Billie Grace  
Hi, hello podcast

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Zoe Glen  
Welcome to the Not-God pod.

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Billie Grace  
Yes, I hope you enjoy the name as much as I do. So I'm Billie.

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Zoe Glen  
And I am Zoe.

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Billie Grace  
And we are, I guess co founders of the Not-God Complex collective. And the NGC hub, which is all like, the same thing, but not.

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah. So today, this is kind of an introductory episode. We're just going to chat a bit about what The Not-God complex is and what it has been so far.

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Billie Grace  
Yes. So we are what, what is the NGC, then? What, what, who are we?

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Zoe Glen  
So officially, The Not-God Complex is a theatre company comprised of two main parts. So we have the knock guard complex collective, which is a collective of performers, artists, however, you want to define that from all across Europe, kind of working together in different collaborative forms. Yeah,

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Billie Grace  
we met, we all met at the European Theatre Arts course at rose Bruford. And that's kind of where it started as well. It started as an application to a thing that we just needed something to apply with.

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah. And kind of there was a group of us all collaborating on various projects. And so it made sense to kind of make that cohesive, in some way. And then, yeah, there was a pandemic,

and then there was a pandemic but we

are here.

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Billie Grace  
Yeah, I think I think we essentially, like got bored enough at some point. And we're just like, that was a cool name. Let's do something. Yeah. And then Zoe, actually you came up with, like, a good plan for like, what you thought we could do. With the like two strands of the collective and and the NGC hub, which we haven't mentioned what it is yet.

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah, so the NGC hub started out as the Not-God complex directory, and then sort of expanded into being something else. So the initial idea was kind of as a way to like platform multidisciplinary artists in a way that like traditional kind of casting sites, profile sites don't necessarily do. And then at various points throughout the pandemic, we sort of thought that it was a useful thing to be like sharing resources and stuff. And so that became a part of it. It's kind of a part of company activities that has a focus on usefulness for artists, and kind of also fits under our broader focus of inclusive practice. So yeah, and then we've recently kind of restructured that to be the NGC hub so that we can move into doing things like this podcast underneath it. And also 

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Billie Grace  
Yeah! you are currently listening to an NGC hub thing. So there you go. This is this is part of it. You already know part of it.

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah, so that's kind of the two parts that come under the Not-God Complex umbrella.

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Billie Grace  
Yeah, and the collective. So we've sort of said, Oh, we've all met at like rose Bruford. By all of us, we mean, all of these lovely people who are going to introduce themselves now.

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Rebeka Dió  
Hi, my name is Rebeka Dio and I'm a Hungarian born London based performer, creative and theatre maker. I specialise in multidisciplinary art and holistic approaches. And I'm really interested in telling stories through music, dance, movement, and all kinds of different mediums. I graduated from rose Bruford college and I'm interested in telling stories of communities and amplifying voices of people with lived and embodied experiences. That's really important to me, I want to create sustainable and accessible art. At the moment, I'm really interested in exploring the intersections of identity, immigration and queerness. And just coming from my own experience as well. I'm really passionate about making change. And I want my art to reflect that. 

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Oriane Joublin  
Hello, I'm Oriane, I'm also part of The Not-God Complex. And I come from France and Germany. I currently live in Germany, where I write young adult novels for

young adults.

And I also do theatre and films. I'm interested in directing and movement theatre. And yes, I'm super excited to be part of this podcast and of this collective. 

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Carola Colombo  
Hello, my name is Carola Colombo. And I've just graduated from rose Bruford college where I studied European Theatre Arts, I've learned how to craft from the very base a piece of theatre, a piece of contemporary theatre. So now I want to focus more on the classical side of the performance. So that's why I'm studying Shakespeare and Greek tragedies. And my aim is to develop my skills in acting into this kind of performances. I really hope that you like the not-god complex company, because it's amazing. It's very open, and you have to join it.

Thank you.

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Amelie Eberle  
Hi, my name is Amelie. I'm also part of The Not- God Complex. And I'm super excited about this upcoming podcast, a little bit about myself. I am an actor and theatre maker based in London. And my main thing is kind of comedy, physical comedy clowning. That's what I'm mainly interested in. And yeah, super excited to see how this is gonna turn out.

