#74 | Finding Joy (with Lucy Harvey)

This is Into the Story, the podcast where you learn English with true stories from all over the world. Stories that connect us and inspire you to get where you want to go. Hello and welcome. I'm Brie, your host. If you're back for another episode, thank you for being here. And if this is your first time, you're in the right place. I'm so happy to have you. So last month I took my two little boys to the circus. It was a sunny afternoon in Barcelona. We are walking through the port.

to a big blue and white striped tent. This is one of the city's oldest circuses. There are no animals, just amazing acrobats and comedians. We sit down, The music starts and the show begins. And I watch in complete awe as performers. flip through the air and are balancing from impossible height. And there was just this electric energy in the room. And that's when I looked over at my son. He's six. And he was sitting on the edge of his seat. Smiling. And at that moment, I felt it. Joy.

Psychologists say joy is more than happiness. It is a deep, meaningful connection to the present moment. But what happens when success? doesn't bring joy. Today, we are going into the story of Lucy Harvey, a London-based costume stylist for advertisement campaigns. She had everything, working for big brands, very big budgets, but Joy, that was missing.

That night, sitting outside the dark train station, I wonder, is this really what I want to do with my life? By the end of this episode, you'll feel inspired to pay attention to what brings you joy and where it might take you.

I was listening to an interview the other day with Alison Woodbrooks. She is a professor at Harvard Business School, and she is also the author of the book Talk. And she said something that surprised me because it's true. Everything we achieve in life comes from speaking to others. And for many of you, that means speaking in English, whether it's an interview or a sales pitch.

Maybe you've had the chance to do these things, but you held back. You thought, my English isn't good enough yet. If this is you, listen up. If you understand this podcast, your English is already good enough. But what got you here? Studying all the grammar and the vocabulary will not get you to the next level. To become a powerful speaker, you need to step outside your comfort zone and do things that you've never done.

That is where I come in. The doors are now closed to my six-week course, Master Public Speaking and English, but you can still sign up for my free newsletter where I give you tools to speak with impact and influence. Sign up now at Intothestory Podcast.com. Okay, now on to five words and expressions that Lucy uses in her story today. The first word is Plead. P L E A D. And to plead is to ask for something in a very emotional, usually serious way.

For example, he pleaded with the teacher for more time to complete the assignment, or she pleaded for help after getting lost in the forest. To plead. Next is a standing ovation. A standing ovation is when an audience stands up and claps. To show great admiration. For example, the singer received a standing ovation for her performance. For the actors bowed after a standing ovation. Then we have

A venue, V-E-N-U-E. And a venue is a place where an event happens, like a concert, a wedding, a meeting. For example, the wedding venue had a beautiful ocean view, or the concert was held at a large venue downtown. A venue. Next we have To pour your heart into something. To pour your heart into something is to put a lot of effort, passion, and emotion into something.

For example, I pour my heart into creating this podcast, or he poured his heart into preparing for the competition. To pour your heart into something. And finally. Cut throat. If something is described as cutthroat, it means it's extremely competitive and ruthless. For example, the business world can be very cutthroat.

Or the competition for the job was cutthroat. As always, if you would like to get a free learning pack for this episode, visit Intothestory Podcast.com. All right, let's get into the story.

I'm racing through the chaos of Oxford Street. I have a stylist trolley in one hand and an overnight bag in the other, and a frantic urgency pounding through my veins. Tomorrow's big budget advert demands perfection, and as usual, there's a last-minute costume change, and my evening once again becomes a mad scavenger hunt. While the rest of the crew head to the countryside hotel for a relaxing dinner, I'm at Victoria Station pleading through the closed shutters of a men's accessory shop.

because the famous director has decided he must have a classic gentleman's umbrella as a key prop for tomorrow's new scene. I'm begging to buy it. Take the money through the letterbox. I'll pay cash. I don't need the change. I'm desperate. If I don't deliver this to the director at seven AM for tomorrow's call time, I won't get hired again. Lucy has been working in advertising for the past eight years.

She's a costume stylist, which means she is the person who dresses the actors in big fashion, banking, and tech advertisement campaigns. She's really good at what she does and she's paid well, but the stress is non-stop. So back on Oxford Street, she's waiting outside the shop and finally they sell her this very specific umbrella that she needs just in time to run and catch the last train. She's going out to the countryside.

where they will be filming the advertisement tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. I'm exhausted, sweaty, I'm carrying everything I need on my back. It's nearly midnight when I arrive at the remote rural station. Not even sure if I can find a taxi. I decide to call the assistant director, asking if someone could please come and collect me, and he replies, It's your responsibility to get to the job. That night, sitting outside the dark train station, I wonder, is this really what I wanna do with my life?

