RM Um, maybe western with your first question because maybe that's a good way in but maybe just to say the I guess the intention, like we're delighted about the nomination, the Olivier nomination for Ruination, but we wanted to have this conversation as a chance to open up the way we work together, I guess alongside that feeling that it's never a one-person endeavour. BD Yes. You just said it so that's good. (Laughter) RM Maybe we should ask each other the questions. And I will (laughter) and I'll try, I don't know what I was trying to do there. BD No that was good, I thought it was a good introduction, I thought that was excellent. (Laughter). Yeah, because I was thinking it would be good to start with the collaboration question, but maybe it's good to start with the Olivier question, just so that's kind of out of the way and no doubt it's a good way in. RM Yeah, maybe. BD I don't know, let's try, let's try. RM Let's try it. BD Um, okay...so uh... (laughter) RM Do you know what this is going to be... it's going to be like, what do you two do, well we mess about. BD Yeah. We have no idea what we're doing.(laughter) Raqs. So how did you feel about the Olivier Award nomination? Raquel Meseguer I think as you know, I had really mixed feelings about it. Really delighted that the show had been nominated, and that the storytelling and craft of that work got recognised for such a brilliant award. But at the same time, feeling like the dramaturgy, and the form and storytelling of that show had been reduced to a singular role in a way that doesn't really reflect the reality of how we all worked together in the studio: how much of the concept was yours; and how much of the piece is shaped by your writing; and also by the choreography, and the performance of the devising company. Maybe we can talk a bit more about what might be different about devising companies. Because the performers that you work with, don't just kind of manifest a scene, it's sort of everything that they bring to a process, which means that you write in response to them in that very generative space, something that comes from spending that time together. And everybody bringing, all that they bring. So that was my sense. Also, maybe a sense that the term 'dramaturg' - a bit like 'producer' - feels and looks different in every example I've seen of it. Having worked a little bit with dramaturgs in Berlin while I was on residency and seeing other people working with dramaturgs, it seems to be something that is defined by the working company. And so I had the sense that maybe the way we think about dramaturgy might not be exactly the same way that the Olivier panel think about dramaturgy. Not sure. Ben Duke Yeah. I mean, I was thinking about awards in general. I suppose awards in general, are always a kind of simplification, or maybe awards in general are still based on a model of making work that seems a bit outdated. I don't know if it's outdated. But it certainly doesn't feel like it quite fits into the devising process in terms of titles and roles. I guess it's always easier to kind of attribute something to a single person. I know that we've spoken about this already with crediting, it's like, how do we?... it's impossible, it feels, even on a programme to accurately represent the process. Unless you're trying to do some kind of level hierarchy, which also feels like it doesn't quite represent the process, either. Because t's not a completely kind of democratic utopia collaborative creation, either. Raquel Meseguer Yeah, I mean, crediting feels like those roles kind of point to something - they point to what you've taken care of on that show. And maybe that does work in some cases, but things are so much more fluid and porous, especially when you come from a background of devising or that is your main practice. That always feels sort of flatter, more horizontal than anything kind of hierarchical or individualistic. I think the industry, maybe capitalism as a whole is in danger of - there's a post by thenapministry that I love, which says something like, "divest from toxic individualism. You do nothing alone, like your whole life is a collaboration". And that feels very true to me. Ben Duke So mixed, really happy for the show, and for the company, and slightly uncomfortable about carrying the banner this time. Not carrying the banner on behalf of the company, just that like I've been given a banner with just my name on it rather than everybody's name, if you know what I mean. Maybe we should talk about the question you were you were suggesting around trying to unpack a bit the nature of our collaboration, maybe in general, as well as on this project, which is a big, complicated topic. Raquel Meseguer Yeah. I mean, I was thinking about this. That it's nearly - well I think it is 20 years now since we started making work together. Ben Duke Yeah. Raquel Meseguer And there's so many kinds of narrative puzzles that we've tried to unpack together, and that creates a kind of shorthand, and also I think a trust. Like we know what we've followed