The Copenhagen Interpretation Podcast
Ess & Jen chat
Descripción
Recorded 20th April 2026 Ess Grange [https://substack.com/@slgrange] and Jen Toksvig [https://jenifertoksvig.substack.com/] 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 [https://substack.com/home/post/p-194268078], 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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish%C5%8Dtenketsu] 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 [https://thecopenhageninterpretation.co.uk/]’, 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 [https://thebroadcloth.com/], 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 [https://www.ursulakleguin.com/the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction] tension of like, everyone is very programmed to the kind of Hero’s Journey [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldilocks_and_the_Three_Bears]?” 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? So when I retell the story, it will have changed a little bit. I’ll be emphasising slightly different things, and there’s like a little bit of alchemy that happens as it’s on its way through, right? JEN: [lighthearted] Oh, I’ve been wrong about that all this time. ESS: But it’s not that any… it’s not that either of those is right or wrong. JEN: No, I know. ESS: It’s sort of different. And maybe some stories are more like hooky, barby things, and some stories are more like percolations over… possibly years, before you go, “Oh, that’s interesting”. And something else that just drifted through my head and I can’t remember what it was. But anyway… stories. Stories work on us, we work on them. JEN: Yeah, that’s true. That’s very true. So… so to circle back to access, I feel like you’re absolutely right. Like, every… every musical theatre mentor I’ve ever had has said, at some point, the words, “Why does it have to be a musical?” And it’s… that, for me, goes along with phrases like ‘When the character can no longer speak, they sing’. These are all things that can be said to be true of traditional American-book-musical-two-act… you know, the very traditional Broadway form. And these are things I’ve heard Sondheim say, I’ve heard Steven Schwartz say, you know, everybody say in an interview. And I found it frustrating, because it can’t be template in that way. I don’t want it to be template in that way. Either these are truths, and I want to understand why they are truths more than anything else, or… or this is a template for a standard form, and I am less interested in that. But why does it have to be… ‘why does it have to be a certain form’ for me is more about the… the inviting people in, I think. Because everything in fourth wall [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall] theatre is fourth wall theatre. Everything is the same form. It doesn’t matter whether it sings or not. It doesn’t matter whether it’s tap dancing or what it is, we get to engage in it in the same way. Whereas things like an art gallery, you can… you, you have a choice. You might be wandering around looking at things, and everybody’s wandering around looking at things, but you can also be sitting thinking, and you… you know, there’s a freedom of engagement there, in a museum or an art gallery, and even in a library, where you can browse books. And you know, there’s a freedom of engagement on the internet, which there isn’t in theatre, which there isn’t in movies. Unless you’re watching it at home on your telly. But even then, the only freedom of engagement, really, is you can hit pause and go and make a cup of tea. So I think my interest is in… is in engagement, but we don’t… if you’re a theatre maker, your engagement is sort of set. It’s a set thing. You know that people are going to come and sit in a seat and watch. And the only kind of choice you make is, “Do I want to make… am I an immersive theatre maker?” - is the question, isn’t it? It’s not like, “Do I want this to be immersive?” It’s, “Am I an immersive theatre maker?” Otherwise, the only time you’re asking that is kind of, “Do we break the fourth wall at this point in the show?” ESS: Yeah. JEN: That’s it. But the fourth wall is still very much intact, because you’re talking about breaking it, so… ESS: Yeah. JEN: So that… I guess my question is: in order for people to take more interest in inclusivity, not just accessibility, but inclusivity… because that’s what it is, isn’t it? If it’s not accessible to somebody, that they’re not included. ESS: Yeah. JEN: And that’s just rude. [laughing] ESS: But it’s also there… I don’t… there’s so much underneath it, of like… so in that, in that case, you know, that question of like, “Oh, I’ve got… I’ve come upon this story that must be told. It has come upon me.” However that works. “I will make it a theatre show.” And it’s like, well… why that? Why a novel? Why a poem? Any of those things, right? And I think there’s something in the traditional theatre culture and that fourth-wall-y thing