CCTA Plays Featured:

Space Cat

By Lewis Hetherington
Read by Ian Garrett & Vanesa Kelly

Show Links

• Climate Change Theatre Action – https://www.climatechangetheatreaction.com/

Transcript

Ian (00:11):
Hello and welcome back to Podcast 13, episode two. I’m Ian.

Vanesa (00:16):
And I’m Vanesa. We are so happy you have joined us again, and if this is your first time tuning in, welcome. If you’re curious about who we are and why we started this, do have a listen back to episode one where we talk about the vision behind Podcast 13.

Ian (00:29):
Exactly. But whether you’ve been with us from the beginning or you’re just joining now, thank you. Honestly. What a fantastic way to round up your summer by supporting us, cheering us on and seeing this little project grow week by week. We feel it.

Vanesa (00:42):
We truly do. Coming up in today’s episode, we’ll be diving into another play that is Space Cut by Lewis Hetherington and later in the episode we’ll be talking about World Stage Design 2025, a global gathering of designers and theater makers happening right now in Sharjah and we’ll be sharing our own experience presenting at the research symposium.

Ian (01:02):
Let’s get started. Space Cat by Lewis Hetherington. This play is about an astronaut who is sent in a deep space to find a new planet for humans to live on, and a cat who sits at home wondering where he’s gone. I wanted to write about the barrenness of space in comparison to this extremely beautiful planet we’ve been given. I wanted to ask why we are all being sold as vision of space colonization and who will actually benefit from it. It can be played by any two people. Please feel free to change pronouns to match those used by the performers. If you would like to use a different name for the cat than I suggest Jesse..

Vanesa (01:38):
He’s coming back. He always comes back. I mean, I’m fine. I’m not worried and I like my own space. Everyone knows that patting about watching the world go by, but he’s just, well, I want to know that he’s okay.

Ian (01:56):
This is it. I’m on the edge of everything. Like the first ever sailor with the first ever boat looking out to see back in, well, whatever that would’ve been, I don’t ever think I would be important and I didn’t mind, but when this came up, it spoke to something inside me, something vast, something important.

Vanesa (02:15):
He likes to fall asleep in the sunshine. He likes to eat his breakfast lowly while listening to the birds. What if there aren’t birds where he is? What if he doesn’t have his special mug for coffee?

Ian (02:27):
Leaving the earth’s atmosphere felt something like something was tearing inside of me, but they said that would happen. They prepared us for everything. Training was hard, but everyone was really nice and it’s software doing most of the work and the people back down on the ground. It’s not just me. There’s loads of us all in separate pods, normal people given this chance, drifting off into the great beyond. It doesn’t matter who finds something. Obviously it’d be nice if it was me, but that’s not what’s important.

Vanesa (02:56):
Look, I miss him. Okay? I do. I mean, I know everyone says cats are loners and that we don’t care about anyone. And maybe that’s true for some cats, but not me actually. So yes, I do miss him. I want him to come home

Ian (03:10):
264 days now. Now not that days mean anything in space. It’s like a corridor with no windows, doors are in. So that’s why we have to keep this wellbeing log. There’s all these mental and physical exercises that keep us right. There’s a dot on the screen and it zips about and you have to tap it to catch it. It makes this little sound. Beep beep. It’s really satisfying. Beep beep. Oh, and if you thought airplane food was bad, you should try spaceship food. What else? I keep thinking about seeing earth. I know I said before, but just seeing it there. Blue and green, A glowing ball of life spinning in space. It was weeks ago, but if I close my eyes, I can still just about see it.

Vanesa (03:51):
Doors open and close, but it’s never him. Someone else lives here now and she smells like him, but she’s sort of annoying and she snores. We keep to ourselves. She does buy me little treats sometimes. I keep looking out for him. He’s coming back.

Ian (04:08):
There’s nothing here, just dust and nothing. It’s not like I thought I’d stumble across a new home planet straight away. But did you see that film Avengers Infinity War space in that is all green and purple and swirling? I mean, I knew it wouldn’t be like that, but I keep thinking about my cat. Well, I bet he hasn’t even noticed. I’m gone silly. Really? My sister moved in. They’ll be fine. 454 days now onward for humanity. That’s one of the affirmations they gave us.