before and what have been rabbit holes that haven't led other places - not that we don't still go down them. But I think that length of collaboration, that really long time collaboration, which is something we kind of dreamed about when we first started making work that like Pina Bausch we could have a company of people that work together over many, many years. So that you can build up that kind of bedrock of practice and of understanding and trust. But I think we've always been fascinated by similar stories. So in the earlier works - when we were younger (laughter) - it was around 'what if' stories and alternative timelines or endings was something that really fascinated us. And then maybe as we've gotten older, especially since Paradise Lost - which I feel like Lost Dog's way of working now really landed in that process of Paradise Lost i.e. working with the text and taking it on and really changing it. And the delight in taking on a grand narrative, like Paradise Lost or Juliet and Romeo and humanising it, sort of dragging it into 21st century. Really playing with that, and with the Space also. I feel like that was something really important about Paradise Lost - your relationship to the space and how the space was kind of messing with you. And getting clearer about the role of the audience, which is something we've spoken about a lot. I was watching some interviews with Jérôme Bell recently - if we were to trace our family tree of influences, I feel like Jérôme bell would definitely be in there - and he talks very much about activating the audience, strategies to activate the audience and for their role to be more than a passive spectator. I feel quite a few things landed with Paradise Lost: that way of working with a text, and the role of the audience, and thinking about space as a more active agent in the storytelling that maybe we had done before. I don't know if those things - Ben Duke No, that feels really true. I mean, I was thinking about the kind of 'how things started' thing. We started working together at college: where at various points during those three years, there's these kind of weird moments where there's an opportunity to make work. And people kind of sidle up to other people and be like, "do you want to make a piece with me?" It's a bit like a weird kind of asking someone out scenario. And that happened, and there were various kind of constellations of that. And I guess, like any kind of relationship, I certainly felt very quickly, that kind of chemistry. And it clearly articulated at the time - I agree, I think we both were interested in stories. And I think we both felt in slightly different ways, like kind of outsiders or late arrivals to this kind of dance thing, even though our roots into it were different. But it felt like there was something that happened in the pieces that we made together, there was that sense of flow, which just happened very easily. And I can think of other examples even with people I really respected or whose work, I really liked, there wasn't a flow is was a kind of clash of....it felt like that's something to do with - like this phrase you said of 'What's each person taking care of?' And somehow it felt like it worked. And I mean, originally, we were dancing together and we were making duets, so we where working on ourselves. And that's what hard then to kind of identify exactly what that is. It's just a kind of, yeah, it's a relationship, isn't it? It's a collaboration. From the very beginning we didn't say "I'm going to do this and you're going to do that". And there's a long history, and there's been changes in that along the way and changes in the way Lost Dog was set up or the way we were making work, but I feel like that foundation is a thing that carries on throughout. Which isn't that helpful in talking about collaboration because I can't really identify what that is except for the idea of a shared interest and then a flow in the experience of being in a studio together. Raquel Meseguer Yeah, I agree, that flow did happen remarkably easily. I think also definitely we were slightly outsiders at Dance College. Slightly older, and I guess not not entirely comfortable in the techniques that were being offered us - Ben Duke Yes. Definitely true for me (laughter) Raquel Meseguer And the sense that we really wanted to tell stories and to make work that was really accessible in that way. Because contemporary dance can so often be quite inaccessible, or can make people feel silly, because they don't understand it, or they don't know how to read it and really wanting to tell stories that all our mates could enjoy. And I think we've always really enjoyed talking a lot around a piece of work. And drawing in like - which is probably how everybody works, I guess - drawing in a lot of literary references and getting, really spending time unpacking what we think about a text, which still feels really useful. But yeah pinning down the exact sort of scaffold of a collaboration does feel really tricky. Ben Duke Yeah. it does. I mean, it felt like