In this episode, I interview Georgia King and Mark Storen, the performance-making duo behind Whiskey and Boots from Perth, Western Australia.
They discuss how they’ve evolved from traditional theatre backgrounds into creating unique community-based verbatim performance work that combines storytelling, music, and interactive elements. Their process involves spending three weeks in a community interviewing locals, editing those stories, collaborating with musicians to create original scores, and then performing these stories back to the community using headphone verbatim technology – what’s been called ‘slow touring’ in Australia.
In this interview Georgia and Mark share insights into their creative process as both artistic and life partners, including how they navigate boundaries between work and personal life, their different approaches to creativity (Georgia’s structured planning versus Mark’s need for inspiration and marination), and the flexibility required when working with community members on their schedules.
They emphasise their commitment to making theatre accessible to everyone, particularly those who might feel unwelcome in traditional performance spaces, and how their work has reinvigorated them as artists. Their key wisdom centres on embracing risk-taking, not being afraid to make ugly things, staying curious throughout your creative life, avoiding comparison, and remembering that you can create whatever version of a creative life works for you.
It was a joy to interview them. I hope you enjoy this episode and don’t forget to show the love by liking, following and subscribing to the podcast on your favourite podcasting app and connecting with Whiskey & Boots.
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Interview transcript
MD: Hello. Georgia and Mark. I just want you to start by just introducing yourselves and where you’re from.
MS: Yeah, sure. So I’m Mark Storen. I’m from Perth, Western Australia and I’m one half of Whiskey and Boots.
GK: And I’m the other half and my name’s Georgia King, also from Perth.
MD: Excellent, excellent. Can you tell me, collectively and maybe individually as well, what your creative discipline, interest is?
GK: Performance, primarily. We started in traditional theatre and then have kind of morphed over the past eight years into more community-based, verbatim performance, storytelling with music, I would say, with some interactive again, as you know, Meg, it’s a little bit hard to describe in a succinct way that explains what it is. But the crux of our practice, traditional theatre background, but now it’s in this more kind of storytelling performance, community-based.
MS: Yeah, I guess we’ve taken our skills as performers, performance makers, teachers, musicians and kind of merged them together to create something that is kind of like a hybrid of all those things. And I think what we’ve done is we’ve come up with a unique performance experience where we go into a community for three weeks and we interview people and then we use headphone verbatim, music and storytelling to kind of like provide a mirror to that place or that community. So we kind of become conduits for the stories and hopefully what it does is it creates discussion, empathy, spotlights our commonalities and it’s kind of a deeper way of working.
There’s a term that’s been coined in Australia called slow touring. So it’s like a much …it’s a much deeper engagement with people and place as opposed to what Georgia was talking about where we used to be just theatre makers or actors for hire and we’d go in and we’d do a show and then we’d bump out and then we’d go to the next town and do a show. So this has been a much more rewarding experience.
MD: I love it and I have got to experience some of it and it’s a lot of fun and also quite emotional listening back to people’s stories.
Can you please tell me a little bit about your creative process? And I’m assuming that you both play different roles within what you create. So, maybe collectively and also individually.
GK: Yeah. I reckon it starts with an idea and it’s usually who normally comes up with it.
MS: Well I think mostly you’ve [Georgia] come up with the ideas and then just recently I’ve probably come up with some ideas as well but really the ideas would have come very much from you [Georgia].
GK: So I’ll have an idea about like a community or a thing, you know like stories about mums, stories about death, young people or home and then I’ll come to Mark. It’s really convenient that we share a life as well because I’ll just go for a walk and have an idea and start thinking about it and come to Mark and go, what do you reckon about this idea? And then we could just like jam it out. It could be this and what about that? And then start kind of brainstorming the potential of that idea and then what do you think happens. Then it’s about trying to find the community.
MS: Well I think like it’s kind of finding the community. Yeah, finding the place that particular idea might be open to kind of trying it out, interrogating the idea a bit more.
GK: So a key part of it is because it’s so much about community, the community has to be on board. So it’s finding the key stakeholders within a community who are like – we’re not about convincing people to do it – it’s like are you into this? Because it’s really, you have to be wanting to do this. And so once we’ve found the community and the people in the community find the people.
MS: Yeah, but I would sort of before that well, slightly adjacent to that, what I think our process is, we didn’t really know what it was. We didn’t know what we were doing when we started. We had all these collective skills but we kind of just tried it out and then we went, oh that kind of works, that kind of resonates, that resonates around this idea that Georgia has come up with. And we kind of started to put it all together that way and then over the time, the trial and error.
GK: Which is probably the same for all of us.
MS: Yeah, over the different iterations we’ve created like a document.
GK: A model.
MS: Like a model and saying, okay these things really work well. We know these kind of are working for us. This thing not so much. Or we discovered this other little component. So it’s always evolving, I think, our process and our kind of idea about making.
