PuSh Play Podcast Episode 44 Transcript: OUT and THIRST TRAP: Complexities

00:01
Hello and welcome to PuSh Play, a PuSh Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I’m Gabrielle Martin, PuSh’s Director of Programming, and today’s episode highlights stepping into one’s power and immersive design.

00:16
I’m speaking with Ray Young, the artist behind OUT, which is being presented at the PuSh Festival February 8th and 9th, 2025, and Thirst Trap, which is available throughOUT the festival. A luscious, fierce, and defiant dialogue through space, through struggles, through communities, this performance doesn’t simply stand in solidarity with global 2SL GPT QIA Plus movements, it dances alongside them,

00:42
breaking down violent histories to imagine something new in a succulent celebration of desire. That’s OUT. And Thirst Trap is part narrative and part meditation, a 30-minute sound piece for audiences to experience in the bath along with a specially designed pack of multi-sensory resources to transform their physical environment.

01:03
It invites audiences to consider the correlation between climate and social justice, and to recognize the importance of taking collective action towards building a more just and equitable future. Ray Young is a transdisciplinary performance artist, experience maker, and writer, widely recognized for their work at the forefront of activism, queerness, race, and neurodiversity.

01:25
Their practice is centered on creating a safe space for those who exist at the intersection of multiple realities through collaboration and resistance to traditional forms. Here’s my conversation with Ray.

01:39
When I started here in 2021, and I was thinking, okay, what are the projects I’ve seen in the last years that I would love to bring to push, OUT came to mind, so I’d seen it at Impulse Dance in 2017, and it just had stuck with me.

01:55
It’s such a powerful and just brilliant thing. performance that really like moved me and then we’ve been in conversations since then pretty much about making this happen it’s been a long path but it’s finally happening I’m so thrilled so yeah just to say a long time in the making and I’m really thrilled to sit down and chat with you a bit more about your process where you’re at in your career yeah so before we jump into it I will acknowledge the land that I’m joining this call from this conversation so I’m among the stolen traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish peoples the Musqueam Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh I’m settler here and I have a responsibility to continual learning and self-education and I owe a lot of that education to the Yellowhead Institute which you’ll hear me regularly give a shout out to And I’m just going to share a little bit on today’s kind of reflections,

02:58
which are on with regard to indigenous alternatives to climate risk assessment in Canada and What has really stood out to me is this comment on how Western silence science silos society and the environment.

03:14
And so often we see nature as a place to visit on the weekends. Rather than a dynamic and interrelated part of our daily lives and this contributes to this paradigm of progress and the capitalist model of extractive economic growth, which has resulted in the failure of the last 30 years of climate policy and so This report is Really Thought provoking and well researched and also ties in how Western policymakers neglect indigenous understandings of time,

03:49
space and scale. So that, you know, while climate change is a problem for all of us. We often only focus on start and it’s inevitable end and we view it as a linear Process or trajectory with unavoidable effects and then forget that our present role.

04:07
We have responsibilities and shaping what will come next. So Those are kind of some of today’s learnings and Ray, I know that we’ll probably talk about some of this with regard to Neo colonialism and relationship to land and in some of your projects.

04:30
But first, I’d love you to share where you’re joining the conversation from today. Well, I am in Lots of kind of gray, not raining Nottingham. Which for those of you don’t know somewhere in the east Midlands of the UK, not far from Birmingham.

04:51
Yeah. Thank you. Can you talk about the impulse to create out and its significance in your trajectory as an artist? Yeah, um, oh shit, so funny when I hear you talk about impulse dance because it feels like a lifetime ago.

05:08
Sometimes those pictures flash up in my phone and I’m like, oh my god, look at me so baby faced. But I was, because I didn’t actually know anything about, uh, I didn’t know very much about impulse dance at all before I went there.

05:20
It was Dwayne that knew a lot about it and was like super gassed and I was like, oh wow, okay. I was just super excited to be invited somewhere to kind of, yeah, to perform the work. Um, I think one of the significant things about out is that I, I set out to make a piece of work through the body because Dwayne and I at the time had been having like lots of conversations about blackness and about awareness.