there was a bringing things to the table, which was a kind of shared process. And I have to say, when we made Hungry Ghosts - which was about a year after we left college two years after we left college, I can't remember - it was mainly with people we trained with. And we were talking about companies like Forced Entertainment and imagining this collaborative process and feeling like, wow, this could be a group of people in this thing. And I remember really wanting that and hoping that that was what was going to happen. But then also - I don't know when I recognised this, probably not during that process - that unfortunately, that probably wasn't how I was gonna work (laughter) And I remember feeling quite disappointed about that, because I really liked this idea of multiple minds being better than one and the kind of strange chaos of that process and of lots of Lost Dog processes, kind of throwing up things that just seemed impossible to kind of, conceive of, if you're sitting at a desk or or if I was sitting by myself. I was like, there's so much here, in what happens in this shared experience. But even then, I think there was a kind of writing thing going on for me, even then I would kind of disappear off.I recognised that I needed to hold some part of the process as a completely kind of private thing. I mean, you talked about toxic individualism at the beginning. And I realised that - I don't know, whether it's a personality thing, or probably to do with my background, I came through a schooling system that was absolutely about individualism, and encouraging that to such a degree - yeah, it was all about competition, all about the importance of the individual and the success of the individual. Yeah, I guess I have to own that and say that....the idea of that kind of company collaboration was a kind of fantasy for me, based on what I was hoping I was going to be like and actually discovering that unfortunately, I wasn't like that and I needed this kind of private control of certain key elements. And possibly that was also to do with the idea of where an idea kind of comes from? Yeah, Raquel Meseguer Yeah. I mean, that's something really important to say I think. That the writing is really something that you hold, and everybody else feeds into that. But I think some of the puzzles you need to solve by yourself. Like there's often a point where we get to in the studio where you're like, 'I need to go and, and have some time away'. Because that's a different way of thinking through things than with a group of people. And so yeah, there are different moments, I guess, of puzzling something out together as a collective. But also you very much need that time. And that's a very 'you' process: taking everything that the dancers and the performers have offered, and all the other ideas that are sort of in the room and that we're talking around and about - that you distil it down into a kind of form, that hangs off the words and then those are made into scenes with the choreography and with other things. Also with the music, I feel like another thing we do is - the music is very much part of the storytelling toolbox. We were talking the other day with Daisy and Emma and Daisy said, you know, "the author is dead?" Is that a kind of theory? Ben Duke Yeah, that's from literary theory, that point - I can't remember who said - there was this kind of idea that single - Well, I guess, with books, it was more to do with, the meaning of the book, or what you take from this is, is what you take from this. You don't have - Raquel Meseguer It's subjective. Ben Duke We don't have to go back to an author and what they intended and what they meant and their kind of autobiography or any of that stuff. And I think the choreographers kind of 'dead' as well, I guess. I mean, actually, that's probably not quite true. There's probably still a lot of 'alive' choreographers, or there's a lot of choreographers who work in the way that people imagined choreographers to work, which I think is um - I remember when I was working with Rambert a while ago, and I wrote an article about that process. And I did that thing, which you should never do, which is look at the comments that people put under (laughter) And someone had written like, "why, you know, what is this person doing?" Like, in other art forms that people arrive - like a composer would arrive with the notes written down. Like" why is this person turning up with no clue as to what he's doing?" Raquel Meseguer As in no set movement, that you are teaching that to somebody? Ben Duke Exactly. Nothing kind of worked out. And I looked at that and I thought, yeah, that's such a profound difference of understanding as to what that role is. And I think maybe there are people who consider that to be the role of the choreographer: you turn up with with the set moves, and you've worked it out, and you've got the music in your head and off you go. So when I think about that, I'm like, "well, choreographer isn't even the right word for what's happening in this process". But it is the