Show Notes & Links

Catch up first

• Last episode: Emma Smallman — The Drum & Bass Aerobics Experience
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Sister Sophia Kicks the Habit

• Sister Sophia Kicks the Habit at Venue 13 — 16:15, on alternating dates 7–21 August. Tickets £12 (£10 concession), with Fringe Friends two-for-one and group discounts for 10+. Book at venue13.com
• On the Edinburgh Fringe programme
• Lisa’s company: The Universe Over 60 — a Toronto company celebrating the stories of women over sixty
• The show premiered at the Hamilton Fringe Festival in 2025, directed and dramaturged by Kate Johnston
• Critical praise: “witty, curious, and easy to root for… cheeky, introspective and thoughtful” (Hamilton City Magazine); “Randall has a helluva voice” (Hammer Monthly)

Things we talked about

• The Sisters of Service — “going where you’re needed, where the need is not already being met” — the ethos behind Sister Sophia’s decades of being moved across the country
• The Beguines — self-governed lay religious communities of women in medieval Europe, living and practising together outside the authority of the Church, which Lisa and Vanesa connect to today’s growing interest in women’s communes and co-operative living
• Tom Lehrer — The Vatican Rag, performed live at the end of the episode. Lehrer placed his entire catalogue into the public domain, free for anyone to use — an act of generosity that made its inclusion here possible

About the company & the connection

• The Universe Over 60 makes its Edinburgh Fringe debut with this show
• Lisa is completing an MA in Theatre, Dance and Performance at York University (School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design)

Find us

• Episodes & transcripts: venue13.com
• Socials: @venue13fringe
• Get in touch: podcast@venue13.com
• In person from August: Venue 13, Harry Younger Hall, Lochend Close, Edinburgh
• Music by Dusty Decks via Epidemic Sound

Transcript

Untitled – July 24, 2026

Vanesa So our guest today is Lisa Randall, the writer and performer behind Sister Sophia kicks the habit here from her Toronto company, The Universe Over sixty. Lisa, welcome to podcast thirteen.

Lisa Randall Thank you Vanessa. Thank you. Ian.

Ian It’s great to have you here. Why don’t you start by introducing us to Sister Sophia and her worldview? We’re very excited for the show. Can’t wait for it to be in the venue and to get to know her better. But maybe you can give us a little bit of an introduction for those who are listening ahead of coming.

Lisa Randall I’d love to thank you for asking. So Sister Sophia, she is a sister, a nun who is in her seventies, late sixties perhaps, and she has had a life of devotion. She went into the monastery and the convent took her vows as a very young woman, probably around eighteen or nineteen years old. And so her worldview comes out of a time and another era, really. This is happening. Obviously, the show is being done in twenty twenty six here, but it’s kind of a generic time frame. So a time frame when people were going into the convent in greater numbers, a time frame when maybe families were larger and many people, several people might go from a family and become religious people. And so Sister Sophia’s worldview has always been very devout, very obedient. And she has done, as she has been told over decades and which which includes being moved, being moved across the country, being moved and going to where she is needed. Because that is the motto of the Sisters of Service, going to where you’re needed and where the need is not already being met. But her worldview suddenly changes when she loses her very best friend, Sister Beatrice. Because Sister Beatrice was a little bit of a lightning rod for her, she’s kind of the one that kept her grounded and kept her clear about her faith and clear about her devotion. She was wobbly, there’s no question about it. Sister Sophia was a wobbly person in her own faith, which is a very human experience for people of faith, people, atheists. We wobble in our beliefs. That’s very often, and many of us believe that questioning is a good way to to actually clarify what we think. And so the scene takes place when she’s moving worldviews, actually. So this question nails it. In fact, because this is the night of the dark night of her soul. She’s lost her best friend. She hasn’t been able to sleep in three nights, and she’s kind of hallucinating a little bit. And her perceptions are changing because she hasn’t had sleep. She doesn’t really know what to do with herself because she’s lost her anchor in faith in by way of her best friend, Sister Beatrice. And so she embarks on another night, another sleepless night. And this is her dark night of the soul, which also does have levity because she enters into a conversation with God and speaks to him directly for the duration of the show. And it’s done in a very humorous way. But this is a this is a show about a nun. Yes, but it’s also a show about a woman questioning her life choices, questioning everything she’s done, questioning her, her blind faith and asking for things. So her worldview is actually changing her expectations around what she’s given her entire life to have been sort of turned on their head this particular night. And so that’s what makes it a little bit more important than any other night, because this is the night where she comes into a reckoning with her own belief system, and her worldview does change. It does change. It does change. And it changes through her emotional journey, through the questions that she asks, and through her own humor and her realization of of what really is important to her and her also her role as a woman in a highly patriarchal system. She gets into that more for a feminist lens than she does the patriarchy approach.