05:47
And, um, I guess like Yeah, the complexities between those two sides of our identities being of like a certain age. We’d have these conversations all the time. And I guess like I was really interested in working through the body some way and felt like this particular project would be like really fertile ground to kind of do that.

06:15
I feel like often when I start to make a new project, yeah, I’m seeking to like challenge myself in some way. And so yeah, this time was like, okay, so what does it mean for me to kind of do a piece that’s like purely physical when that is not, yeah, kind of not my training, isn’t there?

06:38
I think the other thing was it felt like some of those conversations would be really, really hard or had been hard with experts and being hard with our families. So it just felt like, okay, well, let’s kind of like, yeah.

06:51
Physicalize the things that we want to say to our families and like more broadly. A lot of that was thinking about like, what is like a culturally traditional like dance forms, like the stuff that, you know, social dancing felt really, really important to us.

07:10
Because these things aren’t usually seen in like highbrow dance studios or dance spaces. And we want it to kind of like translate that feeling into the performance space. I can remember being younger and going to like a dance or a rave and being probably dressed in something that I didn’t necessarily feel comfortable in.

07:34
And then having like this bright light, this kind of video light, like frost into your face, like all up close and personal, but also just like the vibe of being in that place and it being like really, yeah, really community focused and like kind of everybody kind of like, moving as as as one and also obviously also that base kind of like ricocheting through all of your your bones and kind of like vibrating all the way through your body feels like sort of like I don’t know like ritualistic in some ways or like a shedding of something so yeah kind of wanting to take that to a performance space and then also I guess there was conversations around like the music and dancehall that hasn’t in the past been very favorable to towards kind of like queerness and yeah and kind of like wanting to kind of like subvert that somehow or just reclaim reclaim the music yeah and I was reminded of I went to a club night in London.

08:44
I think it was called Boo’s Delicious. I’ve been there sometimes and it was like the first time I’ve been to like a queer like a bashment night and everyone was queer and I was just like wow this is amazing.

08:54
So yeah all of these things kind of like went into the work and we tried work with an amazing dramaturg and had like yeah some really amazing conversations and yeah and then I guess the yeah the work was kind of born although there was like a really early iteration and the first time we actually did the work we went all the way to Glasgow to Buscott Festival to do it because it was the furthest away that we could be from Nottingham.

09:26
We were like oh yeah we’re not ready for family to see the work yet so let’s go do it somewhere else and it was a really amazing experience. I think that’s you know you don’t know often you know you can be into a thing but you don’t really know how it’s going to land until all the power of it until you put it in a space of people and that was a really really stripped back piece of performance.

09:52
I mean I feel like the work is anyways mostly about the connection between the two bodies and then there are a few objects in the space but the people are kind of like it’s very emotive and that’s just like through the sheer power of the performers in the work.

10:06
Yeah and then I guess it kind of just grew from there really and we just like carried on to developing the work and brought yeah there was more people involved and yeah I think by the time you saw the work at Impulse Tampa, it’s gone through that it’s a really rigorous kind of like process of refining and distilling down and yeah and I you know I actually just really really enjoyed the process of making that piece of work.

10:38
I feel like yeah there’s I think and also bringing it back now. It’s really interesting being where I am now and knowing the journey of that work and kind of just like seeing the evolution of the work but also the evolution of like myself and the way I feel about it.

10:58
And also it’s crazy how I think some of the things that we’re fighting for, standing up for are still really as important and prevalent today. I think that part feels a little bit sad but all the more reason why as many people as possible should kind of like get to experience the work here.

11:24
And so this is the remount that’s coming to push and yeah, why remount it? How has the work evolved with through the remount? And you’ve spoken to your feelings towards the work or yourself as an artist evolving over this period, can you just talk a bit more about that?

11:46
It was when I started to be unapologetic. When I started, when I made out, there was a piece of work that I was making at the time. And again, that went through low, I think it was this really point of like transition, where I kind of knew where I wanted to get to, and I was maybe a little bit afraid and I wanted to kind of push myself in ways that hadn’t before.