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Zoe Glen  
We also are part of the collective in our individual artist selves. Yeah, my kind of areas are physical theatre, looking at documentary techniques in theatre, and also a bit of like, clown and meta fictional stuff. And then I also do like research things.

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Billie Grace  
You're doing a research MA, aren't you?

 

Zoe Glen  
Yes! that is happening.

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Billie Grace  
Um, and yeah, so I'm doing something with myself. Now, okay, my sort of areas of interest, I suppose, like physical theatre, work and dance, actually, as its own form, and then actually, through this pandemic, and being forced to do things, virtually, I think we're going to speak a little bit more about it later. But I've really found an interest in working with video and like making what really I don't think you can call anything other than a short film, but making it have a theatrical element and have like working with movement in video. Yeah, and then you and I have collaborated. I know actually still collaborating again, yeah. collaborating on witchy stuff. Yeah. Which is our technical term for the genre.

But I think

I think I definitely, like that's kind of a big part of what I'm interested in as well. Like, yeah, spirituality and, and, I guess folklore.

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah, I changed my Instagram bio a few weeks ago to be just like, making shows about witches. or making work about witches or something like that. And I'm like, yeah, that is. That is the vibe.

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Billie Grace  
Oh, yeah. Making work about witches.

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah, I feel like making work about witches is the vibe we have going on?

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Billie Grace  
Yeah, I definitely think so. I think I mean that so far, what we've been up to.

Yeah.

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Zoe Glen  
Do we want to chat a bit about how graduating into the middle of a pandemic has informed? kind of...where we started as a company?

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Billie Grace  
Yeah, I mean, it's something that I love and hate talking about because it's been a massive impact on I think all of us. I think anyone who's graduated into the middle of pandemic is going through it a little bit. Yeah,

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Zoe Glen  
it's Yeah,

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Billie Grace  
I mean, it is a like, I feel like graduating is strange, regardless, but then graduated from a theatre course, when that entire industry no longer exists in the way that we were expecting it to exist.

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah, I think it's been a definite test on our abilities to adapt.

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Billie Grace  
Yeah. Um, but, I mean, I think we're doing pretty well.

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah, it's To be honest, it's going not badly so far. Yeah

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Billie Grace  
We're recording a podcast.

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah. And I think it's also like this whole, like the NGC hub side of things. While we probably would have come to it eventually, because it was like, on the cards, even when we were in that like period of naivety, when we didn't realise the pandemic was going to be quite so long.

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Billie Grace  
Yep, nearly a year into it now.

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Zoe Glen  
I think that the kind of limitations on what we could do, in terms of making work kind of gave us the time and space to focus on what that could be like, because we basically got to what like May and we were like, well, we might as well have a good website and a good like social media presence, and actually placing the focus on those things has taken us in a direction we maybe wouldn't have found  had we been able to be like, here's all these shows.

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Billie Grace  
Yeah, I think we definitely would have been more, I guess, performance and just focusing more on the collective side of it all, probably. Yeah. had there not been a pandemic, which like, has its ups and downs, I think, because, I mean, we are performers at the end of the day, and I miss performing one day. But well, you know, however, yeah, as you said, we wouldn't probably wouldn't have gotten to this point, or at least not this early on in the life of the not-god complex. What are we calling it? The not God complex? universe? Yeah.

Um, anyway.

But yeah, and I am really glad that we've like, come to this, I think,

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Zoe Glen  
yeah, like, it's different to what would have happened in a way thats definitely not at all bad....

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Billie Grace  
yeah. Yeah, it was unexpected. But it also, like, all happened. So naturally, and I think that's like, it's interesting to see how this happened naturally. Yeah, time when things don't feel natural, but like, what I'm trying to say something and it's not. I'm glad that we're here, basically.

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah. And I think what's kind of started as lots of separate bits all entirely make sense, as, like, what the not-god complex as a company or organisation is.

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Billie Grace  
Yeah, I think I mean, I also think, sort of having social media as pretty much main outlet of anything. Yeah, has forced us to like really brand ourselves, which is a little bit strange, but also quite useful in this capitalistic society we live in.