Vanesa It sounds like this is going to resonate with a wide variety of people. It it sounds to me as if the show came from a deeply personal place. I believe you’ve had two aunts who were nuns, one of them a cloistered, I believe. And you wondered what they might say under a kind of you know, if they were to have a truth serum. And you know what? What honesty would come out then? And how did their lives find their way into the show?

Lisa Randall Okay. Yes. Well, first of all, I should say that this show is very humorous, and I would have to say from my experience with my nun, that nuns have really good senses of humor. Um, I.

Vanesa Can believe that.

Lisa Randall But my my ninety eight year old aunt, my aunt Paula’s sister, Paula, she is very funny. She’s a funny, funny person. And and I’ve gone to visit her over the last fifteen years at the motherhouse in a small town in Ontario. And I’ve gotten to know the other sisters. And so when I go up there, I usually stay up up there a couple of nights. And when I started going there, it was really kind of full. It was full of nuns. And over the last fifteen years, this number has seriously dwindled. And I’ve known many people. You know, obviously people die. That’s the journey that we’re all on. But there just aren’t any more nuns entering the vocation. And I wonder what this feels like when you donate or give your entire life over to a vocation, and you care so deeply that you give your entire life and you see that it’s dying. And I personally would have strong feelings about that, about any kind of a relationship that comes to an end. Go through some usually questioning, a little loss, grieving, maybe happiness, freedom. You know, there’s a whole range of things that we might feel. And at any given time, we all feel usually multiple emotions at the same time anyway. And they’ve given themselves over. They’ve taken a vow of obedience, which doesn’t equal voicing your opinion. And so as I’ve gotten to know my aunt over these years more, and again, I just developed a really strong empathy for her. And I had a lot of interest, you know, and I’m not a practicing Catholic, but through my interest in her, she asked me one day, so do you want to become a nun? And I thought, you know, like, I’m sixty three. No, I’m I have a life partner and a child. But I’m really interested in the fact that I went through my own personal losses, a divorce, etc.. And many of my family members live out West, and I found myself going and visiting my aunt nun. And I took great comfort in this, even though I’m not a, you know, a woman of faith per se, a kind of faith, absolutely. Definitely a faith in other human beings as well. But I’m driven by my empathy and some of the stories that my mother shared with me, some of the confidences that she’s had with each of them, when they’ve shared some of their experiences in their lives. And the aunt that was a cloistered nun, um, the first time I met her, she was behind bars because they were not allowed to have physical contact. No hugging, even a family members. I find this really sad and I find it, um, I’m gonna say unnecessary to remove yourself when we’re living in a human body. And so this is the thing that really struck me. How can you have a life of devotion of this nature and reconcile with living in a human body? And then the other aunt was a teacher and, um, she moved around quite a bit. Very different experiences. Yes. And, you know, I think there was some isolation and some loneliness. I remember when my aunt, who’s still living in a small town, was moved from Edmonton because the house closed down that she was in, in Edmonton and she moved here. She expressed directly, none of my friends are here. Yeah. And so, you know, they have to close comments down. There just aren’t any nuns anymore. And this is part of their vow of obedience. You know, they need to be obedient and go with their their scent when. And they’re not able to look after themselves anymore. But I will say that this play is full of humor because this particular sister Sophia, she has some very, I’d say, unconventional ideas. And she’s giving air to them. And, and so that is really where I wanted to go with it too.