Vanesa (04:39):
What is taking so long? What is he doing? What is more important than being here?

Ian (04:45):
I sent a message to the company. I said, if we do find a new planet, can my cat come? They said, no.

Vanesa (04:51):
I look for him all the time. I go out to the balcony and look for his bouncy walk below

Ian (04:57):
689 days. Ralph is maybe dead by now in cat ears. He would be, I don’t know, but really old. That tears me up inside. It feels bigger. The machines say I’m fine. They need our bodies to respond to samples from the planets. They keep blood moving to keep my flesh alive to see if it gets poisoned. I hope Ralph will be okay at the end. I don’t know what it’s like for a cat at the end.

Vanesa (05:22):
I’m so tired now. My bones are achy and it feels like I’m sinking. I just want to see him again. Was my breath always this thin? He’ll come back now he he’ll come back and put his hand on me, on my tummy. What was that? No, nothing. It’s all just shapes and light. Now I can’t see very much, but I’ll know him, his voice, his smell, his hand and my tummy. He needs to hurry up. I don’t think there’s long. No, and I want to hear his funny little noise that he does when to get my attention. He goes,

Ian (06:00):
Meow, meow, meow. And

Vanesa (06:02):
I run to him. Not now. I can’t run to him anymore. I’m sinking. I’m sinking away to somewhere else and then I’m gone.

Ian (06:12):
Meow, meow, meow. Obviously it won’t bring him out here, but it’s nice because for a split second I get this little lift as though he might appear. Meow, meow, meow. I used to sit on my balcony in the sun. Ralph would sit in my lap, we’d fall asleep as I was stroking the soft fur of his underbelly, there was a little wooden box and I grew rosemary. I don’t remember how it smelt, but I remember I liked it. I’d pick a bit and Ralph would nibble it. We’d watch the birds, the clouds would drift and sometimes the sky was pink and purple as the sun was setting. Maybe when he died, his soul floated out in the space and he is drifting towards me. Maybe I’ll see him. Whisker is glowing and eyes live. He’ll drift up to me and his ghost wipe paws will tap gently at my face saying, come on, get up.

And then maybe his gentle ghost body will weave between my legs before he drifts onward to cat heaven, but probably not. Day 904. I wonder if everyone is dead. Maybe earth is just another planet of poisonous gas and dust. Now all these ones, maybe there’s been some brilliant and clever technical solution which just swept in and solved everything, but that’s what this is meant to be. Maybe I’ll find something and save everyone. I just want to see my cat. 3,467 days, I really beep, beep. Sorry, my brain is flooded and my eyeballs are swollen. Really? What was the smell? It was muscles like a pop balloon. Old plastic bags atrophied. They told us this would happen, but there’s no planet is there. Not for someone like meow, meow, meow. I really did have Ralph. I was a normal human and I thought that was nothing, but it was not nothing. Beep beep. The machines make it so we can’t die for the mission. Maybe if I get to the edge of the universe, then I will die and have a moment of euphoria, breath in my lungs, cat in my lap. The scent of rosemary in the air. I really did have it all. I had it all. And then …

(08:20):
End of play.

(08:27):
And that brings us to the end of today’s play. What a journey. We hope you enjoyed stepping into that story as much as we enjoyed sharing it with you, but it was a sad one wasn’t. It

Vanesa (08:41):
Was a tough one. I’ve got tears.

Ian (08:44):
Do you miss your cat while you’re here in Sharjah?

Vanesa (08:47):
I miss my cat. Yes I do.

Ian (08:50):
But moving on to the second part of today’s episode, we have some muse to share from world design while we’re here Insha.

