned to see the sort of straight- white-male-cis gendered experience as the 'default', or those characters represent what it means to be a human being in a universal sense but anyone who deviates from that, it's like "well you're speaking to the experience of that sub-set, not humans generally". So, i dunno, Hamlet? Hamlet is about what it is to be mortal and alive and human, and well no, it's actually one very specific experience of the world but we accept it as being something about the human condition. Whereas characters that don't fit that 'default', as we said, are not, are seen to be specific to that particular experience.

SOPHIE: But then you've got films when the demographic changes. You've got films like Moonlight, with two black gay men falling in love, that seemed to have quite a wide audience base. And what's the other one? Call Me By Your Name? So sometimes there are more but it still happens to be for gay men. It's about having more lesbian love stories and keep pushing and pushing and do it somewhere with the support of mainstream distributors or money people, to sort of give it that edge.

GEORGIA: Do you feel like part of the reason why may the male gay films are more credited - is that the right word?

LAURA: Erm, acclaimed?

GEORGIA: Acclaimed, yeah. Is part of the patriarchy? Because essentially, lesbian storylines - I feel - don't get as much publicity and don't get as much attention and it doesn't seem as eventful. Therefore they kind of wash away. And Blue Is The Warmest Colour was in many ways a great film but it also had a ten minute sex scene that is partly why (laughs) it did well in a very male dominated industry, I personally think. But do you think that might possibly be part of the patriarchy?

SOPHIE: I think so. I think there's more money in gay independent films, gay male independent films, I think there's more support from mainstream producers in creating those films, especially if they are already a book like call me by your name. And so I think it's probably more likely that those will get a different platform. Whereas lesbian films *sighs*, 'lesbians films' I'm already like changing the category that it sits in... doesn't have very much money and doesn't have the right kind of backing and I think if there are more people with the money, with production companies behind them, with that kind of power to be able to put them on a platform that can have a wider demographic, will do. But it has to be done right and it has to be done well. I think that people are starting to see that giving the audience what you think they want, doesn't always pay off and taking a risk and telling stories like Jungle are putting mirrors up and are questioning the right things and are making people feel more comfortable, about questioning their own pre-conceived ideas about things. And going to the theatre because they want to hear those stories, they want to be fed challenging things. And if they are transferring to the west end, and they are selling out, and they are making money, they are bringing in the crowds, then things are definitely changing - that's a good thing. It's a journey.

GEORGIA: In terms of taking risks and all that sort of thing, did you feel with Emilia, which the cast is all female but also a lot the creative team are - your director, your writer, I think your designer - do you feel the globe has treated it as a risk?

SOPHIE: Well, Michelle Terry (Globe's Artistic Director), commissioned this. She has come in and talked to us from the very start and said this is a story that she's wanted to be told in, like forever. And she was absolutely adamant that it needed to be told on the Globe stage with these particular people, in this particular way. And she took Morgan, the writer, under The Globe and said "I believe in you, I want - you have 9 months - I believe in you and I want you to create this play. There's this woman, her story's amazing, we don't very much about her but I want you to create this play - do it now!" (Laughter) And she went off with 9 months, with Nicole Charles the Director and they created this in such a short amount of time with the evidence they have of her existence and Will Tosh who works as a research historian within the globe has dug every single bit of evidence he could from the time, patriarchy, from women that exist in this world, real women and their stories. All this information just put into a sort of cauldron and all of these actors being brought in from all of the backgrounds. So it's completely diverse and there's so much faith in the creativity of this show, that telling this story has been, yes, a risk, but huge passions that want to tell the story and it's not a story that's been told before.

LAURA: And you found the DH, Deaf and Hearing Ensemble?

SOPHIE: Yeah, a co-founder from 2013, it's been going on a while. We are based all over the country so whenever we get together we try and create either new work or we take adaptations. At the moment we've got Matilda and the Balloon, which is a children's story and it will be sort of physical theatre. But we're also looking at Macbeth, so we've got a workshop, ten days with the National Theatre studios to look at Macbeth again, cos we've done it before with the Barbican and we did a lab and we just want to keep evolving that. But we work a lot with dual-languages and accessible theatre and we're very much about language of the body and communicating between people. And different ways of looking at texts and how to transfer that in an accessible way so that deaf and hearing audiences can sit and watch and be on the same page and access it in the same way. So we're really excited about that coming up. It's just time, cos we're quite fortunate in that we have quite a few of us within the ensemble, it's ever changing who's available. Our original founder, but she's recently become a Mum, she's up in Glasgow, so we try and work around having babies in the room and working with people who are not committed to other jobs and we try to work together so everybody has a shot.

GEORGIA: And it's also nice to hear, in a way, that it is quite difficult to navigate because you're all doing different things and having families but your work is still carrying on, it doesn't have to be one or the other. It's so inspiring to hear that you have all these different things that are going on. And that you're in a female cast that have all inspired one another - it's wonderful.

SOPHIE: There's so many Mum's as well so that when we come in to do a bit extra scene work, we've had Mum's take it turn to do a scene/ look after babies. Which is kind of the ethos of Michelle Terry, making sure we can still have a family but if you want to do extra work then this absolutely is a nurturing space for people to bring their children and work around you. So yeah, I love it.

GEORGIA: Amazing

LAURA: That's brilliant. What would your advice be to young graduates or young actors coming into the industry now?

SOPHIE: I think we all have a responsibility to create theatre that is a better space. So if you're a graduate of set design, maybe consider how you can make it accessible for someone in a wheel chair. Or if you're a technician, how can you think about creative captioning so that almost all of your shows have captions on the set that are creatively thought through. So that every show can be accessible and you don't have just one captioned performance - if we're lucky - on a Tuesday when everybody's got work the next day. It would be great if those things are implemented from the start. And then as actors, ask yourself what you can do if you're starting to write or direct or perform with. What are you doing to help make better spaces for somebody who maybe isn't like yourself? But also, always question, question everything you do, your own privileges. I'm aware of my privileges and I try and do what I can to make better spaces or opportunities for people who don't have the same privileges as me. But then I'd hope somebody with more privileges then I do would make better spaces for me, so don't pull up the ladder basically. I know we're all, especially as graduates, on this - i hate to use the term - 'competitive', we're all trying for jobs and finding our path through a career, and I'm not expecting it to happen straight away but, if we start questioning now, what you can do, or what hasn't been done, or what there should be more of then it will slowly be part of conversations in a rehearsal room or part of the technical team or with your stage management or in films maybe look at the script and say, is that gonna stir up trouble for the right reasons? For the wrong reasons? Is it reflective of something that exists now or are we feeding the monster of the problem? Or is it part of the solution?

End of Interview