word - tthat's what I put on the form when I fill in my tax returns. Raquel Meseguer Tax Return! Me too (laughter) Ben Duke What am I? Choreorgrapher doesn't seem quite right. So maybe we are also in a point where the choreographer is kind of dead or dying, limping along. Raquel Meseguer Very, very slowly. Is that just a difference within certain practices within dance: some is devised and made with the dancers, a lot coming from them; and then some is that more hierarchical top down; and then some is completely improvised in the moment. So like who's the choreographer of that? I suppose that maybe ties us back to the what I felt about the award, is that I'm not quite sure how the Olivier panel thinks about those roles. Like I like I don't know what they're - Ben Duke Yeah, I don't know either - Raquel Meseguer I don't know what their their thinking is around that, or how they hold that. And I just don't know. Ben Duke Yeah. I wonder what their experiences have been, I wonder who they are? presumably they're kind of their experts, you know, they're people who know about dance. I mean, it feels like in general dance is a devised process, even if someone's come up with all the steps, you're still kind of entering into - You know Day one of rehearsal you don't really have anything, even if that person has kind of worked out a lot, you're still kind of starting - you know, devising is always going to be part of even with the most organised choreographers' process, I think devising is always part of it. But there is a sense that, like I say, we operate inside a model that has been defined by the making of theatre, which is usually begun with an existing script. And that usually takes a certain amount of time and I mean, there's devised theatre as well, which I'm sure has a more complicated process. I mean, actually, interestingly though, was it last year the someone Best Supporting Actor award went to like seven performers who were the operators of a puppet, Tiger? Which felt interesting. But again, it's seven people, but it's a single character so maybe that's still defined. But that's clearly, very clearly an onstage kind of collective endeavour. Raquel Meseguer An ensemble. Ben Duke Yeah, so maybe there is a recognition of that kind of, the ensemble, how things work. Raquel Meseguer I guess for the record, I feel like the the dramaturgy role on this piece, or the shorthand in terms of how we work together, is that I'm taking care of the overall arc - I'm taking care of that with you, very much. But I think what I'm taking care of is the philosophy and the ideas and the sort of aesthetics of the piece and trying to make sure that they hang - that they are true to what we set out to do and to the initial concept and premise. And also that those things are all supporting the storytelling and supporting one another and that no one element or thing is sort of pulling us too far, in one direction or another. So it's a kind aligning of all the elements and being in conversation with you about that, as well as about the story and how that's told. So Jackie, and I had some really interesting conversations about like the dramaturgy of the lighting, in terms of trying to stay really true to how you'd set up the logic of the space: the Nutcracker being above and the afterlife being beyond, out one door and how that was lit and how we drew attention to that. And also, how to not get distracted by all the stuff that you suddenly have by being able to work at the Royal Opera House, and sort of fooling yourself that something in the story might be sort of fixed by tech, you know, like - Ben Duke It's always a mistake! (laughter) Raquel Meseguer It never it never works. If there's a there's something in the story that needs change or that needs support it has to be done in the story, I think. But it was really interesting to to If there's conversations about about the logic of the lighting with Jackie and and I guess I feel like it in shows where, like, - sometimes I don't completely get them like some of Jérôme Bell's pieces - but where the logic has been really scrutinised and really thought about, I feel held in a certain way as an audience member. And so I guess that's what we're trying to do within Lost Dog show is kind of really interrogate the logic and the premise and the aesthetics, so that the audience feel that. Ben Duke Yeah, I think that's a really accurate description of what you do. I mean, I was thinking about this, this kind of opening and closing of a process, and it feels like there's various parts, which are kind of - so if I think about my relationship with the performers, and how there's a kind of closing in there, or some of that, that feels private, and I even notice how, you know, in a lot of the rehearsals I want to be kind of, in the space kind of talking to them. Yeah, I don't know what that's about. I don't even want to be that far away, or sit back, I want to kind of be in there. And that's this kind of amazing thing where, I mean particularly with this group of performers, who were