Vanesa (09:01):
So Ian, can you tell to any new listeners who haven’t heard of it before, what exactly is World Stage Design and what makes it special

Ian (09:10):
So World Stage Design, it’s an international festival of stage design and scenography. It started in 2005 in Toronto and it’s gone to a different city every four years since then. Sort of one year delayed from 2021 to 2022 because of the pandemic, when it was in Calgary. It invites designers from all around the world to submit work as individuals. So it’s not necessarily as political as sort of its counterpart of it, the Prague Quadrennial, which happens in sort of alternating four year increments. And it allows us to celebrate both professional and then emerging designers and to see each of their individual works equally together. There’s prizes associated with that. And then there’s this event called ScenoFest, which has a festival of performance design-based performance that comes and there’s things to see throughout the day. Some of it’s in theatre, some of it’s outside. There’s workshops, there’s talks, there’s presentations. And then ota, the International Association of Theater Architects, Scenographers and Technicians, they have their meeting and organizational meetings. So this group is from around the world get together to coordinate other events that they’re going to do, pick where the next one’s going to be and things like that. So it is a giant festival focused on design and getting people from around the world to collaborate with each other.

Vanesa (10:35):
I see. So this is actually massive. You’ve been involved in several additions before. How does this year compare what feels different about World Stage Design in 2025?

Ian (10:46):
Well, I was one of the co-chairs for World Stage Design in 2022, so in part it feels very relaxed. I have very little that I’m responsible for. The scale continues to grow. There’s always more people getting involved. It’s great to also just meet more people who are getting involved both of World Stage Design and then also with just OISTAT in general. It has to be hosted by an OISTAT centre. A country has another organization that organizes people locally. So it’s really exciting to see it taking place here. It’s opened up a part of the world that is sort of new to that community and also it’s therefore introduced a lot of different topics and perspectives and traditions that maybe were less represented in previous editions of it. That’s always one of the fun things about it being in place to place is that you learn about the performance and design traditions in that place. Another big focus this time around has been sustainability. We did have a strand of ecoscenography in Calgary in the last edition of it, but that’s continued to grow. It’s like finding its way into everything. And of course the digital component to it and conversations around AI, which have at least in terms of generative AI and the way that it’s influenced the design field have really opened up in the last couple of years are a lot more central than they were before.

Vanesa (12:11):
You mentioned sustainability and hybridity. Are those still big talking points this year?

Ian (12:17):
I think even more so now. There’s a challenge with people getting here. It’s far for a lot of people. It was 13 hours flight from Toronto and it was 14 hours flight from Brisbane. So there’s people from all over the world, but it’s sort of like a central point in that regard. But then it’s talking about now that we’re back in person mostly that was something we’re just starting to get back to and the cause of the delays in the previous edition that it’s that big topic of what do we retain from that? How does that something that continues to influence our work when we can convene because all sorts of different reasons that we might not be able to be in the same place together. So hybridity is a big important part of that as is sustainability. It’s a conversation can’t avoid by having a city that’s as young as Sharjah growing out of the desert as well for it. But it’s also a core tenant of the Emirates that they’re trying to pursue and it’s being hosted by the Sharjah Performing Arts Academy and it’s a core part of the types of things that they’re trying to teach as they’re starting up the school as well. So they’re sort of woven throughout everything.

Vanesa (13:26):
I see. And have you noticed any emerging themes in the way the designers are approaching the performance? So maybe something that reflects where the world is right now?

Ian (13:35):
I think we’re talking a lot about human agency and it’s a much more human scale as well because one, the conversation around ai, I also think just it’s always a conversation with how the political global climate influences the conversation of people collaborating together because influential of how performance work gets to get made and who is funding what sort of thing and how people are able to get here. A lot of people are getting grants and things like that to be able to show up. And so you can never completely separate it from the political milieu of the time. And so those conversations as they’ve become real hotbed conversations in general are pervasive in a way that I just don’t think that they have been before and it might be a lot having to do with both the time and place.

Vanesa (14:27):
This is certainly a place that brings up a lot of conversation when it comes to attributes. Leading into my next question, which is what about the accessibility or inclusion, how are those being discussed or showcased in design practice at WSD?