12:04
And, and, and so I remember doing this piece of work, the one that came before that, and everything had to happen in the way it did in order for me to be like, okay, I have the courage to kind of make this piece of work now.

12:14
But it was kind of where I threw, I kind of threw away the blueprint a little bit and just decided to kind of like, do something else. And I suppose actually, this is the journey where I start to kind of, oh, this is the point at which I’m starting to kind of switch form a little bit and think about, I used to use comedy quite a lot to talk about really sensitive subjects.

12:35
And that was really great, because we all love, we all love a laugh. But this time I felt like, no, it’s not funny. And also, it’s not funny. And also maybe there’s space for us to be able to hold, hold this and, and also kind of using the body as activism or using this idea of like, the show feels relentless at times, but so does kind of going out into the world in the UK, sometimes it feels relentless.

12:59
So I think there’s kind of like a feeling of that in the world that we’ve in the world that we’ve created. There was something about standing in my power and standing in my authenticity that I really like.

13:13
I don’t think that I will be the artist I am or the person I am now without that show. That’s like literally how important it is to me. So maybe when people view the work and they speak of its power, maybe that’s what they’re seeing.

13:27
That’s what they’re experiencing, you know, that like real time evolution. I think like, this is one moment in the show where it is, I call it kind of this machine moment where there’s kind of, you know, this is movement that happens for a long period of time.

13:41
and each time I approach that it never I don’t suppose it never feels easier it’s just but it is this this this is always for me there was always a sense of achievement of kind of like getting to the end of of that moment um and I suppose then when I fast forward to kind of like remounting the work this time um it was like well how do you how do you put that work on other bodies when it has been when it comes from such a personal personal place space and so a lot of what first of all it was like finding it was I guess it was like remembering what the essence was about the work and how that might need to shift for kind of the audiences of today or shift for where we are at politically making sure that the casting the representation was really really right in terms of the bodies I felt like I wanted,

14:40
you know, there’s only two performers in the work, but I wanted those bodies to be equally celebrated and to be different from maybe what we see usually in a piece of work. And then it was trying to go through that process of, you know, finding the right performers with the right chemistry, and then also taking them through the journey of, well, look, this is how we started to make the work.

15:01
These were the conversations we were having. Let’s have some of those conversations first, and then let’s try on the work and let’s not try to, and I think it’s difficult, right, because there’s an expectation.

15:13
If you’ve seen the work, there’s an expectation from, I guess, like a programmer that’s experienced it for it to be as is. And I suppose also for me, because we’ve kind of reached that iteration, a new kind of had really spent time finessing it, it kind of felt like shape-wise it needed to kind of, the journey of it needed to kind of remain the same, but we also kind of needed to kind of be generous in there to kind of like play around with the movement language that we had and elaborate on that a little bit more so that the new performers felt like they had a place in it.

15:55
Right. So diving back into both the movement language and the conversations that had inspired the work and those conversations were really about like the intersection of queerness and Caribbean identity.

16:10
It was a bit of a crash course, I guess, for them, because obviously, you know, I had so much time to kind of get to grips with it and they were being asked to perform this very emotive work and put their selves in it and also come up against some of those frictions and some of those feelings that I, the challenges that I’d also felt when I was performing in the work.

16:32
It’s no mean feat, but they’ve done an amazing, amazing job. Because of these sections, like the machine section, that is, is like a bit, you kind of like trance-like and grueling or how both in terms of the content that it’s addressing and also in the physical demand.

16:51
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, we danced in heels in the work. I can’t tell you how many times I thought to myself, even when I was in it, why, why did you, why did you make this choice? I was naivety, but there was something about like teetering on the edge and the fragility of that kind of finding your footing always and just them asking that as someone else and also asking them to trust you, trust you,

17:16
trust the process of the work, trust that I know what it is, it will be on the other side. And if, you know, I think that, you know, there will be this kind of element of like transformation. It has the power to do that once you get to kind of the other side.