amazing. And there's something that's happening there, that is also a collaboration, because it's like, here's a task, or here's an idea, or here's me responding to something that you have offered in an improvisation. So that there's that thing that happens, and you have to get into it, you have to get into the detail. And you have to get into the specifics of it. And then there's this process, then there's this point of opening it out. And going, okay - which I feel is what your role was in this as well - to be like, Okay, we don't need to talk you through all of that closed stuff we've been doing. But here's this thing, and we've slightly lost track of what we're doing, because we've been in, and then this is opening process. And you were then, like you say, kind of holding on to the things we'd spoken about, or the sense of the entire, the sense of the whole, which I guess is different, because we used to be the two people in there being closed in together. And there were definitely moments in that, which we didn't kind of always recognise where we needed to open it out where we kind of got lost into the the thing. But I think with this, or maybe over the last few shows, we've identified that having you there, too much is not so useful, because then you become part of that closed process. But having you there when the process opens up means that suddenly you have a different perspective somehow. A useful perspective on all. Raquel Meseguer Yeah, I like the language. I like that way of talking about it, of the parts of the process that are really intense and internal and closed. And then the moment when you open that out, to discover what you're really saying and what's really landing. And to talk a bit more about the team, because I feel like, what makes a show like Ruination possible is this incredible team, this incredible group of performers that you have, and the relationship with Wins as assistant choreographer, and rehearsal director and with Andrea. I guess I want to say how important each of those roles is, especially on this show. Ben Duke Yeah. Raquel Meseguer Because the performance create pretty much all the material in response to tasks and in response to ideas and improvisations. And then there's a kind of process of setting that and maybe distilling what a score is and what it isn't. And getting clearer on that, which I guess you and Wins - and the company did for each other as well, because they're all artists in the roundest sense of the word rather than just dancers (although no one's ever 'just' a dancer). But they're artists and they make their own work and they have many skills. And then you and Wins I guess, refine that or distil it down to get to the choreography that you see in the show, and that is then pieced together, woven together with the story. Ben Duke Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think that you were talking earlier about this idea of trying to identify who does what, and it would be kind of interesting, you know, if we - I'm mean I'm gald we don't - kind of the stamping of something going that was my idea - Raquel Meseguer that was my instruction - Ben Duke Yeah, that led to that. And that step there that was so and so's creation, kind of divide it all up. There's a sense of not really being able to kind of keep track of that. And also trusting - without wishing to make it sound like I then take credit for those things - but then trusting that actually, ideas often spark off each other or build around each other and that's something to do with the atmosphere of a room. And I think again, that's this strange alchemy of a group of people. Because for me, that's always about the kind of lightness and the sense of creativity. For me, it's very rarely in the kind of heavy place, it's nearly always in the kind of playful place. And how you maintain that atmosphere is really important. And again, I think there was a talent amongst this group or a shared chemistry amongst this group, which meant that playfulness was there. But then as you say, Wins is choreographing. She's making that material work, she's generating that material with them. Yeah, she's choreographing that. And Andrea was working with them on the acting the text and she's directing that. You know there's points where I'm like, things are happening and I'm not really central to any of them. And that's great, because again, this comes down to time, like we're trying to do a massive thing in a very short amount of time. So there's a kind of efficiency to that of going, 'Okay, well, that's happening over there', these things can happen simultaneously, which helps us kind of gather more time. But also there are different parts to the scaffold, different people take care of different parts of that. Yeah, definitely. And I mean, that's also about getting to getting to know, trying to understand my own process, or who are the people that are part of that. And I think like you, you know, if this was an award for me as a director of the show, then I would feel a need for for this