Hi, I'm Konrad Marshall and from the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Welcome to Good Weekend Talks, a magazine for your ears, featuring in-depth conversations with fascinating people from sport and politics, science and culture, business and beyond.

Every week, you can download new episodes in which top journalists from across our newsrooms talk to compelling people about the definitive stories of the day.

In this episode, we talk to Stephanie Lake.

The former dancer turned choreographer is the artistic director of Stephanie Lake Company and also the resident choreographer for the Australian Ballet.

She's leading figure in Australian dance, the winner of many awards including the Helpmann.

And while her rise was stratospheric, it wasn't always linear and in some ways it came quite late.

We're lucky to have her in the studio today to talk through her life story, which starts in Canada before taking a turn south to Tasmania and now Melbourne, a journey rich in resilience, creativity and balance.

Welcome, Stephanie.

Thank you so much.

What an intro.

Now, you lived in Canada until you were eight years old, and I love the name of the place you're from.

I always have loved that name.

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

It sounds like a joke, but it's real.

Isn't that just the best?

I was born in Saskatoon, which is also in the same hospital as Joni Mitchell, which I love as a small detail, but, um, I lived in a tiny little village just outside of Saskatoon.

What was life like there?

I mean, freezing cold winters.

It was very rural.

It was it was brutally cold in the winters.

But I was a kid, so I just thought it was fun.

We were building snow forts and playing with, you know, just just having a lot of fun in the snow.

But I think for adults, it's just almost unbearable.

It gets to -40 degrees, which is an incomprehensible temperature.

But but I loved it.

It was.

It was just home.

We we skied and skated and played in the snow.

Rugged up.

It was good.

I lived in North America for a while, kind of right up there near Canada as well, and loved, uh, loved that experience.

But you have to make use of the cold.

You.

Yes.

If you're not going out there and skating on a frozen pond or hitting a ski mountain or something, um, you're just gonna get sad.

It was.

We spent a lot of time outside, ironically.

And, um.

And the seasons are really marked.

I remember really beautiful autumn's fall there.

Of course.

Um, and spring is so dramatic because it's been nothing but white for six months.

And then you see the little buds poking through the, the slush and and the buds opening on the trees.

It's really dramatic and gorgeous, but it's an incredibly flat landscape.

Saskatchewan is is wheat belt prairies.

Um, not a hill in sight.

So there are some classic photos from my, um, childhood photo albums of of mum pushing a pram just into kind of oblivion.

Like literally a straight road to the horizon.

And she.

Yeah, they would say, yeah, they'd go for a walk and then you'd just, you'd just walk in a straight line and turn around and walk back along that straight line back home.

Um, so very different to the Tasmanian landscape, but, but really imprinted in my memory, I think, in my DNA.

What, uh, like the family, as you say, then moved to Launceston.

What prompted the move to Lonnie and what was that culture shock?

Well, mum was yeah, it was a big culture shock.

Um, mum's Scottish and dad's Canadian.

They'd met in Ibiza in the 70s and.

And.

Yeah, it was different to, to to what it is now.

I hear I've never been there, but, um, it was kind of a hippie enclave at that time, but they ended up back in Canada when they married and they did ten years there, which is a pretty good stint.

But I don't think it was really sustainable just because of the, the brutality of the, of the weather.

And, um, and so they decided to move elsewhere and, and kind of poked a finger on the map and ended up with Tasmania.

Remarkable.

Yeah.

I mean, it blows my mind still, I've got kids myself.

And I just think, Good God, what were you thinking?

They had three kids.

My mum, uh, one of her sisters lived in Perth in WA, so that was I think that helped them get the points up for migration, you know?

Um, I think there was some intention of possibly ending up in Perth, but they didn't like it.

And so the little heart shaped island at the bottom of the world was where we ended up for.

Okay.

I know.

Very full on.

And what was the what was it like landing there?

a totally different landscape.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Really?

It was.

It was a it was a tough entry, to be honest.

If I think back on it, I was.

Yeah, really homesick for Canada, for our relatives, for, for everything that was familiar.

Um, and we kind of, you know, of course, they were just so brave.

They landed with no jobs.

Um, dad did some relief teaching in a high school.

We ended up in a in a really small town up in northwest Tasmania because they needed teachers there.

And I just remember being, ironically, so freezing because in, in Canada, everything's so insulated.