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah. And I think it's definitely been a crash course in skills. Like, yeah, being able to make a film that works as a film, and like, having a website that can host something like the directory and all the NGC hub stuff. And working entirely over like weekly zoom calls. We had, like, it definitely forced us to learn all of that very fast. And I think even in non pandemic times, which will hopefully exist soon thats going to be very useful to our practice as an internationally based collective and kind of, perhaps make us see possibilities were before we'd have dismissed stuff as being not logistically possible.

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Billie Grace  
Yeah, I mean, so our collective we all studied in London, however, how many of us are still in London? 

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Zoe Glen  
Three?

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Billie Grace  
But yeah, basically, um, I don't think we would be able to. Yeah, exactly. I don't like I think the actual making of our collective would feel would have felt maybe impossible. Had we not had to learn that things are possible over zoom?

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah. And like the idea of being like, yeah, we have an idea and we can work on it from across like three countries. That does not seem at all daunting now.

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Billie Grace  
Yeah. 

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Zoe Glen  
like, yeah, of course we can. And so yeah, I think like, options will be open to us going forward that perhaps wouldn't have been had we not had this. Well, I guess we have to learn these things.

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Billie Grace  
Well, yeah. I mean, definitely, because also, you know, we've now kind of, okay, the original website we built. And then and then thankfully, Oriane's dad came and helped us with like, actual coding.

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah, no, we're not coders,

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Billie Grace  
We're not coders, but we did build a website. And like, we've, I think we've learnt a lot about social media promotion, or just like, social media in general, but also editing. Like, we've both done so much more editing than I was expecting to do in my life.

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah, I'm like, I reckon I could put Final Cut Pro skills on my CV, by now.

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Billie Grace  
Yeah, I think so. I think so. I mean, we're also podcasting. I don't know if we'd make a podcast, were we both in the same country and without a pandemic.

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah, no, probably not

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Billie Grace  
I don't know if that would happen. Yeah,

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Zoe Glen  
but here we are.

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Billie Grace  
Here we are.

 

Zoe Glen  
Yeah. So, on the video editing front, do we want to chat a bit about kind of how what our.. very much emerging in the room practice.. is/was and how that has kind of translated into the digital projects we've been doing?

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Billie Grace  
Yeah, well, I suppose, I suppose a very basic practice that we were using in the like, was it a month before the pandemic decided we weren't doing the show anymore? Ah, was a lot of stuff informed by Au Brana, which is a theatre company in the south of France. Wait, no, my words aren't working? Oh.

 

Zoe Glen  
Well, I guess like, um, semiotics and like, meaning making in physical theatre? Like, we're interested in kind of associations. Yeah. Personal associations with words, observations. It's quite linked to the viewpoints practice. Yeah. If anyone knows that and exploring stuff through rhythm, connecting with like, the architecture of the space.

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Billie Grace  
Yeah, and, I also think a lot of it is about the hierarchy of the elements of performance, or rather, the lack thereof. Yeah. Which is maybe the most interesting thing, at least for me to then translate into video because I think, Well, I think it's just very different how elements of performance or elements, I suppose with video, interact and are presented to the audience.

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Zoe Glen  
I was just gonna say, if we were going to be like, we use this practice. We're kind of in the viewpoint realm in that. In the Mary Overlie viewpoints realm, in that like, non hierarchy of elements. Exploring. Yeah, very explorative.

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Billie Grace  
Yes, very much. I mean, I think that's also sort of comes with how we were trained, but that, like approaching work, from maybe a stimulus, rather than from an idea. Um, I think that's maybe the reason why we say we do witchy stuff. Yeah, because we just like, we're gonna do something about witches...uhhh.. go! What's the first thing you can think of? Let's move about it? And then a movement piece gets born?

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah, basically.

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Billie Grace  
Um, it's Yeah, trusting the process? How many of you have heard people like a teacher tell you to trust the process? I can't count how many times

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Zoe Glen  
the thing is that we are just like, here's the steps, we'll have a thing.

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Billie Grace  
And it's interesting, because I feel like maybe even working virtually has made that has like forced that more. You know, you have to take the steps. You have to have an idea and then take some clips, and then send them to whoever's editing  a part and then just sort of put them in some random order and move them about until it makes sense. 