Ian (14:43):
I think that what we’re seeing a lot of is principles of universal design coming into people’s design work and the way that they design spaces being a new building it itself is, and I think that’s something that’s not always been present at it as we’ve been looking at adaptive space, there’s a presentation earlier today about what’s going to happen with the next prog quadron, which is going to be in June of 2027 and they’re renovating this historic convening center, sort of like a beaux artes conference centre if you will, the Industrial Palace in Prague. And I was having a conversation with the artistic director and asking whether or not part of that renovation was making more accessible, one of the challenges of using it before and just finding a large enough venue for an event like this or the PQ. I think that the other part of it is the digital component to that and people being able to actually access the work itself, physically get to it and whether or not it’s there.
(15:42):
So it gets back to that sort of hybridity question of when you’ve got a lot of people coming really far and that’s one of the reasons that World Stage Design moves around is to make it so that it’s not always really far from everybody, but then you have to think about how do people access the work or participate without necessarily being able to travel to that place for any variety of reasons. So I think that those are important questions that happen particularly here when you’ve got a place like Sharjah or the UAE in general that is really this meeting point between a really forward looking modernity that’s rooted in sort of like the being on this tip of the Arabian Peninsula as a meeting point that has a lot of tradition for it. There’s a lot of momentum towards the future in a place like this.

So Vanesa, this was your first time at World Stage Design, right?

Vanesa (16:36):
That’s correct.

Ian (16:38):
What was it like walking into this space for the first time?

Vanesa (16:42):
It was overwhelming, I have to say in the best possible way. There was a lot of, I was met with a lot of creativity. I was very, very lucky to have met so many wonderful people and they’re all connected. They’re all connected to their work, they’re connected to you. You’ve worked with so many of them in the past and I was actually very touched by how everyone was, first of all so kind, so inspiring and how everybody wants to collaborate with each other. I thought that was a fantastic sign immediately to know that this was the right place for me, the right place to bring my ideas and the right place to try and make professional connections because it really feels like it will pay off. There were some, the building on itself as a space is beautiful and what they’ve done the entrance is they’ve put these huge pillars with exhibitions and the exhibitions range from digital to select small models of stages from every type of stages such as stages or costume design.

(17:46):
And they were supplemented by the model with the video at the back of how it would look like in real life and how it behave in a performance. There were some workshops as well, which I really enjoyed. There was one about pickling and it wasn’t just about pickling, it was about the history and the connection and how cultures that didn’t necessarily have access to land can still use and reuse food and preserve it for longer. And I believe that’s passing on these important key messages so that we keep using this because this is the ancient knowledge that needs to be passed on and the communities are built around it. I feel like this was quite eyeopening for me to see design as forefront because as a play writer and maybe producer and hopefully performer in the future, it’s interesting to see that what I have in my head is also kind of something that other people have in their heads.

(18:37):
It’s like when I think about a play that I want to write, I first have to think about the scene and the setting in my mind and then as I write the play, I have to start thinking as well at some point we’re going to have to build this. We’re going to have to build this as a stage physically or digitally. So this is extremely inspiring for me and it also helps me rethink how I can create this world building at the stage light texture. Right now for AI campfire, we are going digital, but also we are working with immersive technologies. And also another thing that I want to bring into this practice is sustainability, modularity. How can we use things so we can reuse as well? Now that we have the venue access and we can actually store things, how can we start creating things from the beginning that are going to be sustainable and they can use in the future?

Ian (19:24):
And you’re not just here as an observer. You presented at the research symposium on Monday as well. How do you feel being a part of the international mix of voices?

Vanesa (19:32):
It is an extremely inspiring and humbling experience as you know, but many people here in the audience might not know. I have come to arts and theater and being a producer and a playwright, I’ve come from not a particularly straight line of experience because my background is in pharmacology and then I moved into working in renewables and tech and I set up my own freelance PR and theater and arts and consultancy. So I feel like when I came here and I was going to present, I came with quite a lot of insecurities. I was accompanied by my insecurities, but the people that I’ve met, they didn’t care about how I came to be. They just cared about what I’m going to be moving forward. And that was extremely wholesome to feel so accepted so quickly. I was met with a global community there rethinking sustainability, storytelling and inclusivity. And I’ve already took up some context of people that are working, for example in alternative materials. Like there’s this lady who’s wonderful, she’s creating this material out of kombucha, and so she wants to mass produce this in a way that she can potentially bring it to stage design, which is a wonderful material. It’s completely biodegradable and obviously now we have a new contact and I’m just thinking, well, I am a fermentor myself, so I’m going to experiment with that. So it’s been really inspirational.