The homes are totally set up for winters.

You dress for it.

You dress for it.

Everyone has all the Parkers.

You've got the gear in north west Tasmania it was, oh my God, I can still feel it.

It was so drafty and and I'd see the big condensation dripping down the windows Inside, and we'd be huddled around this little bar heater from Kmart just going, what has happened?

Like, how can we be so cold?

Um, so yeah.

And it was, it was it was interesting.

I had a really, really thick Canadian accent.

I got teased, of course, because I was different and I was kind of, I don't know, I was just a bit of a quirky kid.

And, um, so it was, it was it was tough in some ways, but it ended up being great.

Tasmania ended up being a beautiful place to grow up, and it was also my introduction to dance.

So it kind of set me on a path.

You didn't really start dancing until your mid-teens and I understand, didn't really do anything kind of resembling formal ballet until about 19.

Um, about a year ago on this podcast, I interviewed Australian Ballet principal dancer Callum Linehan.

I'm working with him at the moment.

He's in my piece.

Yes, he's.

A lovely bloke.

Yeah, but he sort of explained to me how arduous it was training to be a dancer as as a young kid, like once he was identified, which was, I don't know, 11 or 12, like he was quite young.

Um, and I guess, are you glad that you came to it a bit later and had something resembling more of a normal childhood?

Oh, yeah.

Absolutely.

Actually, I mean, there are pros and cons, right?

Because I had a lot of catching up to do.

So by the time I decided, okay, dance is what I'm going to study, which was just such a hilarious notion, now that I look back on it, because I was I had very little experience.

But, um, so there was a huge amount of technical catching up to do.

I really had to do kind of boot camp to get myself in into condition and to learn even the basics of, of ballet technique, uh, let alone contemporary technique.

But I think the pro was very big and that was that.

I had I had a lot of confidence creatively.

I had nothing to kind of undo, you know?

I didn't have to unpack a whole lot of the burdens of of technique or structure.

I was I was completely comfortable improvising and creating.

I thought of myself as a choreographer from a really young age, because that that was the kind of culture I'd grown up with, with dance.

And so there were lots.

Yeah, there were lots of good things about that late start.

I think I always kind of positioned myself as a bit of an outsider, actually, because I'd started so late.

And that's been a somewhat of a defining characteristic, I think, actually, and has served me well because I kind of I enter into every situation thinking, okay, this isn't my world, but I'm going to figure it out.

Um, and so to find myself as the resident choreographer of the Australian Ballet, you can imagine how mind blowing that is for someone with my background.

And now, and actually, as of this year, I've just been appointed artist in residence of the Dresden Ballet as well in Germany.

So thank you.

So to have these connections to these huge classical institutions is, yeah, really phenomenal and exciting.

And I don't take it for granted for a moment, but I think that that early start, feeling like I have to figure out these worlds is um, yeah, has has set me up well.

I love asking athletes when I interview them what it is they love about what they do like physically, whether it's the act of kind of playing football or hitting a tennis ball, what is it?

They love the joy they get out of that performance.

So reframing it for you, I can't help but think of that scene in the movie Billy Elliot, where the, uh, sort of snooty selection panel, like, asks him how it feels, and he's like electricity.

You know, when he dances.

What did it feel like for you when you began dancing.

Like what?

What did you love about it?

What do you love about it still?

Uh, I, I love almost everything about it.

I love I love the the way it takes you out of your brain and puts you in your body in such a tangible way.

I love I love feeling slightly out of control and off balance.

Um.

I love a feeling of discovery.

Like you're experiencing a movement for the first time and you don't know how it happened and how to reproduce it.

I really, really love dancing with other people, and I do miss that a lot.

You know, I'm not performing anymore, but I get that thrill from choreographing and being in the studio with the dancers and and creating movement with them.

But I can I can viscerally remember that feeling of of being in such close contact that that intimate trust of of working with other dancers and having literally having their physical safety in your hands, or throwing your weight into someone else's arms and having them catch you, or to be lifted, taken off your own feet, off off your own center of gravity.

It's kind of an ecstatic state, actually.

You mentioned collaboration there, and that dovetails quite neatly into my next question.

You grew up in the Baha'i Faith.

I hope I pronounced that correctly.

A religion with the catch phrase unity in diversity, including this sort of emphasis on group experience.