GK :But the crux of it is the idea. The questions. What we’re going to interrogate about the theme. And the place. Find the people. Interview. We sit down and interview the people for as long as that is. Edit the story down. Send it to them. Make sure they’re cool. And then bring it to the musicians. So another part of our process that we haven’t explored as much here is music. So we’d send the audio or present the audio to the musicians. They’ll come up with the original music that goes with each speaker. Each participant. And then we sort of put it all together.
MS: Yeah, so it’s kind of like each response informs another response essentially. So it’s kind of like a tiered approach. And it’s, I think our process is nimble, flexible, open.
GK: It’s responsive.
MS: Yeah. And responsive.
MD: So I think about all that when we think about routine a lot of people think to be creative you have to have certain routines where you get up at 5am and you do this until this time and then this and this and this and this and then you sleep and then you… I’m curious about what your creative routine is. Also knowing that you share a life together outside of your work and I guess my question goes that extra for you as a couple. Like how do you also separate your life from the work?
GK: Yeah.
MD: So create … What’s your creative routine and how do you create those boundaries around that for yourselves?
GK: Yeah, I think the boundaries is a really important part for us because it would be tempting to just talk about the work all the time. So we sort of have a rule of not talking about it until after breakfast. Or and then…but we break that all the time. But it’s good to have it there because if one of us is just like, hey we haven’t had breakfast. Come on. So we can check each other for that. And then sometimes if there’s a lot backing up we’ll schedule a meeting. Like at 10 o’clock on Tuesday, 10am on Tuesday let’s sit down and talk about and we’ll put together an agenda and talk about so that it’s not like at dinner time or other life times.
MS: Yeah, I think we kind of, we try and have a structure. We try and keep to that because and we have this kind of check in, Hey my bucket’s full. So where’s your bucket at? Is it low, halfway or full? If it’s full we know that we need to give each other a bit of space. I think we have different approaches to processing.
For Georgia, Georgia likes quite a lot of structure and a plan. For me I’m a little bit looser. So like when inspiration strikes that’s when I’ll capitalise on it or I’ll kind of want to work the most. But I’ve got to find that inspiration and sometimes for me that is like I have to go out into the place, look around, maybe do those things like just sit and have a coffee and sit amongst the place and then go oh yeah that thing, that idea Georgia had I reckon it might work this way and then I can come back to Georgia or the group and say yeah I’ve thought this, what do you reckon? Because our brains kind of work differently.
GK: It’s a challenge. It’s a good thing that we’re quite different because if we’re both the same it wouldn’t be as interesting probably, but it’s a challenge in terms of the collaboration because I want to move. I want to move now. Let’s do this. Here’s the idea, let’s go for it.
I need to let it marinate and be inspired and let it permeate. And the other challenge that’s probably the other one, because our work is collaborative with the community as well, they’re not going to be on the same schedule necessarily that we’re on. So we just have to kind of wait until they’re ready to share or have a story or what have you and then they have to be fitted into the routine.
MS: 100%. So I think that’s why I sort of say our process is nimble, flexible and open. It has to be. We can be rigorous where we can be or scheduled where we can be but we have to be, yeah we’re on someone else’s time often and that and that’s been a real learning for us I think.
GK: Because they’re not creative people either. They’re farmers or they work at the Bottle O.
MS: They run the pub or whatever it might be.
GK: So you have to fit into their schedule and they don’t know what we’re doing.
MS: But that’s been really rewarding, don’t you think? Because I think that elicits something else and some of those informal exchanges are where you really get the deepest kind of connection, like a really amazing story because you’re in an informal kind of setting. It’s not sort of formalised so much and I think that is another part of our process.
We’re very interested in creating access for people who don’t otherwise feel welcome in theatre spaces or performance spaces because our background is that. It seemed unattainable to us and then when we were in those spaces we sometimes felt like uncomfortable so it’s about comfort.
GK: We think theatre and art should be for everyone and when it feels a bit gatekeeper-y sometimes and we want to try and dismantle that as much as two little artists can do. Just make it as accessible as possible for bogans who live in the outer suburbs or in the country.
MD: I love that. So do you try to keep your work to a Monday to Friday nine to five or is it just literally you have to look at each week or each day and take it as it comes?
GK: A little bit of both. We do try and keep it Monday to Friday but on tour it will start off with having Sundays off. So on tour it’s much more intense because you’re just doing a whole show in three weeks from beginning with nothing and then the performance.
So six days a week is fine but no Sundays. If that’s the only day someone can do an interview, if that’s the only day the photography or the media wants to do an interview on Sunday, that rule starts again.
MS: Yeah, or it’s the only day we can set up the venue because we’re often in different spaces. So we do try to keep a bit of structure but there’s flexibility.