Ian Yeah. I mean, we’ve talked about two different downs, but it’s ultimately a solo show. Sister Sophia is an individual and it’s busy. You’ve got songs. There’s a lot of physical comedy, dance, audience interaction. As much as we’ve been, we’ve been highlighting like the philosophical thinking behind What Do You do? And reflecting upon a life of devotion. It’s not something that is, you know, looking back in a in a morose way, all of the all the content that I know that I’ve seen, I’ve been in preparation definitely positions it as a comedy and a humorous look in this way all fit within, you know, that frame jour for it. And you’re a singer and a musician as, as well as a writer. There’s a lot, you know, we’ve talked about your aunts, but also a lot of those elements of you in it. How does that all ultimately come together? Like, what is the experience the audience is going to have by coming to this show?

Lisa Randall Well, I truly hope they enjoy the humor. There’s serious parts, but definitely this is a sister who likes to tell a joke. This is her. I guess it’s kind of maybe her superpower. This is her joy. You know, telling is her humor is her joy. But this show began on the page. It began as a written project, and it started with one monologue. And I thought, I kind of like this character. And so I just kept writing monologues and the physical comedy comes, comes in fits and starts. It’s not full of large elements of it, but it’s definitely there. Transitional or. There are bits and pieces. When external elements start to Sister Sophia’s action interrupt her, she has reactions to it. She also has reactions to her own physical body and how she’s experiencing it, and misunderstandings that she may have with God. I mean, she’s she’s doing most of the talking, and she’s very concerned at a certain point in the play that there’s a real big misunderstanding going on. And so bringing songs into it. There are a couple of points in this show where it was just a natural build to, to move into an area of song. And one of the songs was written by a musical theatre composer friend of mine, and one is an a cappella song I wrote quite a few years ago, and it’s called Flesh and Blood, which is kind of one of the themes that emerges throughout this play. We are flesh and blood. And so that’s one song. One of the songs is The Vatican Rag that was written by Tom Lehrer. And so many people know this song, and it was irresistible to not have it in there. And of course, the wonderful Tom Lehrer made all of his music free in the public domain. And his generosity is unbelievable and also a true a true person giving of his art and knowing that he wanted it to live on without unencumbered by copyright things. And then another song I took, I took the wonderful, beautiful song Ave Maria, which predated its use in the church. It was actually a love song prior to that being sort of adopted as Ave Maria. There were other lyrics before that, and so I thought, I think I’m going to write some lyrics for this that fit in with this show. And so I did. And yeah, there’s a lot of fun.

Vanesa Wonderful. Oh, do you know what you got me thinking? You’ve. You’ve stirred things in me here because I want to see the show so badly. But you got me thinking when you said there. Not that many more nuns, and I am. I have a feminist inclinations myself, and I like to be up to date with what’s happening in the world when it comes to, um, you know, how we are going to age and how we’re going to spend the, you know, the final years of our lives. Um, I am a child free by choice person myself and I’ve noticed that there are many, there’s been a rise in the women’s communes. Now they are happening pretty much in every country, all around the world that you have these ladies that get together. Sometimes it starts as a group of friends. Sometimes they are just essentially They are now established because like you said, people, people pass. So this established communes that hold the interviews for the next person that comes along. And they’re very organized and there’s been interviews now coming out of, of this, uh, this groups and it looks so peaceful. And I wonder if this isn’t a new way of taking the best of, of what that was, you know, of the convent, of what your aunts might have experienced when they had this, this group of friends that meant everything for them and keep them going. And women are going back to that. Maybe they’re picking the best parts of it to say, we still would like that, you know, to go back to that.