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah, and i think it sort of forces you to document things a bit earlier. I mean, obviously, it's always changeable. But you have to like record things almost rather than Yeah, like make a record of things as you go.

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Billie Grace  
Yeah, because so even like, a film that is currently out, because Yeah, because Beira is like from the start, I suppose virtual process, but yeah, right. Rites to Celebrate a Sun Goddess began as a as a show. And I think it would have been a very different thing. Yeah, just in the sort of elements of it. And just, you know, from the very obvious thing of where it's live, it's never going to be the same thing. Whereas this way, it's just exactly what we did at those times that we filmed that. And that that's that that's what it is. I mean, that's a very obvious thing to say. But I'm kind of fascinated. But yeah, 

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Zoe Glen  
I think it was interesting, because we had kind of a outline of Rites. And while we hadn't necessarily solidified like the exact This is what's happening on stage, at this time, we had the bones of a piece. And then in translating that, it was very much a case of being like, what's going to work in this format and what is not basically what we had initially was part, storytelling looking very much at Celtic mythology and folklore surrounding Brigid, the Celtic sun goddess, and yeah, lots of these bits of very live feeling storytelling, interspersed with poetic text with like, accompanying movement scores based on kind of key words. So we'd use a key word for a movement stimulus, and for a poetry stimulus and and put the two things together. And in the translation, the like storytelling elements, just didn't feel..... like it felt like they need a liveness.

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Billie Grace  
Yeah. 

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Zoe Glen  
I think the thing is that poetry or like, poetic text is constructed in a way that films are all so constructed. Like, you have to think about what goes where, and you have to make a concrete decision. Whereas there are some elements of performance. And I think that kind of, like folklore, storytelling requires a liveness, requires a response, like you, the audience to be responding to you. And if you were to be responding to the audience,

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Billie Grace  
I wanted to say about how, with rites our two, like main elements were, what poetry - poetic text, and movement and how when we started, it was kind of a joint thing for both of those and I, we sort of knew whose strengths were where, but it was a lot more of a, you know, we'll sit down on both, like, make a text or something, and we'll both make a movement piece for all of the things And whereas, we've definitely been forced, I think, to just go like, okay, you're very good at writing, and I'm very good at. Well, I am very good at movement..

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Zoe Glen  
Yes, you are allowed to say it!

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Billie Grace  
I am allowed to say it. Yeah, and, and so and so we've just had to, like split those roles, or not really, we've had to, but it's just like, ended up being a lot more apparent and a lot more like, okay, you're gonna write a thing for this and Okay, I'm going to,

do a bit for this

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Zoe Glen  
It's less like, we're going to, like, make a movement score, and we can be like outside eyes, and we kind of know who should be outside eyes on what, it's more like, it's either like, okay, I'll write the text for this, you do the movement. Or it's like, I'm gonna do this two minutes. Then you're gonna do this two minutes. And then we'll have a chat about how we need to link them. Definitely a different way of collaborating, you have to be a lot more intentional, and yeah a lot more kind of strategic about how you split stuff up and what makes most sense.

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Billie Grace  
I think in a way it does also very much streamline the process. Yeah. Like and to some degree, I do miss the kind of sitting around in a studio, wondering what the hell we're doing. But yeah, again, I don't think we would be where we are. If there was so much sitting around in the studio not doing what we were doing as we used to

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Zoe Glen  
I think we've we've definitely learned a lot about like efficiency and I didn't know maybe this is boring, but like organisational skills on the like general running of the thing.

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Billie Grace  
We can do a whole thing about that. Yeah. notion. Yeah.

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Zoe Glen  
Let me tell you about notion!

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Billie Grace  
do you have a minute to hear about notion.

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah, and I think hopefully, when we're like in rooms more often and stuff, bits of that are transferable?

