Ep14 Camino adventures & puppet trouble - Saskia Tomlinson

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Automatically Transcribed With Podsqueeze

Luke 00:00:05  So welcome to another episode of the Impro Pod podcast day in the studio. I have my sister, Saskia Tomlinson. How would you describe yourself?

Saskia 00:00:14  I make puppets and props and models and sets and animations.

Luke 00:00:22  So I'm going to play a piece of music, and I want you to tell me what that makes you think of. Anything that comes into your mind. Can be as ridiculous or abstract as you like.

Saskia 00:01:35  Cool. Yeah, that was a good one. It made me think about if you're on holiday and you're in a new city and you're really excited to explore it, and it was quite yellow.

Luke 00:01:49  Interesting. Do you find you have a relationship between music and color? Do you fight? Do you see colors a lot when you're listening to music?

Saskia 00:01:55  Not as much as some people. and the show that I'm working at the moment has a section where one of the performers is blind and she has sings a song about the colors she sees, but she says that each voice that she hears is a different color, which is a really beautiful idea.

Saskia 00:02:12  But yeah, I wouldn't say that I necessarily do that, but it's. I definitely got a yellow vibe.

Luke 00:02:24  I'd like you to tell me a story, and I'm going to play a piece of music as a soundtrack to that story. Okay.

Saskia 00:02:31  Something that happened to me quite recently. So I was in London driving back with my friend to Bristol, and we stopped off in Redding at the service station, got back in the car and drove back to Bristol. Once she dropped me off, I realized that my phone was gone. My first thought was that it had been stolen because around the same time last year, I got robbed twice in a very short space of time. I got back to my flat and I checked my laptop to do the find my device thing, and it loaded up and it said that my phone was on the side of the M4 in between Bristol and Redding, and I immediately made up this story that somebody had nicked it from me while I was in Redding, driven down the M4 and tried to get into it and couldn't, and then just chucked out the window and I thought, I need to go and get it.

Saskia 00:03:22  And it was the middle of the night by this point. We got in my car and it was in that heatwave, and my car was just covered in sap because it was parked under a tree. So I tried to turn my windscreen wipers on and they just disintegrated into rubber, and rubber just flew across the car. So Chris said, all right, I'll drive. So he drove for a whole hour down the motorway. And then at about 6:00 in the morning, I was in a bush on the side of the M4 trying to find my phone, and I was trying to call it from my laptop, but then that wasn't working. And then we are finally logged into Chris's phone and it said that it was actually back in Bristol, and it had been a glitch in the system. And there was just this realization that I just completely trusted the technology and made this whole story up from a glitch in something that I don't really understand. Technology is something that we trust so much, but actually common sense is so much more reliable.

Saskia 00:04:20  And obviously it was in the car of my friend that I got a lift with. Yes, I drove an hour back and it is weird how technology has almost a personality now that you trust. Last year when my phone got stolen, I did the same thing and I tracked it and I saw it going all the way down the high street in Stockwell into Brixton, and you could just see it moving around the city, which really creeped me out. It feels very intrusive. Everything is on our phones these days are all your photos and all your details and stuff, so it feels like the stranger has all of your information. I had the same feeling of the creepiness, but when I saw that it was in Bristol, I thought the robber must have slept here overnight and then somehow got to Bristol on the side of the road, which is completely ridiculous because there was no robber and I just made up this fictional character who just never existed. It's very strange.

Luke 00:05:14  Okay, so I'm going to break it down into sections.

Luke 00:05:16  I'm going to try and spontaneously score this technology story. So you're riding along in the car with your friend, and then there's this sense of, oh shit, where's the phone? There's a panic there. Then that goes into this tracking thing. Maybe it's a bit technological music using the technology and then, okay, it's by the side of the road.

Saskia 00:05:39  Because when we got there, my heart was beating when we got to the door. And then.

Luke 00:05:44  The moment of realization.

Saskia 00:05:45  Realization and then embarrassment.

Luke 00:05:49  Here we go. Oh my God, what is that?

Saskia 00:05:52  What is that, a little bug?

Luke 00:05:54  Did it be a short interruption? Once we deal with the caterpillar.

Saskia 00:08:04  Yeah, I liked the kind of puzzle. Putting the pieces together. It could be a bit more fragmented.