GK: Where there has to be. If that’s the day it has to be, it has to be that day. Very much from the old school, we just make it happen because we produce the shows as well. We don’t have an external producer. We’re the producers and the actors and the writers and the community engagement team. So it’s a little bit that sense of you just do what you have to do to get it made.
MS: Yeah, that’s true actually. When I do think about that side of things, we are working on two things at once. So we’re working on the creative but we are producing it and we’re also working on the next show in terms of all the administration.
I think that’s similar for a lot of artists because…
GK: you’re your own manager
MS: …you’re your own manager or you don’t necessarily have the funds or the resources to employ people to do that for you. We’re lucky in the sense that we do have a marketing person so we can handle some of that. But yeah, I think you have to, we’re kind of working all the time trying to keep some kind of time off but it’s very hard.
It is very hard.
GK: But when it’s down, when we’re not on tour or when we, I mean we do have some nice weeks where we’ve got space and time.
MS: And that’s what’s been so great about this place is that it gives you the space to kind of really think about an idea, explore the idea. There’s an intensity to it but it’s like everything else is taken care of and that has been really nice I think. Because in a way, that sort of being here has taken me back to the beginning of our process when it really was you [Georgia], me and two friends just kind of making it up and it was just very, very spacious because there wasn’t a lot of...
GK: We took longer too also because it’s one of these funny things where in the beginning you’re just doing it with the smell of an oily rag and you’re just figuring it out and you haven’t got funding and you’re not accountable to anyone but no one’s getting paid properly. But you also can kind of do what you want a little bit more and you can be a little bit more like, what’s the word, be a bit more of a cowboy about it. Because you’re not answerable to anyone because you haven’t gone through the proper channels.
Now that the bigger you get, the more success you get, you have to be accountable for all of the pennies that you spent and all that so you have to be a bit more structured.
MS: There’s a bit more rigour around the structure whereas at the beginning of the process or discovering what the work was, yeah, we did have a lot of space which was really nice I think and we’d all come into it from a place where we’d been working in a lot of that rigorous framework and we were searching for something that was a bit looser. I wasn’t even performing in the first iteration so I was just playing banging on the guitar. It was all Georgia because I was like, I’ve had enough of speaking words out of my mouth. I just wanted to turn into the corner and play guitar. And I literally did that, I don’t think I even looked at the audience. I was just down and there were two other musos and we were just three friends.
GK: And then you got jealous of me performing.
MS: It sort of reinvigorated us. So the process I think did actually reinvigorate us as artists and kind of changed the path we were on as artists which has been really nice. So now I wouldn’t even consider myself an actor, I’m just kind of like an artist who makes work using many different forms.
GK: It feels like, I often feel like I’m not quite anything. I’m a little bit of a producer, a little bit of an actor. I don’t even know if what we do is acting. People put you in that category but it doesn’t feel the same. Am I a performer? Do we make performance art? Not really. We’re a bit of a kind of master of none I think.
MD: I’d definitely put you on the performance. Tell me, if you were to meet someone at the very early time of them choosing to live a more creative life in whatever form, what wisdom would you want to impart?
GK: Just take risks. I think risk taking is really important for creative people and I feel quite strongly that we live in a society education system everything that makes people risk averse. People want to be good straight away, people don’t want to get messy and make ugly things.
I think it’s really important. I wish we could dismantle that and people could just throw s**t up and who cares if it’s bad to begin with. Or it continues to be, it doesn’t actually matter.
Be riskier everyone. That would be what I would say. People at the end of their careers as well.
I think there’s pressure once you’ve got to a certain level that you have to, the pressure is to be good all the time. And then I think you’re too careful and too safe.
MS: Yeah, I would say in a similar way to Georgia don’t be afraid to make an ugly beautiful because I think in the ugly there’s beauty and it’s more authentic in a way. You’re finding, you’re leaning into something that’s not considered the correct version. I also think just don’t be afraid to make it up as you go along because you can create the life you want in whatever career and that in itself is creative.
There’s many different paths, you don’t have to follow one. If you want it, you’ll find a way through it and don’t be discouraged by everyone saying you need to do this, this, this and this to have a good and full and measured life. It can be whatever version that works for you, I think. The version that works for you is the right one.
GK: Comparison is the death of creativity. Don’t compare yourself, just do your own thing. And just be messy.
MD: I love that. Any other pearls? Do you have anything else?
MS: No judgement, just curiosity.
GK: Yeah, stay curious, that’s good.
MD: My favourite words.
GK: I mean it’s important for creatives, just be curious. And you can see with people here, older people who are still curious, that’s why they’re still vital. When you lose the curiosity and adventurous spirit and that’s part of the risk taking, it just fizzles.
MS: Yeah, absolutely.
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