The Amelia Project - Behind the Scenes - How would you like to disappear?

Episode Date: June 6, 2018

"It's all just so wonderful I can't get away!" Behind the Scenes Bonus Episode to Season 1. Alan Burgon, Julia C. Thorne, Philip Thorne and Oystein Ulsberg Brager talk about the origins of The Amelia Project and discuss how they would like to disappear. Cameo appearance by Leeanne Stoddart. Music and sound design by Fredrik S. Baden. Content warning: chewing sounds may trigger misophonia. For full credits see our website. Website: https://ameliapodcast.com  Transcripts: https://ameliapodcast.com/transcripts Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ameliapodcast Donations: https://ameliapodcast.com/support Twitter: https://twitter.com/amelia_podcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ameliapodcast/ Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ameliapodcast The Amelia Project is part of the Fable & Folly Network. Find and support our sponsors at: fableandfolly.com/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your mom hates it when you leave six half-full glasses on your nightstand. It's a good thing mom lives on the other side of the country. And it's an even better thing that you can get six IKEA 365 Plus glasses for just $9.99. So go ahead. You can afford to hoard because IKEA is priced for student life. Shop everything you need for back to school at IKEA today. Because the Skip app saves you so much time by delivering stuff like your favorite cool treats, groceries, and bevvies, you get more time to have the best summer ever. Like riding roller coasters, learning to water ski, applying sunscreen to your dad's back.

Ah! Yep, definitely the best summer ever. Squeeze more summer out of summer with Skip. Hello, what you're about to hear is a behind the scenes episode. And before we begin, a quick content warning. The beginning of this episode contains the sounds of chocolate chewing. This is entirely my fault. Actually, let's say it's Einstein's fault, because he's the one who brought the Norwegian chocolate into the studio. Anyway, if you can't stand that kind of thing, apologies, and maybe skip ahead a bit. Right. Enjoy the episode. the episode. Congratulations, you've reached the Amelia Project. This phone call isn't happening. If you're not serious about this, hang up now. If you continue, there's no way back.

Good choice. A new life awaits. You'll hear back from us within the hour. If you don't hear back, please consider the whole thing a hoax. Leave your message after the beep. I left Scotland seven years ago, trying to disappear. My plan was to get as far away as possible, but I haven't been able to leave Vienna ever since I arrived,

seven years ago. It's the weather, the architecture, the atmosphere, it's everything. It's all just so wonderful I can't get away. I need help. I have to disappear. My wife, Leanne, must believe that I have not disappeared. You must hear it as if I am in this episode, Was assoziieren Sie mit dem Wiener Prater?

Die riesigen Schweinstelzen im Schweizerhaus, Langosch und Lilliputbahn? Oder vielleicht die ikonische Szene aus dem dritten Mann, in der Orson Welles im Riesenrad fährt? Nachdem sie meine Verschwinden inszeniert haben, wird niemand mehr an diese Dinge denken. Ich bin zu beschäftigt mit Arbeit und nicht bezahlt. Ich passe die Hälfte meiner Tag auf dem fucking Metro. La Défense, Châtelet, Saint-Denis. Ich habe Mühe. et mal payé. Je passe la moitié de ma journée sur le putain de métro. La défense, Châtelet, Saint-Denis. J'en ai marre. Je dois disparaître. Thank you. Welcome. Can I offer you some cocoa?

Oh, yes, please. Oh, that'd be lovely. Just some official bits and bobs before the fun begins. Name? Oostein. I asked you for your name, not your last disease. Well, it is Øystein. Wow.

I'm Norwegian, that explains it. Occupation? Artistic director of Imploding Fictions, co-creator, writer and director of the Amelia Project. How's the cocoa working out for you? Well, it's great. And I've just got the thing to go with it. What's that? Oh, Einstein, you're a star.