Luke 00:08:10  I'm thinking there is that classic early sci fi film. We have a robot that's going wrong. It's trying to communicate itself or some other robot, but it just can't.

Saskia 00:08:28  I think you could have a beat with the realization as well.

Saskia 00:08:31  When it's logging onto Chris's phone and seeing that it's actually in Bristol. There could be almost a pause there, and then a completely different mindset of panic to realization and then just embarrassment.

Luke 00:08:44  You asked the question, are you using the technology or is the technology using you? Latter. Then they've got a bit of a problem. Are you up for telling me another story then?

Saskia 00:08:57  I've got a story. So me and my oldest friend Lesher were walking the Camino in Spain to Santiago de Compostela, but we're actually walking it backwards from Santiago.

Luke 00:09:11  As you were walking that direction, not actually backwards.

Saskia 00:09:14  Yeah. We just thought it would be a fun challenge and we needed to strengthen our calf muscles. So there's lots of yellow arrows, but we were doing it backwards so we didn't see the arrows as much. Getting up really early, packing all your stuff, getting on the road. And then we would walk for a couple of hours and our goal was our 9:00 coffee. And that was what we were thinking about all the time in the morning.

Saskia 00:09:40  At 9:00 we stopped. We find a café, we have a coffee and we have a big Sandwich. And we got to the cafe that it said on the map and it was closed and it looked really perfect. But we were really tired and we really wanted that coffee. And we were thinking, oh God, what are we going to do? So we decided to carry on, and we took a left after the cafe and started walking, and we were quite tired and thirsty by that point, but we just kept going. Maybe we were a bit delirious, but we didn't see any arrows and we didn't see any other pilgrims. And then we kept walking for about an hour and then it got really steep. The steepest hill I've ever climbed, steeper than Bristol. And we were going up and up and we were like, this doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like a proper track. Good to the top. When there was just this spooky concrete hut and inside it was this beautiful black horse who just looked really lonely.

Saskia 00:10:37  And it was really sad. And we just spent some time stroking it and feeding it loads of grass, So we tried to get down, went really steep down, and then we started having the realization that we were on the wrong track popped out at the bottom, and we were in exactly the same spot and the cafe was open. So we just had this massive detour to see this sad horse and then came back and then had a sandwich.

Luke 00:11:00  I'm sure the horse appreciated it.

Saskia 00:11:02  Yeah, I feel like there was something that we just needed to go and see that sad horse. Loads of good stories from that trip. I got a blister on my toe that was like another toe, and we were laughing so much because we were walking a pilgrimage and wondering if we actually believed in God. We were having that conversation, and then I took my shoe off at the end of the day, and I had an extra toe because God was like, you will believe in me. Yeah, we thought it was so funny.

Luke 00:11:27  That's a good story. So I'm gonna go for you. Get up early. There's a determination there. You need to get this coffee. And then there's this moment of realization. It's closed. Sadness. Then you spot this other The path you got, and then you have the climb. And then something about the horse, maybe an element of confusion and then back down.

Saskia 00:11:50  More sadness again with the horse. Loneliness and powerlessness. Because you can't let it out. You can't adopt it.

Luke 00:11:58  Would you like to pick a key.

Saskia 00:12:00  H for horse? That was really nice. I definitely saw the story all the way through that I felt the sadness of the horse. It's amazing how music can make something much more emotive, but it is really sad that that kind of helplessness. And I liked the dissent. The only comment I'd have is that the ending wasn't as happy as the release of finding that the sandwich, so I feel you had to play that again. There would be another section of eating the feast.

Luke 00:15:46  The sandwich.

Saskia 00:16:05  You see in color again, because they've got these amazing sandwiches with and tortillas in them.

Luke 00:16:11  How did you feel? The mountain, the climb?

Saskia 00:16:13  Yeah, that was really good as well. Got the kind of jaunty happy first section, the expectant of the cafe, the disappointment, and then the kind of o up the hill and the really sad bit.

Luke 00:16:27  I did use a pretty sophisticated musical trick. Did you? So you hit the bottom of the mountain. Then you play at the bottom of the piano, and as you go up the mountain and you get higher up the piano. It's pretty advanced stuff.

Saskia 00:16:41  But that did read because when we were coming down, the descent was easier, quicker steps and feeling a bit kind of top heavy and tired though, and a bit disjointed as well.