This job just does not match her values. And then and there, Lucy decides that it's probably time to make a change. So one day I'm hanging out with my friend Andy, a jazz guitarist, and he's returned from visiting his new girlfriend in Dorset and he's beaming with excitement. He shows me a photo he's taken of a poster. he saw in a village supermarket, and the poster reads Alien the stage adaptation and amateur production. Alien is a sci-fi classic that came out in 1979. It's dark.

Scary and full of amazing special effects for that time. The spaceship, the lighting. It's really not the type of story that you would expect a small theater group to perform. And as Lucy and her friend discover the blog for this amateur drama group, they realize that all of the people in this group are actually from the Dorset Bus Company. Dorset being a small town in southern England, and she becomes increasingly curious.

They have no idea that from afar we have become their tiny fan club, and I have no idea how much this amateur dramatics group will come to change my life. On opening night of this theater production of Alien, Lucy and her friend Joe decide last minute to make the 190-kilometer drive from London down to Dorset. They are speeding down the motorway and they arrive at an empty village hall just in time for the show to begin. A thick country accent announces. This is Mother, the ship's computer.

And the curtain opens and on the stage is a white box that looks like a freezer chest or a coffin. Mae'n ei wneud â'r cyrochamber, sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n The actor in the cryochamber is supposedly waking from a cryosleep of some many years, and as the door of the cryo chamber opens, we hear a sound effect that goes Oh.

Like a kind of mechanical piston, but we can see a glimpse of a hand pushing the door open with a stick, hiding behind the cryer chamber, and Joe and I think, this is so brilliant. Lucy watches completely amazed. The show is both impressive and funny. The homemade special effects the serious acting, it all makes it even better. But what she loves most is the feeling behind it. These performers are not performers

But they're giving it everything. And by the end of it, we are totally delighted by everything we've seen. And we give them a standing ovation and run to see them and meet them at the end. and discover that everybody's involved. We meet Dave, the director, the scriptwriter is his son, his mum is Lydia, his grandad made the set.

Everybody's involved, brothers and sisters and close family friends and all the co-workers. There's about three bus drivers on the stage and the night shift worker made all the pro in his spare time and it took them an entire year to create it. And it was the combination of it all together made it uniquely magical and incredibly entertaining and joyful and

it felt tragic to me that nobody was going to see what they'd achieved. And I felt very strongly that more people should see it and they should get the audience that they deserve.

Lucy and Joe drive back up to London, but she cannot stop thinking about the show. It's too good to stay in this small village hall. She writes online reviews, telling everyone that they have to see it, but then she gets a kind of crazy idea. What if She brought them to London. Then she speaks to a friend who has a contact of a West End theatre owner. The West End is like Broadway, but in London.

That seems impossible. These are bus drivers. They're not professional actors. They've only done one show. But Lucy decides to send him an email anyway. Nothing's gonna come out of it, right? But then she gets a phone call. The theater owner says, I have a date for you. Let's do this. Alien on Stage is going to Leicester Square Theater in the West End.

It's total obscurity to the most exposure you could get as a theatre show. And um it just felt ludicrous that this was gonna happen. I ringed I ring Dave, the director, and I said Uh yeah, I've I've got you a venue. And he's like, mm-hmm. It's the Leicester Square Theatre in the West End. And then because it was such a shock for them and they became so excited, it's like, oh my God, this is such a big deal. We we ha somebody needs to film the process.

And then I realised that that that somebody was gonna be me, but I've never held a camera before in my life. So, Danielle, my housemate, is a budding filmmaker, and I convince her that this is your opportunity to make a really brilliant film. Let's just do this.

And even though we didn't really know what we were doing and we didn't have any equipment, we agreed to document their journey and the show and just to see what would happen. Um, so there we go. We s we became documentary makers just like that. Lucy and Danielle drive down to Dorset to start filming the documentary. As the night gets closer, Lucy realizes that the cast is getting nervous and they're forgetting their lines.

She starts to panic. What if when they go to London the audience laughs at them, not with them, and she feels responsible for them? What if this all falls apart? She becomes more and more determined and does everything she can to fill the theater, handing out flyers, inviting every single person she knows. Then the night arrives and it is sold out. 400 seats. The standing room is packed.