I believe you even went on a year of service after high school to Canada, Hungary and Israel as part of a kind of dance troupe, um, based on the faith?

Yes.

Do you practice?

Do you still believe?

No, no, no, I'm a hardcore atheist now.

I've, I've, I've.

That's in my past.

But I was really devout.

I was a very devout Baha'i when I was growing up.

My I mentioned my, my parents met in Ibiza.

They were hippie searchers, spiritual searchers in the 70s.

And, um, and my dad discovered the Baha'i Faith, and we were all raised in that, in that religion.

And it was a huge part of my identity when I was growing up and in my teens.

But no, no longer I my religion is art and nature.

You had a bit of a three year lull, I think, between high school and dance school.

I did.

What did you get up to there?

Were you, uh, in search mode or.

Oh, yes, partly.

I was, um, I was searching for what to do with my life.

Really.

I was so lost, I, I, I was a very high achieving student at school.

I'd done really well and kind of had felt like I had lots of options in a way, but then was kind of paralyzed by those options.

It felt like, well, I don't I don't love anything in particular.

And I really didn't know what to do.

And I felt like all my friends were so clear about what they were doing.

They were all off to uni and studying international relations and doing, you know, impressive things and were so clear about it.

And I was just really adrift.

Um, so I spent a year working in a sandwich shop and in the deli at Coles and just earning some money.

And my goal was always to go overseas and and do this year of service.

It was called um under the Baha'i framework.

So I was saving up for that.

I had some intention in that direction, but I was really just kind of I had no idea what I was going to study or what I was going to do for a career.

And then while I was away in that big year of travel, I made the hilarious decision to to do dance.

And and up to that point, it had been my favorite hobby.

To be clear, it was it was my favorite thing to do on the weekends.

And I'd joined a youth dance company, and that was really exciting for me.

But I had very little training and and so it was a pretty audacious thing to start saying that I wanted to do.

So I came back from that year of travel and then started to talk to anyone I knew who was in the dance field and ended up plonking myself on the on the stone steps of tasdance, literally just waiting there for the artistic directors to turn up.

And then they came and found this little waif just sitting on their on their step.

And I said, I'd love to do an apprenticeship with your company.

And they set that up for me.

How amazing.

Like, I just think these little acts of kindness along the way.

So that year, after travel, I ended up doing a year, almost a year of apprenticeship with Tasdance.

And it was intended that I would kind of just be hanging around the edges and maybe doing a bit of class and that kind of thing, but I ended up performing with the company.

I ended up touring with the company.

I ended up leading workshops.

So the the directors of the company were kind of bonkers, but the experience was really valuable.

And then that's what led to me auditioning for VCA in Melbourne.

It's amazing how those little acts of kindness, or those moments of luck or just.

Yeah, can.

Change a life.

Luck and luck and pluck.

I would say yeah, because I yeah, I'm kind of amazed at my young self just turning up on that doorstep, actually.

And there's been a bit of that since then.

I've, I've, it's been luck and pluck all the way.

But I got myself along to that doorstep.

But yes, they were very generous in opening the door.

Now, you only got into dance school at the VCA.

Sorry.

The Victorian College of the Arts for our New South Wales listeners.

Yes, by the skin of your teeth.

You've described visiting Melbourne for the first time and finding it to be filthy grey, flat and featureless.

Oh my God, did I say that?

That is a horrible thing to say about my dear city.

You also.

But that is true.

That is.

That was my first impression.

Yes.

You also kind of, uh.

Once you were there, you barely passed at times had to really fight to kind of graduate.

I believe you might have even failed ballet as a subject.

It sounds like an incredibly tough time, not just academically, but personally.

Yeah.

It was.

It was a mixed bag for sure.

My my first year of study was was really.

Oh, it was it was a really difficult one for me because I'd come from this, this background.

The dancing I'd been doing in Tasmania was very free, very creative.

We were very empowered as young artists in this youth company, Stompin and and so that was my background.

And, and I came in to VCA and I just found it.

So confronting having to just follow this, this very codified techniques.

I felt restricted, I felt restrained.

I really disliked having to look at myself in the mirror all day, every day.

I found it very, uh.

I really questioned it.

I felt like it was a very narcissistic pursuit.

Like, why am I doing this?

How what what good is this doing in the world?

Especially because there was such a focus on just training and technique, which of course now I understand is is an a completely essential foundation to being a dancer.