17:31
But yeah, they, you know, they’ve really embraced the work and it’s changed because they are different. and they have a different experience and actually in some of the conversations that we’re having you know those performers are quite a lot younger than Dwayne and myself and so their experience of being black and queer and growing up in London which is a very different experience from growing up in Nottingham you know it was very that was it was different and so yeah I think because there’s less I mean you spoke to how the work is still so relevant because there hasn’t been as much shift with regard to the society homophobia these things and in since you created the work but then working with the younger cast from a more like a larger more metropolitan international city was there was there a disconnect there in terms of like the intensity of the the experience of the that intersectionality yeah I mean they you know they go put it yeah they go up in a city where there were lots more people that looked like that and were also queer and they had it that that club night I talked about you know that was my first opportunity to go there and that was when I was can’t remember what age but they were able to experience that from a really really young age and feel that uh like feeling that places as as as a safe space for not only queer bodies but for trans bodies as well and talk about that as being like I guess the foregrounding in terms of becoming who they were seeing other people like them and then knowing that that is okay to you know to kind of live in their authenticity and then we’re in a time I think last year felt like have we moved forward at all because it feels like we’re in a time where governments are pitting people against each other and so last year particularly for like there was a focus on really tearing down trans people in a way that I found utterly disgusting and so transparent as kind of like what you know what you know what the agenda was and I still think and and I you know obviously I think that I mean yeah I just find it disgusting actually it felt really really really the right time to kind of be bringing this work back into the world yeah to be like we’re not going to be quiet we’re not going to go away you know we’re here we deserve to be here we deserve to take your space it’s about being invisible being really really seen I think I didn’t speak about that but it was about being seen on our terms and about strength and fragility because I don’t think that people get to be fragile a lot of the time you know and so the softness that’s kind of like yeah there’s all of it.

20:40
Yeah and in your recent work you focused on exploring notions of rest, care, recovery in your in your art. What it means to both create and receive art while centering care and intentionality. Can you talk about what that looks like in relation to your projects, thirst trap, bodies and plow?

21:00
Yeah I think that um I think I was tired. I think I was tired. I’m a neurodivergent artist and maybe because of that and because of kind of sitting on these different uh sit in the midst of these kind of different identities or whatever.

21:27
I’m also living in this world, this world that is I think I was talking to before about like empathy. Like where has that gone? Um I I guess like I needed a rest and so therefore I created a work that would allow people to experience it in a restful state and often actually the first trap in private.

21:53
Um and I wanted people to be able to uh have space and time to think. To uh to see each other, to um you know these these works of thinking about uh like climate and like our part in that and I feel like they’re all interlinked because you can’t have private justice without having social justice.

22:20
Like those two things you know um it’s impossible and and so yeah I I needed to slow down. I kept saying maybe lots of people said a lot that I’m not going to go back to working how I did before and I in some parts did do that as much as much as I could.

22:44
But also I suppose for me in that moment in time, I took myself, the key thing is that I decided to take in order to do that restful thing, I took myself out of the work. Because when your body is a site of trauma, and it’s also the thing, and then it’s also the material in the work.

23:04
And it’s also the thing that people want to talk about when they want to like critique the work and your lived experience, which is personal to me, but also I know through having friends and family, it’s not that personal to me, because these are the things that we talk about often.

23:26
I still wanted to be able to give, but not in a way where it took from me, and it was taken a lot from me. you So yeah, I created these two pieces where I ask the audience to be the performer in the work, I guess, you know, I asked them to do the work.

23:48
It doesn’t exist actually, unless the work isn’t, yeah, it doesn’t exist really, isn’t alive until there are people in the work performing for being the stand-ins of those things. Because in Thirstrap it’s the audience, an audience of one in a private space is led by prompts, it’s following a narrative, it’s experiencing something that they are also helping, they’re an actor in that experience as they’re following along.

24:17
And then was bodies, did bodies come out of Thirstrap? Are they, or is it really its own project? Yeah, so bodies were supposed to be first, it was always supposed to be that swimming pool piece, and then lockdown happened.