What is it? First sound in the world. This is Norwegian chocolate. Freya chocolate. Isn't like Swiss chocolate supposed to be the best in the world? I think there was advocate here. That's what they think. Norwegians are very proud of their chocolate. Mm-hmm. Have a bit. Isn't, like, Swiss chocolate supposed to be the best in the world? Oh, that's a little to a Norwegian thing. But...

Norwegians are very proud of their chocolate. Oh, very much so. Oh, wow, this is actually really good. Ha! Go home, Swiss chocolate. Thank you, Iso. You're welcome. We've now made it impossible for ourselves to continue this podcast,

which is didn't count. We should get Friar to sponsor us for season one. Yeah. Name? Oh, sorry, it's Philip. Pip for short. We were just thinking about your nickname there. Yeah, I was, yeah.

Pip, it stands for Philip in person. Occupation? I'm artistic director of Employee Fictions, writer and director of the Amelia Project. So you do what he does? Essentially, yes. Why do there need to be two of you? Actors are kind of scary, so it's always good to have backup.

You're French? Oh, God, no, I just live there. In France? In Paris. So you're British? Kind of. Kind of? I'm half British, half German.

And my mum's German, my dad's English. Actually, his mum was Swiss, so that makes me a quarter English, a quarter Swiss. Next! I'm Julia. You're the Austrian one. No. We're in Austria. Someone must be... Well, I live here in Vienna, but I'm not actually Austrian.

Oh, for God's sake, I don't have time for this. Occupation? I'm a co-founder of Open House Theatre, which is an English language theatre based here in Vienna. And I work on casting and general coordination for the Emilia project. Oh, and you might also recognise my voice from the intros and outros. Good, good, good. So that just leaves me. I'm Alan, I'm general manager of Open House Theatre and I play the interviewer. Philip and Oistein, do you want to give us a bit of a background? Sure. So making a narrative podcast is something we've been talking about for a very long time.

If we should start at the beginning maybe. We both studied theatre directing at Rose Bruford College, so that's where we met, collaborating and stuff and we thought about theatre in a very similar way and that was something that kind of drew us together alongside the fact that I love the fact that Pip is a magician. Yeah unfortunately since this is audio you can't see that at the moment I'm wearing a tails and a top hat and watch this are you ready one two three on a top hat and watch this. Are you ready? One, two, three. Wow. Now, unfortunately, our listeners can't see what just happened, but trust me, it was amazing. Amazing. So most of our shows to date have included some sort of magic, trickery, that kind of stuff. have included some sort of magic, trickery, that kind of stuff.

It's probably only a matter of time until some magic comes into Amelia. And in fact, we've just finished writing a murder mystery play about a bullet catch illusion. Which goes horribly wrong. And there will be an episode of the Amelia Project about Melissa, who's a time-tripping magician. Don't give away too much yet, though. Yeah, you're right. I'm digressing.

We were talking about meeting at Rose Bruford. And so one of the first things I knew about Einstein was that he directed a show in which he'd kidnapped his entire audience on the way to the theatre. Okay. Come again? Yeah, so he kidnapped his audience and held them hostage. And so these rumours were going around Rose Bruford that we had this new Norwegian student who'd done this. And as soon as I heard that, I got curious and I thought, okay, I have to... Do you want to maybe explain those then?

Yeah, well, no. No, I did a show where the audience was told to get on the bus and they were going to be driven to the place where the performance was going to take place. But what the audience didn't know was that along the road the bus would be stopped by four actors who all had guns who then hijacked the bus and bring the audience to a remote warehouse where the rest of the show kind of took place.