that is… is automatically… Let me just try and get this thought in the right order. Because, in our culture, theatre is a commercial exercise, and it is… very entangled with ideas of author as authority… JEN: Mmm. ESS: And… sort of personality? So, like, the big name in the cast, whatever… and a sort of idea of, like, people being physically, literally given a platform to make noise… JEN: Be celebrated. Celebrity. ESS: Yeah, and that means making noise and taking up space, and a bunch of other people pay to come and… and have that bestowed upon them. JEN: Yeah. ESS: So there’s, like, just a built in self-importance… monologue-iness… is, like… it’s a product. I have to be… like, if I’m the author, or the director, or maybe the star of the show, it’s like, “This is my product that I’m… this is what I’m selling, and I own it, and I… and I sell it to you”. It’s like, very transactional, kind of one-directional. JEN: So this is what I’m talking about, it’s like, “I’ve trained in this.” It’s that whole thing of, when I talk about ‘Copenhagen’ to, you know, actors who’ve spent their lives training and working in fine establishments, do you know what I mean? And it sounds like I’m dismissing all of that work and all of that… ESS: Yeah. JEN: But I’m not. At all. ESS: But it is… I think it is a real battle to make that model inclusive because, by its nature, it’s exclusive. It’s like everything about it, you know, like, oh, ‘exclusive backstage tour’ for example, like… things that you sort of hear… like the extras that you get sold. “Have the box: it’s an exclusive space, with the little private, fancy room” and maybe you’ll get to meet the star of the show in an exclusive context, right? So the whole thing is, like… you’ve… “I have created this special experience that you have all paid money to come and be exclusively a part of”. JEN: Yeah. And it’s been optimised for the best… you pay more for the best seat, where the best sound is, you know, where everything’s been optimised. ESS: Yeah. So, because the whole sales package of it, and the principles behind it are, just by their absolute nature, exclusive, it’s… like, I think bringing genuine access and inclusion into that is… it’s kind of impossible. You have to, you have to do what you’re proposing, which is completely dismantle that whole idea of, like, a story being told by a kind of single author, and the director’s vision, which is in real terms, usually directed from the most expensive seats in the house, right? So, all of the, like, you know, the sound design, the set design, is very often constructed for… JEN: Yeah. ESS: Even everyone in the theatre, it doesn’t even include everyone in the building, it includes the people in the… JEN: In the middle of the stalls. ESS: The people in the expensive seats, right? JEN: Yeah. ESS: So… yeah, it’s not an inclusive system. Which doesn’t mean that it makes… doesn’t mean… I’m not saying that everything it makes is rubbish, and I’m not saying that people are training… that people are wasting their time training, or that the people aren’t really good at what they’re doing. But I think if we… if we’re thinking about inclusion and access as being, like, alive within that process, I think that’s really hard. JEN: And it doesn’t dismiss or diminish any of that training. Like, I’ve trained as a writer, and I’m experienced as a writer, and I have written stuff for The Broad Cloth. I just haven’t scripted it. But it doesn’t mean I haven’t used all of my knowledge of theatre, all of my training, all of my… Like, I’m experienced in stage management. I’ve had experience as a designer. I’ve had experience as a choreographer. I’ve done all the bits, because I’m greedy and I just wanted to try everything. So I’ve tried all the bits, and everything I know about all of those things I use in creating things like The Copenhagen Interpretation. But what’s interesting to me is I don’t have to employ them. I use them responsively, depending on what happens in the process. So we might have a very fine actor in the room who’s done lots of classical training and has huge experience. And there might be a moment where all of that comes to the fore, because they are responding to what’s going on, and they have those tools, and they can use them. And that’s great… it’s just they use them responsively. And there might be times when they’re just sat in the room being who they are as a person… and, and having their lovely experience for themselves in that way. And it might be that somebody else who’s never trained as an actor is performing a character, and gives that actor, as a human, a lovely experience as an audience member. Do you know what I mean? And that’s… for me, that’s really beautiful. It might be that Judi Dench makes the tea, and that’s lovely… like, I just… do you know what I mean? Having… having all of us together, having a human experience, is, is for me, more relaxed, far nicer. Like, I don’t have to be anxious for anybody, for a