Ian (20:58):
Do you find it inspiring in terms of your own practice as a playwright and producer?

Vanesa (21:03):
Absolutely. Absolutely. I want to know, write differently. I want to write with the end goal of thinking building in the workshops and the things that I’ve experienced here. So for example, in my own past as my own hobby, if I’m going to be making kombucha, can I actually start creating some fabric out of it so that I can use it in the next show as some sort of a token, a reminder, something that people can take with them because I do believe that big things come from small things and if I actually can give them a little token, a little heart made out of a kombucha, that can be a key ring. They will be thinking, oh my god, that’s made out of kombucha, for example. And it’s biodegradable. And I do believe that the small acts that we can do can have big impact on climate action.

Ian (21:50):
And you mentioned meeting new people. Do you feel like this opened up any doors for you or for the venue? For Venue 13?

Vanesa (21:56):
Absolutely. I think it was really interesting to share with people. Not only that, we have a project on the go and we have another project on the go with the return to the AI campfire, but also to share with them that we have now a space in Edinburgh and it’s established space in Edinburgh as Venue 13. And we also have hopefully we’ll have soon an ongoing year round space, which is going to be have a physical space, but also an online space in Future 13. And I believe that people now want to collaborate and it’s one of those things you need to know who is in that space to basically start the collaboration, start the conversations, and this will definitely open the doors and we will have presenters that we would’ve met them here and they’ll be presenting with us in 20 26, 20 27. I do feel like that’s a connection that we can make quite easily here.

Ian (22:46):
That’s great. And what about the event itself? Anything that you’d change or anything that could be done differently to make it even better?

Vanesa (22:54):
I think I didn’t realize that the place itself is kind of quite far apart from the main city. I think that it is quite well put together. I think the schedule sometimes overlaps a little bit, which is a bit of a shame, so we have to make tough choices to go to one thing or not another. As a vegan myself, I felt like there could have been a few more vegan options perhaps, but I do believe in generally when we’re looking through the apps and through the offerings and restaurants and things, it feels a little bit limiting still. So heads up, it is HAI is getting better, but I do feel like if they have that in their minds for the future as well, tell me, I haven’t experienced this before, but I felt like it’s quite cold inside the buildings and inside the theaters, but it’s really hot outside, so I don’t know if you can hear in my voice.

(23:49):
I already have a bit of a sharpness to it because I actually am getting a summer cold. It is just because again, it’s the culture of having here the very cold inside, so inside the car, inside the building and just extremely hot weather outside and I believe that that’s quite a shock. And if you’re going to bring here people from all over the world, they’re going to be feeling that difference. And I do feel like the building itself, it’s a little bit on the cold side now. We were both part of the research symposium on Monday. Should we tell the audience how does it feel to present alongside so many international voices?

Ian (24:28):
Well, along with the event that I was at in Chicago earlier this month where we got to share AI campfire, it was installed at the WT center there. It’s been really exciting to get the word out in general about the work. Now that we’ve been able to get a little bit of distance from it. It’s not every day running. We’re not on that fringe schedule of 14 hour days every day. And because then we’ve had to do this work of distilling it down into something we can share with others, it’s been really helpful for me to think about where we’re headed next and then be able to have the conversation with people who are listening and getting excited about it or even critical about it to be like, what are the things that I need to be thinking about moving ahead now that it’s not just like go, go, go, go. Show, show, show, show, show.

Vanesa (25:16):
No, yeah, I actually, I agree with you as well. From my experience, I felt like being able to talk about the show as opposed to just showing the show allowed us to explain to people the reasoning behind it and to share more about the various aspects of ai. I feel like right now it’s almost as if we have a duty of teaching people that there are varieties of ways someone can use AI and that they’re not all necessarily completely detrimental to either the environment or to the practice. I do feel like the talks like this ones are extremely useful to pass that message along. What ideas stood out to you from other presenters?