Right. And that made you think, I want to work with this guy. Yeah, absolutely. So that's what, yeah, that's what initially drew me to it. And then we started collaborating, making some theatre pieces and some short films together. Our graduation piece was The Hamlet Machine by

Heine Müller. We convinced our tutors to let us team up co-direct, co-device a show based on that text and we used that show then which we made still at college but then we still used, when we left college we then took it to various festivals and used

that to start our own theatre company which is called Imploding Fictions so we toured festivals in Austria, France Norway And used that to start our own theatre company, which is called Imploding Fictions. Yeah, so we toured festivals in Austria, France, Norway, Italy, Egypt. Egypt, which was absolutely insane. We'd only just graduated at that point. But the Egyptian festival must have thought that we were a bigger deal than we were. Because they put our show in the Cairo Opera House. Which was purely down to our blagging the fact that we were bigger than we were.

We just graduated and I think we were good, good blag artists and they thought they were inviting the RSC or something. And then they ended up with us. Yeah. So that's the surprise. We want to see how the English do Hamlet, someone from the festival said. And our show was kind of full of German post-modernist music by Rammstein. Half of the audience left.

The other half, they gave us a standing ovation. So it wasn't all bad. And it was a great experience. Just generally traveling with a show is so much fun. Although, I mean, if you're out there, if the listener, if you're going to be traveling with a show, just a little word of recommendation from me, don't take a handgun in your luggage. That's not a good idea. It's based on personal experience, actually.

So this was when we flew to Hamburg to make a short film from Stansted. And obviously it wasn't a real gun. It fired blanks. Hamburg to make a short film and from Stansted and obviously it wasn't a real gun, it fired blanks but yeah it was a prop for the film that we were going to make though Stansted Airport Security found it real enough Yeah and next thing I know

there's this big burly security guy with a machine gun marching down the queue for people boarding the plane saying Mr. Brager, Mr. Brager. This is no exaggeration. I was actually there. And Ostein gets frog-marched off and

Julia and I are left to board the plane alone with the actors. No idea when Ostein would be able to follow if or whether he'd be stuck away in jail. It was about 24 hours later. I got to know Stansted Airport very well. I was stuck there for over 24 hours later. I got to know Stansted Airport very well. I was stuck there for over 24 hours. I think the kidnapping concept sounds amazing.

I think it's wonderful that I actually know someone who's now been arrested at an airport for carrying firearms. But aside from kidnapping, blagging and getting arrested for possession of firearms, is there more to imploding fictions than semi-criminal activity? There is. In the last few years, imploding fictions activity has been mostly in Oslo. We've been running a project there called Oslo International Theatre, which is doing rehearsed readings of contemporary international plays. Yeah, so that was mostly Einstein. And I moved to Paris.

My life took a completely different turn. I became a dad. And I sort of, we still kind of collaborated a bit by email. I did some dramaturgy work on some of the imploding fictions in Oslo International Theatre shows, but mostly I was very busy eating baguettes, changing nappies and that kind of thing. And basically I left the theatre behind for a few years

and tried to be an adult. How did that work out for you? Well, I'm back here with you, aren't I? Pip and I really wanted to find a way to collaborate again. And then last Christmas we met up in London and spent an entire day in the Waterstones Cafe in Hampstead, drinking tea, brainstorming. Drinking so much tea. I remember I really needed to pee.

And I went to the loo and there was some guy taking forever. So I rattled on the door politely at first, then not so politely. Eventually, the door opens and Alan Davis walks out. Wow. And you forgot you needed to pee and went back to the table exactly yeah I was so starstruck I love Alan Davis

in case he's listening to this actually yes if you're listening Alan Davis would love you to play a part on the Amelia project he'd be perfect as Bob absolutely brilliant yes we wouldn't be able to pay you that much but there would definitely be

a bar of Norwegian chocolate in it for you oh Oh, no doubt. Alan Davis, if you're listening to this, send Julia an email at julia at openhousetheatre.at. And we might even be able to stretch to two or three bars of chocolate. And I'm really sorry that I rattled the door. Anyway, let's get back to where we were. So where were we? You were waiting in line in the Waterstones for a pee. Yes, that's right. So, yeah, so we, apart from that, we also had a very productive meeting. And that's where we discussed the concept of an organization that fakes its clients' deaths and allows them to reappear in a new life. So after that meeting, we went off each to a different country, started writing scripts,

and I sent them to Julia to get some feedback. I'm Philip's sister, by the way. Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, that's right. So, yeah, so Philip sent me the first few scripts, and, I mean, I've had 30 years' experience of Philip's wacky imagination, but still each episode managed to take me completely by surprise, and I immediately became addicted, kept badgering him to send me more episodes.

