Recorded 20th April 2026 Ess Grange and Jen Toksvig have decided to try having an informal podcast-y chat on a semi-regular but no-pressure basis. We’ll meet up when we can, with no planned topics, just whatever feels most alive in us at the time, and we’ll talk until we are done talking. This first one is recorded over Zoom using Otter, so it’s grainy and sounds like eavesdropping on our phone conversation. We’re posting it anyway. Maybe next time we’ll use the good mics we actually both have. JEN: Shall we… shall we talk about something? ESS: Sure. JEN: [chuckles] I’m not sure… so there’s lots of like, recordings about access and stuff. Like, people who have podcasts, and they talk to people who make accessible theatre, and they talk about things that are important and that I’m sure… I’m sure that people go and find that stuff and listen to it, if they want to know how to make their work more accessible. Right? That’s a thing that people do, right? ESS: Yeah, all the information is out there in the world. JEN: Do we think people go and find out, or no? ESS: I think some people maybe genuinely do. I think some people probably tick a little box for work, to show that they’ve done the thing they’re supposed to have done. JEN: Okay. ESS: I think probably… my sense is, for a bunch of people, they go, “Oh yeah, that’s the answer to that. And now I know the answer. Job done.” And then they don’t necessarily keep up with it as a conversation, rather than some answers. JEN: Here’s my thought currently: that this is about what matters to us as theatre makers. So I say to people a lot… I said this on a… gathering I was at the other night… so my friend Christopher Morrison, who is amazing, does digital access and all kinds of theatre making around that. And is a writer and is a cool human, and has this thing called Prompt, which is about narrative. It’s about challenging linear narrative, effectively, and ways that we can and should be more inclusive with storytelling, around using different forms of narrative. And it was a really interesting talk, as they all are. We’ve had a guy come and talk about kishotenketsu as a structure, and this one was a guy who came and talked about a book he’d written about how storytellers in contemporary media use… with dystopian and utopian stories, how they make excuses for, you know, “There’s this problem with the world, but then we’re just gonna ignore it, or we’re just gonna fix it, or we’re just gonna… we’re just gonna, you work within the system to address it. We’ll make legislation, and then it will go away!” It’s that kind of, that kind of storytelling. And I was talking, as I always do, about ‘Copenhagen’, about the process. And I was saying, as I always do, the story is the last thing, not the least thing, but the last - because the first thing is to think about the people who are coming into the space, and what kind of world that wants to feel like, that experiential world, not the fictional one, but just like, what kind of world you’re inviting people to step into, like if you host a party, and what kind of world that feels like. And it made me think again about how most of the creative people I know, certainly people in theatre, will talk about work they’re really excited to make. They’ll talk about the story, or they’ll talk about the thing they’re responding to in the world with storytelling. And I feel bad thinking that that’s wrong to put that first. I don’t, I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to put that first, but… but once you’re once you’re focusing on that, that’s what you’re focusing on. You know? Once you’re thinking about “I want to tell this story for this reason”... I’m part of a brilliant collective of playwrights who are writing something… female-identifying playwrights who are writing something in response to the Epstein files, and it… and the energy, and the passion, and the support, and all of that stuff is magical, wonderful. Not that we should need to have that kind of thing, but the fact that we do need to have it is… it’s amazing when it, when it does manifest, and people come together to respond to that stuff, and the focus is on that stuff and making that stuff happen, and finding a space to make that stuff happen. And I get it because, on the one hand, you’re… if I’m talking about just bringing people into a room, I’m talking about just bringing people into a room, and it doesn’t matter what story we’re telling at that stage, I’m just talking about, how can I make people be comfortable in the space? And on the other hand, the responding to the Epstein files is a really important thing. It’s the thing we’re doing. So I get very torn between… like, on the one hand, I care about The Broad Cloth, and the story and the place, and the people, and the stuff - and on the other hand, I’m inviting people