Lisa Randall Absolutely, absolutely. Well, this brings things to mind, uh, in that this might not be such a new idea there. There is a group called the Beguines, and they were Self-elected sisters that were not under the auspices of the Pope or the Catholic Church. And they were spiritual in nature and they were completely self-governed, self guided. And they were considered heretical, of course, because they weren’t under the Pope, but they were just women doing their practice, living together, supporting each other. Even the modern day retreat, which is very popular for women to go on, and probably for men too. But I’m more aware of women’s retreats because I’ve run them as well as been an avid participant. So you get this micro community for like a very limited time frame of a week where you’re and I think people are all, you know, hungering for this kind of connection, especially as family sizes are much smaller. Where can you live in community?

Vanesa Yeah. No, absolutely.

Lisa Randall I think it’s really important for me to say that we rehearse the show in a community space in a women’s co-op in downtown Toronto.

Vanesa Nice. Oh that’s brilliant. I love that. It’s like that was your that was your audience.

Lisa Randall Well, that’s a director. The director lives in a particular. And um, you know, I mean, it’s all about, you know, mutual support. They divide, you know, this is co-op living. So they don’t they’re not like sharing their living quarters together, much like you’re probably talking about Vanessa, but it’s the next best thing. Yeah.

Vanesa No, I think that honestly, I genuinely think that it’s one of the it’s a valid thing to explore. And I do believe that this play is going to bring this type of questions up as well. And others. You know, I feel like the show holds kind of like a balance between the sacred and the profane at the same time. And you say, you know, you want to welcome the believer. The atheist, the agnostic and the curious, all you know, all are welcome. So what were the challenges you encountered when you’re writing this show? I know you started the page and you know it kept on being monologues. Did you ever feel like this show is not for everybody or, oh, this might not go down very well?

Lisa Randall Well, I started sharing it pretty early on with people and I got a really positive response. I started with the comedic pieces. That’s just what flowed out of me first. And then I started to move towards some more serious ones. And I do have quite a few more monologues than made it into the show. But I really selected the ones that I thought I didn’t want to upset people or push people away or judge anybody else’s religious inclinations. But what I thought was important, and this character exercised it, because characters have a way of just finding their way out of you, you know? Um, her interest and her tendency and what she was doing from the very beginning was questioning. And she’s doing it in a light hearted manner, you know, and she’s also, you know, excusing herself and also going, oh dear, I shouldn’t really be saying this. And she’s saying that throughout it, but she goes back and continues her questioning. And so his vow of obedience doesn’t necessarily make a lot of room for questioning. And so I really do believe in questioning in everyday life. And so no matter what you believe, I think it’s important. I think that it should be places where you can do it respectfully and, you know, within the bounds of, um, you know, not not a destructive approach, but simply being able to have a dialogue, you know? Yeah, she’s asking for dialogue with God. And because that’s one of her, that’s one of her requests throughout this evening. Yeah.

Ian Bringing it to the fringe is definitely a place where that type of conversation can happen. There’s work of all types and from from different places and different points of view. And this is your debut at the Edinburgh Fringe. It’s had a life and in other fringes around the world, it’s going immediately after your run in Edinburgh to to all the way west. So you are. I don’t envy the jet lag that you have there, but with it being your Edinburgh Fringe debut and you know you have your company sell celebrating stories of women over sixty looking at the universe over sixty. What are you hoping that Edinburgh takes away from Sister Sophia?

Lisa Randall Well, first of all, this is this is kind of like a dream come true. And and I mean, it’s part of my Ma in theatre, dance and performance at York University and a m p d and when I entered into the learning programme, I actually didn’t realise that venue thirteen was run by York Theatre. And so when I learned that in, I think it was December of twenty twenty five, I got really excited because this is a dream come true, being able to play and present at the Edinburgh Fringe. I’m just elated to be able to do it. Um, I’m just really looking forward to going out there and doing promotion during the day. But what I hope that the audiences that come to see Sister Sophia. Get out of it is some laughter, some enjoyment, and I want to bring levity to what can be some very difficult life decisions that some people may face, but I want them to enjoy it and be amused and. And maybe, you know, I’d like them to empathize with Sister Sophia and the struggles that she’s going through.