Ian (25:57):
For me it was about the interactions between different types of performance. I mean that’s what ours is about at its core, but I think we saw that about many types of presentations, like how we relate to others, to the environment, to technology. It’s all about unpacking these different types of interactions that we have with humans and non-humans alike. What about you?

Vanesa (26:23):
Other than the workshops on the community side of things that were very, very wonderful and there were great ideas that I’m going to implement. Another one that I would like to know more about is there was a presenter who was a digital costume designer, which to me that was extremely revolutionary because we have in our own show we have Symbiolene and when we were created Symbiolene, we were torn between creating her digitally or to actually for me to put on the kind of motion capture suit and to move with her and to give life to Symbiolene. And at the time it felt, because due to ignorance, it felt like a really complicated and it felt like we were very inexperienced. But now that I’ve seen this presentation and I’ve seen how the characters that this person has built digitally can move with ease and is been moving real life by this person wearing the motion capture sort of like a suit, it opens up idea for what could be other installations of AI campfire. Could we have something that really brings AI to life in real time whilst it being moved by a person, by a performer. So these are things that again, it brought more questions, but that’s a good thing. More questions are always good is when you just don’t even know what to ask about. That’s where the ideas just die basically.

(27:50):
Did anything surprise you about how people are thinking about the theater and sustainability in 2025?

Ian (27:57):
I think the thing that surprised me was just how edible everything is. There is the scoby, there’s been things on fermentation. I’ve had conversations around growing sets and things like that and it’s been something that I’ve been part of those conversations before and talk to other people about those topics before, but it seems to be an undercurrent here. So I think that the surprise is just how delicious World Stage Design is this time around. I mean the food’s also been good too, but it seems to be an undercurrent of things.

Vanesa (28:34):
I think I agree with that. Yeah, everything seems to be now we’re trying to, we’re aiming for things that are made in of scoby, seaweed, mycelium and I quite like that. We’ve had a chat with someone earlier today about buildings and how we could potentially integrate mycelium into buildings and I like the fact that we’re not creating things that are going to end up barren and unused. There is this idea as well that pre pandemic and then post pandemic and there’s a train of thought that people are being asked to return to office because there are all these buildings that the contract still need to be paid for. And it is kind of like are we tying ourselves to the status quo just because it was built for it, can we not create buildings that actually have a shorter or smaller lifespan to them? And I like the idea of leaving nothing behind once we’re done with it. Do you think there is a growing overlap between the research and the practice between what’s being studied and what’s happening on stage?

Ian (29:38):
I think so. I think it goes hand in hand with the questions of how we make things. So it’s not just about what we do, not just doing things but why we’re doing them and sort of one thing leads to another and then you’re down a deep well of more questions, which just means that you’re doing the research. How do you feel about coming in overall, having joined the research conversation here, it’s your first time presenting in this sort of way?

Vanesa (30:03):
It is actually, and it actually makes me want to get more involved. If anything, I’ve already seen that there are calls for papers, calls for talks or calls for abstracts. And I’m thinking I’ve never thought that, first of all, I never thought that my ideas were going to actually become a real show and now that they are a show, I feel like that I should write them down and I should continue on this research. And I feel like once you put that knowledge out there, you meet other people that are also researching the same thing as you and maybe between each other we can all answer some questions that we all have now. It’s amazing seeing all these international collaborations and it makes me think about Venue 13. How do you see what’s happening at WSD connecting to what we are building here in Edinburgh?

Ian (30:49):
It’s a lot more connected than I had originally thought. We’ve had a lot more conversations about work, which would come to the venue than I imagined, but it also makes sense. A lot of the work seen here is design driven with very specific production needs and that’s something we’re focused on. So it’s ultimately making a lot of sense to me. Really it sort of shows the gap we’re trying to address at the fringe with the venue where the unique and maybe complex production needs of our project form a barrier to participation. So we’re just not seeing that work as much. For our listeners who might be new to us, Venue 13 is now open for inquiries for August of 2026, and we’re especially keen to hear from artists and designers who share these values of sustainability and inclusion. What has being here shown you about the types of projects that we might host this summer?