Luke 00:16:56  So do you have one more story?

Saskia 00:16:58  I'm trying to think. I was doing maintenance backstage at a show. We had a hyena puppet. This was a costume puppet, so you had to wear a strap into it, and the first person who was using it was tiny and had a really small waist.

Saskia 00:17:14  And then she got covered. And second was a much bigger guy. We had to make everything much bigger. And then he got ill as well. And then we had this other person come in and she was amazing, but she was much more of a dancer and wasn't used to the puppet, and she stretched it in different ways. It wasn't used to, but at this point it was feeling a bit tired. It had done 100 runs or something. Anyway, it was the middle of the show. Somebody ran to me and I was just sat minding my own business and someone said, the hyenas snapped in half and you've got three minutes to fix it. And then I just got given two halves of a hyena in stop motion. If something breaks, you can be like, okay, we are on a tight schedule, but everyone could just have a cup of tea and I can fix it and then I can go back on set. But in theatre, it has to go on. They're not going to stop the show, which is probably the main difference.

Saskia 00:18:07  So I had about 30s of just panicking in my head, and I just froze because it was a really bad break. So I just grabbed wire and tape and string and just everything and just strapped it up. And it survived for the last scene. And then I was waiting for it when it came off the scene and caught it again, and then did another fix. But that was just the craziest. Three minutes is not long. To get it back on stage and it's in two pieces. Good to get the actor back into it. And it was literally in two halves. And then I came in the next day and fixed it properly. That's the thing about theater, like when the magic is broken, it's really disappointing for the viewer. If you're in in the magic of the world and then you're like, oh shit, that's a puppet and that's broken, then you're just thinking about that. You're not thinking about the story. That's why there's so much attention to detail within costume and stuff. If somebody is wearing the wrong pair of socks and you see a logo or something, it just completely ruins the show.

Saskia 00:19:08  Was this that was the Book of Dust.

Luke 00:19:11  That was theater in London. Was it the Bridge Theater?

Saskia 00:19:13  My friend came to see it with her boyfriend, who's a paramedic. We went to the pub after, and I forgot at that point that he was a parodic, and I was like, yeah, it's quite a stressful job, quite unsocial hours and quite high pressure. Sometimes they get a puppet that's just broken and I need to fix it. And he was like, yeah, I understand. Yeah, I know how you feel. And I was like, you don't know how I feel. But he does actual proper things.

Luke 00:19:39  Okay, so I'm going to break it down into sections. You're just hanging out, chillin backstage. I'm just being cool because I work in the.

Saskia 00:19:44  Theater wearing black polo.

Luke 00:19:46  Whatever you do in the theater, I don't know, smoke cigars.

Saskia 00:19:48  And I had nice, nice cigars, actually.

Luke 00:19:50  Just there with a cocktail in the backstage area. And then a panicked stage hand runs in and says, no, look at this.

Luke 00:20:00  You you've got three minutes to break this. Otherwise this is it.

Saskia 00:20:03  To fix it. Yeah.

Luke 00:20:04  And then there's a scene of flurry with various bits of.

Saskia 00:20:08  Material and tape and yeah, very quick. It was 30s of a stillness. Silence. Yeah. Okay. And then panic. Nice. Yeah, that was good. I think you really captured the kind of anxiety.

Luke 00:22:11  Struggled to get the whole picture of something. So I was thinking about the brittleness, the fragility of the puppet, and then your anxiousness around that, which kind of worked together in some way. So what did you get out of this podcast?

Saskia 00:22:31  It was really nice thinking more deeply about certain scenarios and thinking about how anxiety at work can be portrayed. Just spending a bit of time to think more about things or the horse. Yeah, because that's just a story. But then when you actually have time to put a bit of music to something and think about it, you're like, yeah, that's actually quite a lot of interesting emotions.

Saskia 00:22:55  Do you think.

Luke 00:22:55  When you remember or tell that story again? The music will have an influence on it, on that memory?

Saskia 00:23:02  Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think the Horse Won was probably the kind of easiest to remember, because I really went up and down the piano like the mountain. But yeah, it's a really interesting thing to do.

Luke 00:23:15  So thanks very much for being on the podcast.

Saskia 00:23:17  Thanks for having.

Luke 00:23:18  Me. Join us next week for another episode of Impro Pod. Thanks for listening.