And, yeah, I thought, this is something I'd really love to get on board with. And seeing as the Amelia Project is all about collecting stories, and at Open House Theatre our motto is stories worth telling, I thought, this seems like a perfect fit. So I took this idea to Alan. And I read a couple of episodes and I'm one of these guys who when I read a play or a scene or whatever, I don't usually laugh out loud or cry out loud or do any of these things. But I did laugh

out loud when I read through these. And one thing that's exactly score, you know, brownie point check. And one thing that struck me about the writing was because I have written some things in the past myself, some comedy sketches and things, and I felt very comfortable with the style of writing. So for me, it was a kind of no-brainer that we would do this. And at Open House Theatre, we're always looking to broaden our horizons and get involved with different projects. So, hey, why not not let's try a podcast yeah so we were really excited to be collaborating with open house and in fact although julia and i are sisters and both work in theatre brother and sister what did i just say giving the game away This cocoa's good, isn't it? Lovely. Actually, why do you say cocoa?

It should be... Hot chocolate. Yeah, I know. So, well, I think cocoa is... I don't know, because I always get confused with German, where you can say cacao. But in the first script, I wrote cocoa, and then I didn't want to change it,

because somehow it's snappier and it's just one word. And to me, it sounds funny. I don't know if anyone else thinks that. But anyway, this is probably a discussion we should have had before actually recording an episode. But to me, Coco sounds funny. We should explain to the listeners where this Coco is from, shouldn't we, Bep? Right. So I brought this over especially from Paris.

And it's the real deal from L'Ideau Magot. People who've been listening to the first two episodes have probably noticed that Coco and L'Ideau Magot is mentioned, and those two features will play an even bigger role in episodes to come. I'm imagining that if you cut the interview's veins open, I don't know if you agree, Alan, but I think the thick hot chocolate would come running out instead of blood. I believe that's true, yes. Do you actually even like hot chocolate, Alan, or is this like torture for you right now?

Well, no, I mean, well, hot chocolate per se, I don't drink because hot chocolate for me is covered with milk and cream and lots of sugar. But I do almost every single day, I drink a mug of Khao Khao, which is just straight up cocoa powder and hot water. So there's the difference. The one is actually liquid chocolate and the other is just the powder.

Well, yeah, I think so. I mean, the cocoa powder is what you use for cakes and things. And it's not sweet at all. It's actually quite fatty. And it's actually, it's extremely good for you. It's very's very very healthy which is only one of the reasons why i drink it i do love the taste as well but i don't really do sugar or milk so hot chocolate not so much okay but the stuff i mean it's kind of like it's almost like so you put your spoon in it and it stands in there so it's kind of it's yeah it's like liquid chocolate really, isn't it?

I don't know, like, yeah. I don't know how they make it. It's absolutely made in England. I tried finding the recipe online, but it doesn't, I think it's a secret. I think it's a secret, yeah. Well, with regards to that, my taste buds would say yes, my discipline would say no. Pip and I went to Le Dumagu a few weeks ago

and we actually discovered there are these two huge wooden figures of oriental magicians who are hanging on the walls. It turns out that that's what Le Demago means. It's I thought it meant two maggots. You've got to work on your French. It would be a rubbish name for a cafe, though, right? No, but I thought that was part of the chart. I thought it was like how wonderfully creepy this cafe called The Two Maggots.

And I thought, like, how Amelia? And, you know, so, yeah. But no, it doesn't. It means, I looked it up on Wikipedia. So, magot means a figurine in a Japanese or Chinese style. I think you can forgive me for not knowing that. I said in French because that's pretty... I don't know any French stuff.