When it came to the day of the show, to film it was such a massive operation, Danielle recruited six or seven volunteers and we covered every aspect of it. So she was running around backstage filming. the cast and crew vomiting from nerves, f getting really stressed. We were filming the the theatre just getting f more and more full until it was packed And then I was recruited to switch them radio mics on and off that the cast were wearing for the first time in their lives. And they hadn't

been trained to not speak when they're backstage. So the risk of them ruining the show by talking backstage was really high. So I had to try and switch the mics on and off with this script at the back of the theatre and making a really bad job of it and the audience are laughing because they can hear

They can hear them backstage when they shouldn't be able to hear them. Anyway, the second half of the show just flew because everybody was buzzing from the energy from the audience and it was a triumph in every single way. It was the best experience I've ever had. And um yeah, the audience thought they were heroes. The audience treated them like heroes and celebrated them and they had a standing ovation and it was just wonderful.

Lucy knew that they had captured something incredibly special. But after the show, life got busy. Lucy and Danielle kept putting off creating the documentary until they realized the real problem wasn't time. They actually had no experience, they had no money, they had no clear plan. And the longer they waited, the more that doubt started to come in.

Was what they filmed even usable? Where would they start? The biggest challenge wasn't editing. It was finding the courage to finish. And after a while it was four years that had passed. And I was sharing the story again about alien to a f a new friend who was a filmmaker and he could see my sadness about it. And he took the role of a mentor and just said very directly

You just need to make a three minute trailer and then you can launch a Kickstarter to get everything you need to finish this film. And he helped us and that's exactly what we did. We decided to to commit to doing a Kickstarter campaign. Doing a Kickstarter is actually a huge challenge, and Lucy knows that this is their one shot. So she completely dedicates herself to this campaign. She decides to leave London, cut her expenses, and make Alien on Stage her entire focus.

She feels that everything is on the line. If it fails, all that work could be completely lost. And then the results from the Kickstarter come in. They did it. They get the money. Now they can finally finish the film. So now the Kickstarter gives us the opportunity to rent a house somewhere cheap and remote and the real work starts.

And finally this vision that I've been holding in my mind for many, many years has a creative outlet and it feels amazing. I'm buzzing and a different frequency. I feel activated and I'm so happy just logging hours of raw footage. And I'm labelling the dialogue and I'm organizing it scene by scene. And Danielle and her partner Anthony and another editor called Emily. Join me in this house, and we spend a three intense months of shaping this rough story into a true documentary.

Seven years after first seeing the poster that Andy shows me, our film is finally finished and ready to be seen. It's rough around the edges, it's a true DIY project. And we've poured our heart and souls into it. The first people to see it are genuine film critics. And the next day the reviews roll in and I'm praying that they understand our intention and they don't tear it apart with cynicism. And as I'm opening the emails, I'm so anxious and I start reading.

And one after another, they're all glowing, beautiful reviews, like love letters personally written for me. They say things like it's hilarious and heartwarming and it's a balm for the soul and we've caught lightning in a bottle. They say it's joyous, it's magical, it's restoring their faith in humanity, it's life-affirming.

It's it's an it's an incredible sense of validation that I've never ever felt before and and a sense of connection to these people who understand everything we've tried to do. A journalist from the Paris Review. Writes that the word amateur is rooted in the Latin to love, and he says that this has to be the best film about amateurs by amateurs. And in that moment I understand why this story needed to be told.

yw'n gwerthu'n gwerthu'n gwerthu'n gwerthu'n gwerthu'n gwerthu'n gwerthu'n gwerthu'n gwerthu'n gwerthu And it reminds us that if you place community and connection above ambition and ego, that something magical happens. And looking back, I can clearly see the contrast that my professional world was so cutthroat and transactional and soul destroying. But in Dorset with these bus drivers I discovered a different way of creating, one that's rooted in kindness and inclusivity and love.

And from then on, I've made every decision by listening to my heart and my life quickly filled with the kind of richness I never thought was possible. Making space for joy isn't always easy. Life pulls us in so many directions, and it's easy to put joy last, but it matters. And it means paying attention to what excites you, even when it doesn't seem practical. So ask yourself, what's one thing that brings you joy? And how can you make space for it today, this week, this month?

You might find me going to a lot more circuses. Today, Lucy Harvey is the producer and director of the critically acclaimed documentary Alien on Stage. You can find out more on Instagram at AlienOnstage Doc. I will also leave you a link in the show notes. I hope that you enjoyed this story and found it inspiring. Be sure to follow into the story wherever you listen to podcasts so that you never miss a new episode.

If you're ready to start speaking English in a way that opens new opportunities in your life, then join my free newsletter at IntothestoryPodcast.com, where you will also find the free learning packs for each. on the podcast. That's all for today, folks. Until the next time, I hope that you have a good time, or at least a good story to tell.