start. We’re not having an experience that’s… that’s exciting purely because something might go wrong. Which, as far as I can work out with live fourth wall theatre, is the literal only thing that differs from movies. That’s a really unfair thing to say. I know that performances change every day, but really they’re set so they don’t change every day. So the exciting thing about live theatre is, if somebody f***s it up. ESS: I think the interesting thing about… like, even those… the ones where people are… people do have a sort of permission to play it different every night, to quote Mike Alfreds’ book [https://www.nickhernbooks.co.uk/different-every-night], is that a lot of the really exciting discoveries and stuff - the like, working out bit - happens in a rehearsal room. JEN: Where the audience doesn’t get to… ESS: It’s kind of like an exclusive space, and then it’s sort of bestowed upon the audience, who might tune in to the nuances that are going on that night, but they don’t know. Like, as an audio describer, obviously if I’m describing a show, I’ll see it like a handful of times, live and on video, as I write my script, and the shows where they do have that kind of permission to, like, play with blocking or physical reactions and stuff, are really hard to audio describe, because the audio description hasn’t met the theatre making process, in that it’s like a… it’s a process that demands people do the same thing every time they do the show. And… so, yeah, so the… it’s like an interesting little tension, in that when the show is more live, the access is harder. JEN: Yes. Absolutely. And that’s, that’s… but that’s true of ‘Copenhagen’. Like, people say to me, “But aren’t you gonna have access clashes?” And I’m like, “Yes, left, right and centre.” [laughing] ESS: But we’re going to be very honest about them, I think that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s an invitation rather than a dictation. It’s like, yeah, here are some people who have different needs. Some of those needs are mutually at odds… JEN: Yeah. ESS: But we’re all just gonna… that’s part of the conversation that we’re having. JEN: Because we’re all in it together, so we’re all going to make it as good as we possibly can for each other, collectively, and that’s the goal. And if it really doesn’t work, then… you know, and it might really not work sometimes, and that’s just a thing that happens in life. ESS: Also, you know, in that way of, like, telling the story multiple times, or from multiple perspectives, having the ability to go back and repeat. It’s like, okay, we’re going to tell this story, and we’re going to really prioritise people who are deaf or hard of hearing. JEN: Yep. ESS: Now we’re going to go back and tell that story again, and this time, we’re going to prioritise people who are visually impaired and blind. JEN: Yeah. Yeah. ESS: And it will be… different each time. So we won’t have the same experience, we can’t have the same experience. JEN: Why would we want to? ESS: And… sensorially, our experiences are not the same, so… but that’s fine. Because it’s still, it’s still holding that… it’s holding the story. And we’ll probably all learn a different thing about the story by doing it again with a different set of needs as a priority. And that is really exciting. JEN: Yeah. ESS: It’s all filtered through a different bit of rock, or it will get hooked on a different bit of person. JEN: Mm. Good. That was a nice chat. ESS: That was a nice chat. JEN: Thanks. Links for things we mentioned Christopher Morrison, PROMPT: Narrative Resistance [https://substack.com/home/post/p-194268078] Kishotenketsu [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish%C5%8Dtenketsu] Henry Lien, “Spring Summer Asteroid Bird: the Art of Eastern Storytelling” [https://henrylien.com/spring-summer-asteroid-bird/] Eugene Nulman, “How Popular Culture Destroys our Political Imagination” [https://www.routledge.com/How-Popular-Culture-Destroys-Our-Political-Imagination-Capitalism-and-Its-Alternatives-in-Film-and-Television/Nulman/p/book/9781032847702] Jenifer Toksvig, The Copenhagen Interpretation [https://thecopenhageninterpretation.co.uk/] The Broad Cloth [https://thebroadcloth.com/] Ursula K le Guin, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” [https://www.ursulakleguin.com/the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction] Joseph Campbell, “The Hero’s Journey” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey] Goldilocks and the Three Bears [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldilocks_and_the_Three_Bears] Fourth wall theatre [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall] Mike Alfreds, “Different Every Night: Freeing the Actor [https://www.nickhernbooks.co.uk/different-every-night]” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jenifertoksvig.substack.com [https://jenifertoksvig.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]
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