24:32
So we’re like, ah, we can’t be in community together in a pool anymore, so what can we do for this time that feels like it is hitting some of the same things that I wanted to do with Thirstrap? So Thirstrap was really an experiment, you know, and it was really an experiment in like, how do I make a piece of work when I’m not, that I’m not in?

24:53
Because I think maybe if you get me as a performer, you kind of know what to expect if you’ve seen my work before, but if I take myself out of that, then how do I still, how does it still do the things that I would normally, that I would be trying to do in the space, and the relationship with the audience, how do we still kind of have that thing happen without me kind of like being there, and you know,

25:15
all of my shows I feel like are about like world building. And so yeah, it was a test really to see if that could, if it could do, if you could get this box delivered to your house with a few simple things in it, and have kind of quite simple setup, you know, you’re using your mobile phone and some headphones.

25:36
And then you’ve got some objects that you kind of take into the bath, which is a place that you, you know, many people always go and how do we kind of like make that, how do we make that theatrical experience in that kind of small space in your bathroom for one.

25:53
And again, process, the process of making that was always nice to have the finished piece. But obviously with that piece, I’m never going to know, I never see, I never see it. I’ve never seen somebody’s bathroom like, oh, why don’t you go in?

26:08
I never see it, I kind of hear about it afterwards, but yeah, it was just exciting to be able to kind of make work in that way, to really have the opportunity to take a risk and do something different.

26:22
So then when we’re allowed to be together in this space again, I could kind of go back to like, okay, so what is bodies, then how does that differ? What are the similarities? which is an immersive experience in like, in a swimming pool.

26:42
In a swimming pool, yeah, for 24 people at a time. Yes, yes. An instructional as well and uses kind of lights and sound as kind of like an immersive experience to kind of guide people on a journey. Yeah, of recovery, discovery and the rest, I guess, does both of those things.

27:03
It kind of takes you out. What a really nice way to experience something. I suppose because also, you know, the things that I’m talking about are quite heavy. But I want people to be in this like restful space to be able to kind of receive the information because I think you turn on the TV or you look on Instagram or anything like that and it’s you’re, you’re, you’re exposed to things really, yeah,

27:30
things all the time. And maybe just something in me felt like, okay, but if I can make, if I can make, if I can get the heart rate calm, if we can calm the nervous system, then maybe we could take this in better.

27:45
Maybe we can experience it better. Maybe we can see each other, you know. Yeah, I really find that very powerful about your work, how you use how you transmute this kind of subject matter through the body in a really visceral way, or through these tools of immersive, like states of recovery, or, and, you know, this is the first time I’m learning about your use of comedy in the past, but this like,

28:13
how do you treat this subject matter and your creative risk and experimentation is in form is really exciting and stands out from project to project. So yes, clearly, you’re a transdisciplinary artist who’s worked in dance, film, installation, performance, art, song cycle concert, more, I’m sure.

28:35
And does form always come after the concept for you? Or do you sometimes take on the challenge of a form first? So for example, Plow, your new project of film, was that like, you really wanted to work in film?

28:48
And you’d been waiting for the right project? Or? Yeah, I can talk about that to work in film for a minute. And actually, at this point, I’m like, okay, I’m ready to be in the work again. And so I not live or maybe live.

29:08
Because I think when the piece of work kind of is finished, it will be kind of this interaction with the screens, maybe this kind of the live space as well. And usually, I think that what I do is I think about what I want to say.

29:25
And then I think about maybe what form that’s best said in. And then I find a way to kind of make the two things work together. And obviously, when I said I’m going to make this piece of work. It’s going to be in a swimming pool and it’s going to do this.

29:40
And people look at me like, okay. And I’m like, no, no, no, I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it. If you experience it for yourself, if you experience the water, if you, you know, the cool temperature, if you kind of like, yeah, bodily, it kind of like, I hope that it kind of does something different from just seeing something with your eyes, kind of really like feeding it.