You have to learn your trade, you have to put in your 10,000 hours.

And I really bucked against that.

I really I was, I was a bit, yeah, rebellious and unhappy, at least for that first year.

And then I really had a turning point after at the end of first year, where I'd made a very clear decision that I was going to either just shut up and stop my whining and get on with it or quit.

It's one or the other.

So I'm either going to be the best in the class and and go hard, or go and do something else.

Stop whining about it.

I made the choice to stay and and I did.

I did exceptionally well in most things, not ballet.

Ballet wasn't a great fit for me, but but I did really well in everything else.

And I met colleagues, my my peers and and people who ended up being really important collaborators in my life, dear, dear friends and and started choreographing work and putting it, putting it out in public.

So it was.

Yeah, it was the best possible training for me, for all the good and bad things about it.

And then of course, sort of exiting school, you got kind of swept up in contemporary dance, including Lucy Guerin's chunky move, Philip Adams Ballet Lab yourself, putting on kind of scrappy shows with a collective performing at fringe festivals.

And it sounds like by 25 you were really performing at a very high level, and then 26 you were pregnant with your first daughter two years later.

Another daughter?

Yes.

Those, I imagine, were prime years for your dance career.

Do you mourn the loss of those years at all in your vocation?

I was literally just before coming here.

I was holding my daughter so tightly.

She's 21 now that that darling daughter had who I had when I was 26.

And just saying, I just love you so, so much.

Never move out.

So, um, and of course I don't mean that, but I kind of do.

But, um, no, of course not.

Um, my daughters are everything to me.

But it was.

Yeah, it was a it was it was interesting timing.

Absolutely.

I because I'd started uni a bit late, I graduated a bit late.

And so everything was happening a little bit late and I'd, I'd been on this, as you said, just this amazing trajectory where dreams were coming true.

Boom, boom, boom.

I was working with Gideon Obarzanek, I was working with Lucy Guerin, I was working with Phillip Adams, like all the kind of the superstars that I looked up to when I was studying and thought in some distant universe, I Universe.

I might be in in a studio with them, and I ended up working with all of them and getting to tour the world and do things that I couldn't have, really have dreamed of.

And yeah, there was there was an amazing momentum happening.

And then and then I was pregnant with my daughter and and life changed dramatically.

I basically stopped dancing altogether for about.

Yeah, it was probably 3 or 4 years where and right, as you say, like right in a.

Right in the sweet.

Spot, right in the sweet spot.

And and the dancer's life span, the career, um, years are very short, really.

I mean, most dancers retire in quotation marks around 30 to 35, so.

So I was very cognizant of the fact that.

Huh.

Okay.

My life's taken a turn.

This is this is interesting.

I thought I felt like maybe I was on the precipice of perhaps moving to Europe or New York and and trying my luck in in some bigger, bigger ponds.

Um, and then, um, I ended up having a family.

So yeah, it was it was a big rupture at the time.

And I did really mourn.

I grieved dance and choreography because I, I felt like I needed to come to terms with the fact that it was over.

Mhm.

And that was, that was quite hard to face, but it was not over.

It turns out very much not.

There was a very incremental, gradual return to dance that has ended up with me now here with two grown daughters and this astonishing career.

So I it's I still pinch myself.

It's unexpected.

How did you feel about the switch from, um, dance at a choreographer?

I always wonder how that goes for people in other endeavors, whether it's sort of, you know, player to coach or even, uh, writer to editor, you know.

True true, true.

Yeah.

Well, it's, um, it's it's different for everyone.

For me, dancing and choreographing were never separate.

I was always I've been choreographing as long as I've been dancing.

And you could probably argue that I've been choreographing longer than I've been dancing, because I was bossing my sisters around and getting them to be in dances.

And when I was very little and I, I can I have memories of making up dances at home when I was very small, so there wasn't ever a time where I felt like I had to make a decision and leave dance in order to become a choreographer, because I was working in a more a kind of fluid way between lots of choreographers and lots of of companies.

Um, there was downtime where I was able to always be, I would always use that time to be making shows.

So I realized not so long ago that It.

Next year will be the.

It'll be 30 years since my first public, um, dance that I'd choreographed where there were ticket buyers.

So, uh, so I'm quite proud of that.

That's that's a that's a decent stint.