Vanesa I think Sister Sophia will be resonate with a lot of people based on what we’ve heard so far. Lisa. Thank you. Thank you for being here for the audience. Sister Sophia kicks the habit place at venue thirteen at four fifteen on several days this August. Tickets are twelve pounds ten pounds. Concessions with fringe friends two for one and group discounts for ten or more. All the links, all the information will be on the show notes and tickets are at venue thirteen dot com. Now, Lisa, I understand that you have brought us the audience a little treat. You will leave us with a taste of the show. Is that right?

Lisa Randall I absolutely would love to. Yes.

Ian Thank you. Lisa. Well, tip it over to that. Uh, we’ll be able to include actually, I think the Vatican rag. I’ve got a we’ve got a copy of that in the store, so we’ll make sure that’s in there. Thanks to Tom Lehrer for his foresight and making that possible. And we’ll see you in Scotland, Lisa.

Lisa Randall Fantastic. Thank you Ian. Thank you. Vanessa. I really appreciate your, um, your interest in Sister Sophia. I’m looking forward to it very much.

Lisa Randall You feed my soul, but it takes a toll. You leave me empty, but you make me whole. You can’t be seen. But you leave your Mark is black, but it likes the dark. I wonder if it’s hope or fear. You’re my phantom. You are always near. You keep me anchored. You keep me here. Keep me waiting days and nights. And here. I’ve been waiting for you all these years.

Ian And now, as promised, we were able to locate the Vatican rag by Tom Lehrer. Uh, as he has put it in the public domain. We’ll include it here. Uh, so you can, uh, experience that as well.

Tom Lehrer Another big news story of the year concerned the Ecumenical Council in Rome, known as Vatican two. Among the things they did in an attempt to make the church more commercial. Was to introduce the vernacular into portions of the mass, to replace Latin, and to widen somewhat the range of music permissible in the liturgy. But I feel that if they really want to sell the product in. In this secular age, what they ought to do is to redo some of the liturgical music in popular song forms. I have a modest example here. It’s called the Vatican Rag. First you get down on your knees. Fiddle with your rosaries, bow your head with great respect and genuflect, genuflect, genuflect. Do whatever steps you want. If you have cleared them with the pontiff. Everybody say his own Kyrie eleison. Doing the Vatican rag. Get in line in that processional. Step into that small confessional there. The guy who’s got religion. I’ll tell you if your sins are original. If it is, try playing it safer. Drink the wine and chew the wafer. Two. Four. Six. Eight. Time to transubstantiate. So get down upon your knees. Fiddle with your rosaries. Bow your head with great respect. And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect. Make a cross on your abdomen. When in Rome, do like a Roman Ave Maria. Gee, it’s good to see you getting ecstatic and sort of dramatic and doing the Vatican around.

Ian Thanks for listening to this week’s episode. If you enjoyed our conversation, be sure to hit subscribe so you never miss an update. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. We’d also love it if you could take a moment to leave us a review wherever you’re listening. It helps with people discovering the podcast, joining our community, especially if they think that they would be interested in any of the topics that we covered today. If you got thoughts, questions, or ideas for future episodes. We’d love to hear from you. You can reach us at podcast at venue dot com and our socials at venue thirteen fringe are back. Episodes and transcripts can be found on our website, which is venue dot com. That’s the number thirteen dot not spelled out. Venue one three dot com. And it’s only about a month before we’ll start being on site at the literal venue, thirteen Anchor Hall, on lock and close. So you can also start to find us there. The music that you heard through the episode is by Dusty Decks, which we get through Epidemic Sound. Until next time. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll be back with another episode soon.