conversation as well because again, it makes everyone's life easier to put it down to a single person and you see that as people accept awards, they're often like this is for everyone, I just need it to be acknowledged the making of any show is basically a kind of collective endeavour. And yeah, this one particularly, the people that we had - you know, the way Jackie, whose title is lighting designer, his kind of contribution to story - Raquel Meseguer to Lost Dog Ben Duke Yeah, to Lost Dog and to the whole thing and how it works. To Yshani whose role is musical director her kind of thoughts and contribution to characters. You know, all of these things. Yeah, there's so much crossing over. I mean Yshani would always begin her comments with 'this is none of my business, but...' (laughter) and it was always great because yeah officially, this is not your job description but this - Raquel Meseguer And some rehearsal spaces don't invite that, you know, some spaces don't. But I've always seen you create a space that does invite that and that invites everybody's thoughts and feelings about something. Which I think is quite special. I'm sorry, I slightly interrupted you when you said there about what Jackie contributes to story, because I was remembering that the initial provocation to play with space as a more active agent was Jackie's on Paradise Lost. So those things that have become central tenants of the the way you make work comes from yourself, but also from the many people you've you've collaborated with. And yeah, those things become more central - I'm just repeating myself now - Ben Duke I agree, it's a really good point. Because you're right Paradise Lost, so much kind of shifted or aligned - Raquel Meseguer Or sort of landed? Ben Duke And I think pretty much every show since Paradise Lost has begun with this very explicit contact with the audience. And you're right, because Jackie was in a way the designer of that show, not just with lights, but he was the one playing with this idea of how is the space kind of interfering or consciously discrupting - Raquel Meseguer helping or hindering you in your in your storytelling - Ben Duke Which has also then become a kind of really key thing that we consider. You know, where are we? What is this space? What are we doing here as performers, but also what are you the audience doing here? Even though we were kind of interested in that before, and interestingly, hungry ghosts had a kind of direct address thing to it. But it wasn't clarified in such a way and it became central. You're right. And I think that has a lot to do with Jackie's contribution - I mean, I think Jackie's always contributed in this kind of - I don't know how to describe - I know that he is paying attention to the detail, but sometimes, sometimes I feel like he's not. And I'm kind of really grateful for that, there's a kind of watching of it. But then there's a response to it that's often coming slightly, not from where I'd expect. And that always shifts things in a really useful way. I'm not saying he's not paying attention, he is paying attention, but he's kind of, you know, I love it when we've made a bit of material that so clearly exists on stage right or something. And he's like, Well, why don't we just light that - Raquel Meseguer Stage left? Ben Duke With a stage left corridor? That's like, a metre wide and I'm like 'yeah, I mean, the choreography doesn't do that. But yeah'. Raquel Meseguer Yeah we had conversations on Ruination where I was like, 'Jackie, doesn't that just need a corridor of light' and he's always under cutting that, what that does I think, is give the audience more ways to watch and more ways to view and not to fall into something too predictable or too obvious or too linear or clarity-centric - Ben Duke Yeah. Raquel Meseguer And yeah, it's definitely a slightly left field way of thinking or slightly outside the box, which is really useful. Yeah. And then you know, light and sound design can do so much. And Jethro did such a great job of making the underworld a kind of sonic place. Ben Duke Yes. And again, was amazing. And also there was a - what's the word? There was a good relationship, some kind of alliance in terms of Yshani's work and Jethro's work and how they solved problems together as well, really added a lot. Because that's the problem, I suppose if you do stay too much inside your job description, then - it's hard, isn't it? There has to be that overlap, and that slightly kind of porous boundaries between it all while at the same time people think... So if I find myself in a situation where we are trying to write something together, or even if I've occasionally found myself, kind of trying to co- direct something - this, I find hard. Because I don't really know how to - I need I need some kind of definition around the role or what I'm responsible for. But then you want those edges to be porous. But yeah, I mean, it's obvious isn't, I think we've probably said it's really the people and finding the right people. And there's luck involved in that. And