I'm planning, though, at some point, I have to write an episode about two Chinese magicians coming into the Amelia office. That'd be great. Yeah. What's... Oh, hey, we should get Les Demagogues to sponsor season one. Yes, exactly.

I'll go in there and I'll just say... I'll say... And they'll take one look at me and go... That's all I got. Yeah. What's hot chocolate in Norwegian? Well, you can call it cacao or varm chokolade.

Varm chokolade. Alan, if you could actually choose a method of disappearance, what would you go for and how would you want to come back? Um... So many options. I wish I'd read this bit before I didn't do that. Let me get back to you on that one. Shall I go first?

Yes, please. I've lived in Vienna for almost five years now, and I still completely love this place. So I think I'd want my disappearance to play out in front of an iconically Viennese background. I actually live quite close to the Prater, which is Vienna's fun park. Most people probably know that old-fashioned Ferris wheel. It actually features in two of my all-time favorite movies,

which are Before Sunrise and, of course, The Third Man. So that's one of the rides. But there's actually another ride, which is less famous but much more exciting. It was my wife who made you go on it. Absolutely, yeah. It's the Prater Turm, which is a 117-meter-high chair plane. So you can see it from all over the city because it's a great big tower. But I'd never actually dared to go on it until my sister-in-law recently convinced me.

I chickened out, by the way. Yeah. It was amazing. Next time you're going to have to go because it was an exhilarating experience. You're flying high over Vienna with a perfect view onto the towers and church spires

and the hills beyond. It was great. So for my disappearance, I would want to get onto the chair plane on a clear day, wait until it had reached its final height, then my seat would detach and be flung off into the distance while the crowd below held its breath.

But neither a body nor the seat would ever be found. And for my reappearance, obviously, I'd want to reappear in Vienna because I don't know if you knew this, but it's recently been crowned the most livable city in Europe for the eighth time in a row. So, yeah, I'd still want to stay here and I think I'd still want to work for my own business. So apart from theatre, my passions are baking, playing board games, reading and spending time with my daughter. So I think I would like to run a cafe that had board games and books and a big play area for kids. Sounds nice. Lovely. Okay, so for me, well, as a magician, I like to

baffle people. So I'd like my disappearance to be something really impossible. There's a story, I think it's a Sherlock Holmes story in which someone gets onto an empty tube carriage. And when it arrives at the next station, the carriage is empty. This is a really nice mystery, I think. So I'd like to do something like that. And disappearing from the metro would make sense because the Paris metro is a place where I think I've had some of my darkest thoughts. I spent many years teaching business English in Paris, which kind of involves shuttling back and forth between various offices,

often with very, very little time and not having proper lunch breaks, but just eating kind of sandwich lunches on the metro in crowded, smelly carriages. And yeah, so many a time I've been in this situation, just fantasizing about, dreaming about being able to just disappear and teletransport myself somewhere completely different. So what I do is I would get onto the very last metro at Salazar at around midnight. Salazar is the nearest metro station to where I live. And I'd get onto the carriage in full view of the CCTV cameras. And by the time the train pulls into the next station, Madeleine, two minutes later, I would be gone.

And for my reappearance, I'm obsessed with Venice. Ever since watching Don't Look Now, I've really wanted to go to Venice in winter. This year I finally did it, and it was absolutely amazing. The mist, the crumbling buildings, the

tides emerging the city, it was exactly how I'd imagined it. The mist, the crumbling buildings, the tides emerging the city. It was exactly how I'd imagined it. In fact, there's an Amelia episode about this coming along later down the line as well. So my new life would be as a fisherman on Burano, a little island in the Venice Lagoon. So should I mysteriously disappear one day, that's where you'll find me.