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Billie Grace  
Yeah, I think so I think they will be I think we've very much learnt, I actually think that maybe having to do this digitally and like starting, you know, doing our first real collaborations digitally, yeah, has kind of forced us to figure out our dynamic and figure out how to just like get stuff done without any kind of confusion at the rehearsal room, you can very easily just like miscommunicate, what you're meant to be doing or like, you know, maybe you all do some work. And then there's like cuts that need to be done. And that's always kind of, or, like, it can be kind of hurtful. I think, if you're like, really excited about something that you did, and then it doesn't really work, or like someone else's works better, or these like little dynamic things that I think are so present in the rehearsal room, I kind of feel like this has forced us to sort of go to just like, accept what the work is, and to deal with it and do that. instead of....faff about basically.

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Zoe Glen  
And it's like, Okay, this person is doing this, this person is doing this. Yeah, like division of responsibility and kind of trusting in each other, that the thing will get done. Collaboration doesn't necessarily mean that everybody has to be doing every thing all the time.

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Billie Grace  
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's something that definitely, eta...our course sort of, at least made me feel like I think for a very long time, I was very convinced that we had to all be doing the same thing. And like all check, I think there's also like that, yeah, the checking each other's work, always seeing each other's work. Yeah. Which just takes so much time and like, I trust you, I dont need to..

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah whereas now it's like...you'll send me some like video stuff. If I'm editing it to a text and I'm like, cool. Maybe I'll put them together and be like, Can I get this one specific thing? Because the timing doesn't match up or something?

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Billie Grace  
Yeah,

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Zoe Glen  
but I'm like I trust. And partly, it's like, we've been working together for a while. And we can communicate the instructions well enough that we'll probably understand each other. And I think also it kind of like, I wouldn't see it as a particularly challenging idea. If, for example, we were working in the room, but we had, like some of the group there for the first few days. And then a different combination of people. Yeah, like that would be fine. That somehow feels fine now. Yeah. Like, like we've learned the kind of like planning systems and recording systems to make that. Yeah. Easily doable.

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Billie Grace  
So yeah, those are are good things to have come out from...the pandemic

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Zoe Glen  
Those are our thoughts on working so far.

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Billie Grace  
Yeah.

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Zoe Glen  
Kind of like a ....here's what we learned in the last year. Here's where we're at.

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Billie Grace  
I just opened your.. 'to conclude' on the plan. Just says, hope you enjoy, with, you spelt just like the letter u  

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Zoe Glen  
Yeah. 

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Billie Grace  
Um, yeah. Hope you enjoy.

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Zoe Glen  
There will be more podcasts.

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Billie Grace  
There will, we are trying to do like a rotational host situation, because obviously, there are more than just me and Zoe in the collective

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Zoe Glen  
yeah. So at some point, you'll hear from some other people with some other perspectives, and it'll be cool. .

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Billie Grace  
They're all pretty cool people. They've all got like, pretty cool ideas.

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Zoe Glen  
There'll be chats about like, internationalism, international working, languages. Different practice in general, various, like industry related topics.

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Billie Grace  
Yeah. Because actually, we haven't really spoken about language. And that is kind of a big part of what we do as well, I think. Yeah.

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Zoe Glen  
That's, that's the come. Stay tuned. Please come back. If you want to hear that.

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Billie Grace  
Yeah, please. Um, please be nice to us. And come join us. And I suppose also just putting it out there. Like if you have anything you would like us to chat about. We'll be happy to put it on our very organised list on notion. And it will come to you at some point. 

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Zoe Glen  
If you want to keep up to date on things that are well on this podcast, or things that are not this podcast, you can follow us on Instagram @thenotgodcomplex on twitter @notgodcomplex. And we're also on Facebook @thenotgodcomplex

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Billie Grace  
Yes. On Facebook, there's like it's like written properly with a hyphen in between not-god. The rest is all just lowercase. lowercase capitals?

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Zoe Glen  
lowercase un-hyphenated. 

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Billie Grace  
Wow.

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Zoe Glen  
We've been talking for too long. Cool. Well,

we hope you enjoyed the first episode of The Not-God Pod.

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Billie Grace  
Yes. I hope you like chaotic energy because I don't think that's going to change. Yeah. about it. Wish me luck editing this.

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Zoe Glen  
And we hope you have a good month.

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Billie Grace  
Yes. See you speak to you soon. Yeah. What do you say? Yeah, we're gonna see. Speak to you soon I suppose. Thank you for listening

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Zoe Glen  
Good byeeeeee