into a space, and that surely is my first responsibility. So I go back and forth about… people don’t look up stuff about access, and don’t listen to podcasts, and don’t go beyond just getting an answer, because they have a thing they passionately want to tell, and I’m not going to tell them they’re wrong to be passionate about that. Because that’s what being a creative artist is. Right? It’s about having a thing you want to comment on or observe. ESS: Somewhat, yes. I think for me, there’s like… an equal priority with that is the form in which it’s told. Like the story alone isn’t enough. It’s like… the process is also, and what is the most appropriate way… what processes can take, can lead us to the most appropriate way to tell that story. So there’s the form and the content, basically. And I get more excited about the form than I do about the content, most of the time. So for me, the form has to meet… they have to meet each other, the form and the content have to meet each other, and they will affect each other. And… yeah, I think that’s my starting point. And I know, like, a lot of the time… it sort of comes back to that Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction tension of like, everyone is very programmed to the kind of Hero’s Journey arc, and the sort of single author idea that goes along with that. And so it’s all about, like, ‘pitch the story’. Like I was talking to a friend last week who does some writing for TV, and I was asking her about how that works, because of a project that I’m involved in. And she was telling me about, like, pitch decks and the sort of process of putting an idea in front, like a TV idea, in front of people that might commission it. And it’s all about, like, it’s all about trying to, like, sell people the story, the sort of elevator pitch of the story and the characters, and that that’s… you have to, like, hook people in, and all of the sort of terms around it have a sort of like… there’s a sort of hunting, a fishing kind of metaphor going on, right? That you have to, sort of like, you have to hook people in, and that the thing that you’re hooking them in to is this idea of the story, and this idea of, like, the lone genius author who’s like, got this story that’s like, so compelling… that, like, yeah, people are sort of unable to not… you can’t walk away from the story. JEN: It’s interesting, the word hook, because I write lyrics, obviously, and the hook of a song is the main thrust of the song. ESS: Yeah. JEN: But also, when I do fairytale gathering, and I talk about that, I talk about… there are barbs inside us, and bits of Velcro. ESS: Yeah. JEN: So I have always said that… I think stories are just out there in the ether, and we are conduits through which they pass on their way around the world ESS: Yeah. JEN: And when they pass through us, only certain bits of them catch on the barbs and the hooks and the bits of Velcro that are inside us, from our lived experiences. Stuff that gets jagged, gets made jagged from living… and then those bits of those stories tear off inside us and stay. As evidenced by the time, I asked somebody, what’s your favourite fairytale? And they said, “The Three Bears”. And I said, “That’s brilliant. What’s your favourite moment in the fairytale?” And they said, “When Mummy Bear makes Daddy Bear and Baby Bear lovely dinner, and they all sit down at the table and have lovely dinner together.” And I said, “That’s a lovely moment in the story. What about Goldilocks?” And they said, “Who?” Because it didn’t matter. Didn’t matter. Goldilocks hadn’t torn off on anything inside them. Goldilocks didn’t matter. Didn’t matter that it was porridge - typically a breakfast meal - just mattered that it was a nice dinner. That’s Mummy Bear making a nice dinner for Daddy Bear and Baby Bear. That’s all that mattered. So it’s interesting to talk about the hook of a story, in that I think there are commercial hooks, where we recognise… it’s like, you know, Rachel and I are writing a novel at the moment. And everything I see where I follow on Instagram, they talk about, “What genre is it? What other novels can you compare it to?” Because that’s all hooks. But it’s very different to what tears off inside us. Like the hook, the commercial hook of Goldilocks and the Three Bears was not what tore off inside that person, because it’s not clean hooks that we have. We don’t have commercial hooks inside us. We have barbs and rough, jagged bits from living, you know. It’s different. ESS: But I think there’s also… I suppose, for me, the feeding is less… hooks and barbs, and more, like, sedimentary… like there’s a sort of rainfall of information that circulates and filters through, and it leaves… there’s some mineral deposits that come out as it passes through, but it also leaves something… but there’s like a mutual exchange, right?