That episode's going to be very confusing for a lot of my friends back home, who when I told them I was moving to Vienna, said, oh, really, with the gondolas? Yes. Yes, it is. And the other one is Austria, Australia, of course. Many, many, many letters do

a round-the-world trip instead of us personally that are posted to us and arrive in Australia. Cool. Alan, do you have a... I do, actually. I've just thought of my perfect disappearance and perfect reappearance, that I get whisked off one day by a very large production company, preferably based in Los Angeles, California, and go off to this magical world where everything is created by a team

behind these magical objects called cameras and come back to Vienna anywhere from six months up to a year and a half later depending on the size of the wonderful disappearance that they create for me and come back with the influence and the finances and the resources to create my own theatre that we can all come and play in. That would be much more convenient than handing in those funding applications every year. It would be. But until that time, we'll continue to do the funding applications. Absolutely. What about you, Aston?

Actually, I discussed this with my wife, Leanne, before I came here, and she swore that if I disappeared she would come looking for me and then I said well you wouldn't if you think that I'm dead and she said well now I will so I guess since she's onto me already

I'm going to have to disappear in such a way that she would think that I haven't disappeared but that is probably impossible right? Without faith, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible. Shall we crack open the champagne? That's a good idea.

So, let's, everyone take a glass. Here we go. Thank you. Let's pass this around. Thank you very much. Who's going to open the bottle? Shall I open it? Yes. There we go. I don't want to get, like, Who's going to open the bottle? Go for it, Philip. Shall I open it? Yes. There we go.

Okay. I don't want to get liquids all over Gabriel's equipment. Oh, we're recording in Trongeber Studios, by the way. Gabriel Geber. Trongeber Studios in Vienna. So if anybody ever needs any audio stuff in Vienna, that's the place to go. Trongeber. Okay, so put your fingers in your ears, everyone. One, two, three.

Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. This behind-the-scenes episode of The Amelia Project featured Alan Bergen, Ostein Braga, Philip Thorne, and myself, Julia Seathorn.

It also featured Ostein's wife, Leanne Stoddard, and Julia Morizawa on the answer phone, Coco from Les Deux Magots, and Norwegian Chocolate. This episode was recorded at Thorngeber Studios with the assistance of Gabriel Geber and was edited by Oistin Braga. Music by Frederik Baden. Graphic design by Anders Pedersen. And production coordination by Julia C. Thorne.

For more information, see ameliapodcast.com. Alan Davies, if you're listening, our offer to appear in Season 1 still stands. That's all for now. Look forward to welcoming you back to Amelia again soon. Where is he? Where the hell is he? Einstein, where is he?

I don't... He said he was just popping down to the shops to get some brunost. Brunost? It's Norwegian cheese. Brown. Tastes of caramel. It's really good. It's gross.

I'd like to try some. Where can I get some? Can we please stop talking about cheese? My husband has just disappeared. Leanne, I'm sure he hasn't disappeared. He's just... Shut up, Pip. I don't trust you. You're a magician.

One, two, three. Wow. That was amazing. And I'm back. That was amazing. Who's coming to get some brunos? I'm in. I'm coming just to see your grossed out reaction. Bye, Leanne.

Bye. Where's everybody going? What about Einstein? The Fable and Folly Network, where fiction producers flourish. You found the heart. She found a key to the heart. On the quest of a lifetime, three best friends take on a harrowing journey.

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different. Everything's weird, just different. Everything's different on the water. When new friends meet, you have an office? Where do you think I do all the pirate business? Pirates have business? It's a parchment nightmare. And family secrets are revealed.

We could be twins. Yes, I've noticed. This young crew of adventurers will learn what it takes to complete the deadly Journey to the Heart. It's not like an island could set a trap for us. What? Lightning fog? Are you kidding me? But is getting what they want worth losing what they have? I was happy with you and Charlie. Was?

Look at us! How could I be? Journey to the Heart. Now available everywhere you listen to podcasts. Tune in each week and vote for where you think the story should go next.