Uh, so, yeah, there was never really a decision to become a choreographer.

It was more like a decision to focus on choreography.

So, uh, when I was about when I was in my early 40s, I decided to to hang up my hang up my dance shoes.

Actually, it had been quite a few years before that that I decided to hang up my dance shoes.

But then I broke my arm in the middle of the opening night of that show that I'd.

I'd made this decision that it was going to be my last show as a performer.

And and then I literally yeah, my I was in hospital getting a cast on and I thought, uh, this isn't how I go out.

No way.

This isn't the last one.

And then I ended up doing many more years after that because I got the bug again, and I ended up doing about three more.

Lucy Guerin shows after that.

But yeah, at that point I was already touring my own works internationally and things were really taking off for me as a freelance choreographer.

Your partner, Robin Fox, is a sound and light artist and composer who has collaborated on many works with you.

What's that like working together?

Yeah, it's so awesome.

Not fraud at.

All.

No.

Love it.

It's the best, best, best.

Yeah.

Yeah, we we've got a good groove going on.

We've we collaborate a lot with virtually every work I've made since I've met him has been together with the odd exception.

So that's a pretty good track record.

We've been together 15 years now, and, um, and almost instantaneously, uh, we started working together.

But it happened in this really organic way.

Like he was, he'd just come in to watch a bit of something that I was working on with two dancers.

I was working on a duet at the time and and I was just in the studio going, I'm just clicking out this count because I didn't have anything.

I just, I just needed the meter for the dancers.

And he said, do you want me to I can do I can kind of whip something up for you if you want.

Would that be better?

So you don't have to do that?

And I was like, okay, yeah, sure.

Go for it.

Fine.

And he ended up making this great track that just had such, you know, it was literally just like a techno pulse.

But I just it was the texture of it and it was, it was so simple but clean and gorgeous.

Um, and that was literally the beginning of our collaboration.

And now we've made some huge shows together in the last few years, particularly with just getting more and more ambitious with what we're doing and, and have started to work overseas.

And, um, yeah, it's been it's been really wonderful.

But he's this is just a small part of his many faceted, um, life.

He's literally opening the mess, which is the Melbourne electronic sound studio in Fed Square.

This living museum of electronic music instruments.

So yeah, he's he's a busy boy, but we work together very well.

You formed your own company, as I mentioned before, back in 2014.

I'm always full of admiration for people who do that, who kind of back themselves to go out and build something new, because it sounds so bloody terrifying to me.

Um, what was that like, hanging your own shingle?

Oh, look, I'm glad I was as naive as I was at the time, because if I'd known what was involved, I never would have done it.

Mhm.

Um.

It's madness.

And you're right.

It is.

It is terrifying.

It's best not to think about it and just think of it as a very small step.

So I was lucky that I had, uh, I was working with a producer at the time who just kind of almost quite casually said, I think it'd be good for you just to, you know, formalize it and call it a company.

And, um, we can look after the paperwork for you with that.

But it will just help with, you know, just just giving it a bit more gravitas.

I was like, oh, sure, sure.

Like it really was quite.

It felt very simple.

Um, it just seemed like almost like an administrative thing at the time.

Yeah.

And I think that that was actually really fortunate, because I don't know if I would have had the guts to do it if it hadn't have been proposed so lightly.

To be fair, I have always had a dream of having a company, of making bigger works, and particularly of of having some kind of framework that could support an emerging choreographers, other artists, something much bigger than myself.

And I'm inspired by people that have done that.

But but I probably thought that that was more in the future.

Not not at the point that it did happen.

Um, but there was there was good momentum happening at that time, 2013, 2014.

That's when I was starting to get invited to tour my work internationally.

I was getting commissions from other companies.

It was really taking off.

And and so it did seem like a good time, but.

But also I remember distinctly in 20 around 2012, 2013, wondering if it was time to to wind it up because at the same time, things weren't there were kind of a few disappointments.

Things weren't really happening.

I didn't feel like, yeah, I didn't feel like there was really a reason to keep going that maybe I needed to, to listen and and just, um, gracefully step, step aside.

And I felt really sad about that.

I really remember that feeling of going, no, I think it is time to wind it up.

Um, so to go from that to then starting the company and, and just taking that chance and going, okay, all right, let's, let's do it, see what happens.