Vanesa (31:43):
We had a few conversations already with people that have projects and what it made it very both easy and complicated at the same time. We are a wonderful venue. We are kind a startup venue, 50 seaters, 60 seaters. We don’t have that many spaces. So once was a concern of will we have enough people because we’re a fantastic location, our great space, I feel like we don’t have enough spaces and I feel like we’re going to sell out if anything very quickly. And there’s this whole curation idea and this place again made it very easy and very hard, easy because everything here upholds value that we have a Venue 13 pretty much, which also makes it easy and hard because it’s like, well, we only have a certain amount of spaces. So yes, please, if you would like to talk to us about performing at Venue 13 in Edinburgh in 2026, this the time, drop us an email, let’s just have that conversation. Absolutely no pressure. But if we don’t have that conversation, we will not know what possibilities are there.

Ian (32:50):
And Future 13, that’s the nonprofit arm that we’re developing feels very aligned with the spirit of WSD. Do you want to share a little bit more about that as it’s sort of in the works right now?

Vanesa (33:01):
It is in the works. We have actually submitted our application and we do believe we have quite a strong application and constitution. So once that’s approved, we will be able to elevate the offerings of Venue 13 into a teachable ongoing support slash workshop that people can actually access to present not just at the Fringe but anywhere else. But as soon as you speak to someone about the Fringe, the first thing that they feel is that they said they’re feeling overwhelmed. They don’t even know where to start. And it is an absolute beast and with our knowledge combined creating Future 13 and giving this support, I believe it’ll change lives. It’ll make people feel much more connected to the fringe in a global scale.

Ian (33:47):
I think that’s a good place to bring us to the end of the episode. That’s an excellent sentiment to bring it to. It’s been quite the week here in Sharjah from sharing another CCTA play here on the podcast and into diving into the world of World Stage Design 2025.

Vanesa (34:06):
It really was very special for me being A WSD for the first time. It feels like stepping into a global laboratory of ideas, so much creativity, so much generosity, and it’s brilliant to know that what we’re doing at Venue 13 and Future 13 connects with that international conversation.

Ian (34:25):
Exactly. It’s really all about community. The same energy we saw at WSD is what drives this podcast and our work here in Edinburgh. Speaking of which, a quick reminder, Venue 13 is open for inquiries for August, 2026 of your performer, designer or company looking for home at the fringe and you want the type of support that we can offer, please to get in touch.

Vanesa (34:47):
Yes, we’d love to hear from you and next we will be back with another play from the Climate Change, the Action plus more highlights and conversations about sustainability, creativity, and performance.

Ian (34:58):
So whether you’re joining us from Edinburgh or anywhere else in the world, thanks for being part of this growing community.

Vanesa (35:05):
Thank you again for choosing us and for making podcasts of the team part of your week. We’ll see you very soon.

Ian (35:10):
Until then, take care and keep exploring. On today’s episode, you heard the directors of Venue 13, Ian and Vanesa. We read Space Cat by Lewis Hetherington. Thanks for listening to this week’s episode. If you enjoyed the conversation, make sure to hit subscribe so you never miss an update. You can find us wherever you get your podcast. We’d also love it if you take a moment to leave us a review. It helps get more people to discover the podcast and join the community. It’s especially helpful to get those on Apple podcasts so we rise to be the most popular hybrid vegan climate theater podcast in Edinburgh. It’s a highly competitive niche, but honestly, it’s a big help even if we are a very specific flavor. Got thoughts, questions, or ideas for future episodes, we’d love to hear from you. You can reach us at podcast@venue13.com and across the socials @venue13fringe. Our back episodes and transcript can be found on our website, venue thirteen.com. The music you heard through the episode is by Dusty Decks, which we got through Epidemic Sound. Until next time, thanks again for tuning in and we’ll be back with another episode soon.