30:07
And yeah, how kind of represents an opportunity, like I said, for me to step back into work, it represents me an opportunity for me to work in the medium that I haven’t worked with before. Although I did really make, it’s very funny, actually, I made a comedic video very recently, a student project about eugenics.

30:28
And I made this video, I’ve gone back to comedy a little bit. But it was really, really fun. I kind of really like the way what I like about film is the way that you can like, draw, draw focus into specific moments and tell somebody that something’s going to be important a little bit later on or kind of be expansive.

30:58
And again, just really interesting to see how like my interest in like world building and emotive, I don’t know, yeah. And trying to draw out certain feelings from people. And your work has everything I’ve seen has a really strong aesthetic perspective.

31:26
And already in your kind of treatment, the visual storyboard, or I don’t know, it’s not called a storyboard, it’s called a… The inspiration board for the film looks incredible. I’m so excited to see how Eurosthetic will translate to that medium, where often a lot more is possible than like not large budget theater.

31:53
I think it’s great to hear about how you’re finding fun in creative process these days, and also sustainability for yourself. So I do have a question about where you’re at in your career now. So, you know, out premiered in 2017.

32:13
Since then, your work has toured internationally, been critically acclaimed. When I was at Edinburgh Fringe in 2019, your works out and nightclubbing were festival top picks. They were everywhere, you know, receiving great press, which is not easy in a festival of almost 4,000 shows.

32:30
And then, so I’m curious about the transition to becoming a mid-career artist and just how you perceive the challenges and opportunities at this stage of your career. I think opportunities are that people trust you a little bit more, right?

32:47
You know, they’re willing to back you because they’re like, oh yeah, this person can do it. So when I do go to them and be like, well, I want to do this crazy thing, I want to just deliver you a parcel, or I want to make this thing in the swimming pool.

33:00
I want to do this thing. They’re like, okay, yeah, we think that you can do it. You know, they believe that you can. So that is really, really great. And also the fact that like, you know, my networks are so much bigger.

33:13
The fact that my work can travel internationally now and is meeting so many new audiences. And I feel like that’s the great thing about being an artist, that I get to have conversations. I get to use my work to have conversations with people that I would probably never be able to meet and have conversations with.

33:28
That I might be able to change their perspective just a little bit. That I might anger them just a little bit. And we can have a talk about why that is as well, you know? Like, what’s coming up for you in this work?

33:38
And I feel like I’m trying to change the world a little bit. And I was talking to say to Francis, who’s one of my access support assistants, that I was like, you know, I’m just such an emo. I often call myself like, I’m like Mary J.

33:52
Blige in that could Mary J. Blige, doesn’t really like, she can’t really do a, it’s all about sad songs, right? Because if she does a happy song, we’re not feeling it quite as much, won’t we? Because she has this way of like, or she did, you know, she has this way of tacking into being like, oh, it’s my song, and I certainly feel like that, you know?

34:12
So I think that, yeah, that I’ve had the opportunity to like really hone that. And that’s been really, really beautiful. I guess like, some of the challenges of being a mid-career artist is that, and I heard this from mid-career artists before I became one.

34:31
You know, when you’re starting out and you’re emerging, there’s all of these opportunities. They’re not big pots of money, but there are opportunities for you to receive support, whether that’s cash support or mentoring support and all those things.

34:51
And then, and that’s really, really great. And also, I think the biggest thing is you can fail more. Or it feels like you can fail more when you’re new. When you start to make a name for yourself, I feel like it feels less like you can fail.

35:03
And I think failure is really, really important because there’s also something that can be learnt from that. You know, it’s the biggest kind of learning thing, and it kind of provides growth. And you can see, okay, so that didn’t quite work.

35:15
What can I do to kind of change that and make it better for next time? But I think the key thing that is really difficult as being a mid-year, career artist at this point in time where we’ve, you know, there’s so many cuts to funding and everything’s so expensive.

35:30
And it’s, it’s, is that sustainability is like, for all intents and purposes, I run in a small company with a few people that kind of work together. And I’m often the last person to be paid or don’t get paid.