And then to be here ten, 11 years later, um, with something I could barely have dreamt of is is really astonishing.

And of course, last year, as I mentioned earlier, you were appointed resident choreographer for the Australian Ballet.

That must have felt like some kind of vindication after this very zigzaggy career.

Oh my goodness, I can't tell you.

It was absolutely gobsmacking.

So David, the amazing David Hallberg, who's the artistic director of the Australian Ballet.

I think we've had him on the podcast.

I'm sure you have.

Lovely American.

Fellow.

Amazing, amazing person.

He, um.

Yeah, he was supportive of my work.

He'd commissioned me to make a short work for the company.

We talked about making something bigger in the future.

And then he'd called me in for a meeting.

He wanted to.

He just sent me a casual text and said, could we, um.

Do you have time for a meeting sometime this week?

And I actually felt I just had this instinct that something was wrong.

And so I put it off.

I was like, ah, um, I'm pretty busy this week.

Um, how's next week?

And I don't know why, but I just kind of I just wanted to put it off because I thought that there was some issue.

I actually thought that he was going to tell me that, no, that the Major Commission had fallen through, that actually they'd had a change of heart and they'd decided to pull that one.

And so I delayed that meeting and and I even asked, oh, is there something we can do over the phone?

And he said, no, we really need to meet face to face for this one.

And I thought, oh shit, it's really bad.

It's really bad.

And then I went into his office, braced for bad news, and he could have knocked me over with a feather when he said, we'd like to invite you to be the resident choreographer of the Australian Ballet.

I just honestly could.

It was one of the most surprising and happiest moments of my life.

It was, um, yeah.

And it's been it's just been a dream.

You've got a new and intimate work debuting next week, seven days, as part of the triple bill prism at the Regent Theatre in Melbourne from September 20th 5th to October 4th, and then at the Sydney Opera House from November 7 to 15.

You're also jumping into a perhaps unfamiliar role as a festival organizer of sorts, working on dance X, bringing together 14 dance companies for an October event at the Arts Centre Melbourne.

How do you go with something like The Ladder?

Something logical kind of switching into your left brain?

Oh well, I wouldn't call myself a festival organiser on that.

I won't give myself that credit.

I am a mere helper on that amazing project.

Dance X is something that the Australian Ballet launched two years ago, I think, and this is the second iteration, and I'm.

I'm merely helping with the programming and logistics and but that was a large part of the appeal of taking the role as resident choreographer was not only the chance to work with the company and And make works on those incredible ballet dancers.

But all of the other stuff that was surrounding it, which was being part of the curatorial process, mentoring emerging choreographers through the company, being part of of programming discussions in projects such as dance.

So absolutely love all of that.

And I've been I've been kind of I've been doing that since a really young age.

Like I mentioned, I had a we had a collective at VCA called trike and we put on our own shows and I've been doing it's been that kind of spirit of community and, and collaboration since the beginning.

So this is very much in my wheelhouse and something that I feel very passionate about.

Um, I enjoy it as much as choreography.

I read a profile of you last year, and it described a morning of rehearsal ahead of a production called Circle Electric, and the scene pioneered in this story was of you kind of giving these questions to the dancers.

dances, this whole list of questions that they had to go away and consider.

I want to put one of them to you.

It was a direction.

You called on each of them to list three things you've felt.

Today I'm mindful that it's only noon right now, but would you favor us with three things that you've felt today?

Oh, gosh.

Okay.

I've felt deeply tired.

I've felt, um.

I felt, as I said before, this intense, burning love for my my daughter.

For some reason, she was buttering my toast and putting honey on it, and I just felt massive appreciation for my family.

Um, and I feel nervousness because I think today I'm going to meet one of my heroes, William Forsythe, who's part of this triple bill in Prism.

And he's been one of my biggest choreographic inspirations.

And I think I'm going to run into him at the studio today.

So this is a big day for me.

Fantastic.

Well, we'd better let you get on with that guy.

Thank you so much for coming in and having a chat.

Such a pleasure.

Thank you.

That was choreographer Stephanie Lake on the latest good weekend talks.

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We chat with TV and food personality Melissa Leong.

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This episode of Good Weekend Talks is produced by Konrad Marshall, with technical assistance from Cormac Lally and editing by our executive producer Tami Mills.

Tom McKendrick is head of audio and Melissa Stevens is the editor of Good Weekend.