then there's the kind of the holding onto those people once you find them (laughter). And going 'this works, this works, let's do it again.' Raquel Meseguer I agree. But there's also something in an accumulated knowledge of how to create a process like that for people, and how to hold a room like that for people. That is a real skill of yours. And I've seen you do that and create a camaraderie between people in very short workshops, like a two day workshop as well as within a longer devising process. And that probably feels equally difficult to separate into its constituent parts, what that skill might be. But, I just want to name it. Ben Duke Thanks. Yeah. I don't know what that is. I mean, we've spoken about this before, but I think about our training, and I think about the situations where I felt - maybe because we were older, there's definitely parts of dance training, which are kind of inherently patronising and, and hierarchical. And there were situations where that that's that sense of being - I was going to say, that sense of being a student was removed, it wasn't exactly removed, I still felt (like a student) - I'm thinking about like Rick's classes, improvisation - Yes, Sue Mac - and Karen as well, classes where we were kind of - Raquel Meseguer treated much more as equals - Ben Duke yeah, we were treated much more as equals, but there was a sense of being an artist. We were considered to be artists in those rooms in a way that perhaps you weren't in other in other parts of that training. But I remember the relief of that and being like, 'Oh, wow', you know, I can still acknowledge that I know a lot less than the these people, but what I liked was that they didn't come into those spaces with a sense of like, 'I know more than you'. They came into those spaces with a sense of like, 'okay, how about this?' Or, you know, 'let's, explore this' and I loved that - Raquel Meseguer Yeah the dynamic of respect and power was totally different in those spaces and classes. In some of the spaces it felt like people just cared about what you were doing with your body and then there wasn't any kind of care around the sort of bigger you - that might be going a bit far - Ben Duke I mean, I think it's just the nature of that training, there's a focus on technique. And that requires a certain way of talking a certain way of - but I certainly felt kind of a bit oppressed by that and felt released in those places where I felt like - I mean, again, with a workshop or even the first days of rehearsal, it's like, I genuinely feel that that I'm part of the kind of gathering of people together, which is also why I love working with voice and people talking because that immediately means you can get into hearing about people and who they are. And in a way that perhaps it would take longer if we were just moving. Yeah, cuz I love that onstage as well. I love to watch shows where I don't feel aware of a choreographer's vision or the imposition of a kind of singular, thing. I mean, we were always talking about Pina Bausch. But that is facilitated by a single kind of amazing artist, and yet you watch those performers and you feel like, I'm watching a group of individuals, and I don't feel like they are executing something they've been told to do. I feel like they are living something here. I love seeing that onstage, that sense of ownership. Have we got off the topic of collaboration? Raquel Meseguer I'm not sure (laughter). I'm just going to check our little list of questions. See if there was anything else - I feel like maybe the only question that we haven't talked was this really generous one of yours, which was to acknowledge that the work I make, separate to Lost Dog, has taken me away from conventional spaces. And this question, you had which was 'how do I feel about traditional theatre as a site for shows? both as a performer and spectator? and I really appreciated that question. Because whilst I do work in different spaces, when I'm not working with Lost Dog - I work with rest is a strategy for making art and engaging with art and gathering in public together - it made me think of this talk I listened to recently with a neuroscientist called, I'm gonna get his name wrong, I think it's called Daecher Keltner. And he's been investigating the science of awe and the first two things that are bring us awe are seeing struggle in one another, and collective effervescence. And we've always spoken about the theatre as a kind of space of gathering, as being something special. I think we've all at times, we might have even talked about it as slightly sacred - a space where we come together with a certain kind of modern ritual, where we know what we're doing (more or less, sometimes we're asked to do something a bit different), but we sit with something together. And that togetherness, as being something really important that in our contemporary sort of more secular life, we have less than less spaces for maybe. So I still really do believe in that, that come in together as like an important thing. And it's interesting