35:46
I’m still doing so much work, so much work for free. And I suppose that is challenging because, because personally, if that were my friend or someone else, I’d be like, you definitely shouldn’t be doing that.

36:01
You’re worth more than that. And I know that, but it feels like there is no, I don’t know what the alternative is. I haven’t yet managed to find a way to, I mean, maybe it’s, maybe I’m too ambitious because maybe I have too many projects.

36:25
I guess, you know, Gabrielle, I thought that the other reason why I made these pieces of work that I wasn’t in was because I was like, well, that gives an opportunity for there to be a canon of work that can talk that I’m not in.

36:38
So that can be out in the world, making some money, not loads, because, you know, art is art, like in our art world anyway, we’ve got kind of like selling paintings for millions of pounds, but anyway, and then I can be, and that’ll mean that that’s kind of income generating, and then I can work on a new thing.

36:58
It hasn’t quite worked, it hasn’t quite worked like that. And I’m not really sure, I don’t know what the answer is actually. I was, had a conversation with the Arts Council of England today and would have a little laugh about how these Arts Council grants used to be like under £15,000.

37:16
And then I was like, how is anybody making any work for under £15,000? She said to me, to me, your project smells like… No, it’s not enough money to make the project. However, with timeframes being what they are when you put your funding bids in, you kind of just have to, it feels like you have to make it work for the money and for the time that you have available because if I, you know, I’m often thinking,

37:48
should I go and get a full-time job? I’m like doing what? I don’t know. And also then what’s gonna happen to the art? Cause is it possible to be able to do, I mean, I did it before. I’ve worked part-time.

38:00
But also it’s a question of like, is that sustainable as you become an older artist and just maybe have different values or, you know, value rest more or just like self-care. Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s a real, It’s going to be a really hard time to keep our mid-career artists working in the next decade.

38:29
I know so many people already that have like stopped. They’re just like, no, I’m going to do something else. They have gone and taken the full-time job. You know, we’re losing so many great people in the canon.

38:42
Like it’s going to be really, really sad. But I guess like, yeah, as you say, priorities change. So you should probably like, you can check in with me like next year and be like, how’s it going? Yeah, absolutely.

38:59
Well, you know, for better or worse, considering the self sacrifice, super glad that you’re staying ambitious. So it is a very selfish way so that our audiences can also experience the remount of your work.

39:13
I’m so looking forward to seeing Plow when it comes to fruition when it’s realized. It’s so exciting to have two works by you here, both out and thirst trap. So people can really like, just get to know you a little bit.

39:27
And that you’ll be here. That you’ll be here. Oh, and I think we might have another, I’m not going to announce yet, because we’re still in the details of it as we record this in mid-October, but I think there’ll be another special appearance of Ray in the festival.

39:41
So keep your eyes open. Are you all Ray Dow? Yeah, no, it’s great. We’ve waited so long. So let’s like, just fully connect. Thanks so much for this conversation, Ray. Oh, thank you so much for having me.

39:59
It’s really lovely to talk to you otherwise. You just heard Gabrielle Martin’s conversation with Ray Young, whose two works, OUT and Thirst Trap, will be presented at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in Vancouver, BC.

40:17
Thirst Trap will be presented throughout the festival from January, 23rd to February 9th, and OUT will be presented on February 8th and 9th at Performance Works. I’m Ben Charland and I produce this podcast alongside the wonderful Tricia Knowles.

40:33
Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. New episodes of PuSh Play are released every Tuesday and Friday wherever you get your podcasts. For more information on the 2025 Festival and to discover the full lineup of more than 20 works of theater, dance, music, and multimedia performances, visit pushfestival.ca.

40:56
And on the next PuSh Play… They need to have their own integrity so that we can activate the responsive level. So they’re not just objects that are there for us to be manipulated. Not at all. They have objects that they need to have some kind of energy and they need to be self-standing and have participation.

41:17
particular textures, particular colors, shapes, weight, and different type of materialities, right?