that now neuroscience can sort of show us how our brains do sort of become entrained, they sort of synch up and how that coming together affects our nervous systems. Which I guess is something we've known, it's been in the knowledge of our bones, because maybe that's why we've kept doing it. So I I still really do believe in the potential of traditional theatre spaces for that and for telling stories that help us make sense of ourselves or maybe take us into a very different experience that allows us to build a bridge towards an experience that we maybe can't imagine or comprehend or sits very far outside our realities, of the ways we live. Yeah, Ben Duke That's great. Yeah, I need to read that. I think it helps to have things that kind of make sense of this thing that we often find hard to talk about - Raquel Meseguer it's difciult to articulate why isn't it? Ben Duke Yeah, and it can get quite kind of - sometimes seems too much to talk about theatre as a kind of sacred space, or the kind of spiritual aspect of what happens when people experience something together. But, it's definitely there. And it's definitely the thing that kind of like you say, keeps us coming back to it. But also, which is maybe what your work is also touching on - that kind of ritual and those buildings can also be a barrier to access because if these rituals aren't familiar, or if there's not someone who's invited you into those spaces, you know, then then maybe that seems like a weird thing to do or a hard thing to be part of. Raquel Meseguer Yeah. Because, who can't get into that space? Or who do we leave behind by not making spaces accessible to everybody? Like, I will find the award ceremony difficult, like I will find sitting through a long show difficult - Ben Duke It's really long - Raquel Meseguer Is it - Ben Duke I looked at a (laughter) YouTube thing from last year it was like, three hours? Like, that's crazy. Raquel Meseguer I thought it might be about three hours - Ben Duke The dance one is normally quite early on. Maybe then you could sneak out for an ice cream? And then come back - Raquel Meseguer I mean, what I might need to do is ask if there's a resting space that's possible, or if it's possible to experience some of it in a different way. Because yeah, I do spend a lot of time doing that - asking venues to think a bit more widely about how they extend a really warm welcome to the disabled and the chronically ill community, not in just step free access, but in much wider invitation to slightly misbehave, in a way, if that makes you feel more well welcome or to do what you need to do to feel well in that space, is something that I'm increasingly working with venues in Bristol to talk about. Ben Duke Yeah, an accessible awards ceremony - Raquel Meseguer And accessible award ceremony would be amazing. Like, I'm going up to Edinburgh this year, for the first time in since we took The Drowner up in 2006. And Edinburgh (the Edinburgh Fringe Festival) feels like an incredibly inaccessible kind of thing - even things like how do you do accessible networking? How does that not become a conversation at 11 o'clock at a bar? which is definitely not a conversation I will be able to have. Yeah, anyway, this is maybe a part two conversation. Ben Duke Yeah, it's interesting. I think yeah, there's still something really so - I mean, we experienced that a bit at the Royal Opera House as well even though they were open to all that stuff. You're still like the design of this actual building is quite challenging and - Raquel Meseguer Yeah, and making those offers really - like making it possible to find them within a big building and a big website and even just finding those things can be really tricky. But just like maybe like a final - I don't know if this is the final thought but - I've been really obsessing about Jérôme Bell lately and watching lots of his interviews and in his interview for 'The Last Performance', he was talking about the idea that the audience come to theatre because they might see someone die on stage. And he kind of starts off talking about that as a kind of literal death and then more of a metaphorical death. Like when somebody messes up, those kind of little death moments -and it reminded me of 'In a Nutshell', the piece that you made with that idea that, you know, you could in live theatre, throw a shoe at somebody on stage. Like that's probably not going to happen, but this, this sense of risk. Also that togetherness, of coming together to to experience Theatre, which is exciting. I'm not saying that anyone should throw shoe at the stage. I don't mean - Ben Duke No. Possibility. Potential. Yeah, I think you're right. The potential that you could is important - (laughter) Raquel Meseguer Yeah. I don't know how to wrap up this conversation. I thought that might be a good way of ending - Ben Duke I think is I think that's a good place to end. I think I've lost sight of the beginning so I don't really know - Yeah, I think that's good. Let's finish there. Raquel Meseguer Yeah. I'm gonna stop -