In Conversation with Bronte Lemaire | I THOUGHT YOU SAID

In today's Backstage Blog, we spoke to the writer and director of I THOUGHT YOU SAID, Bronte Lemaire, about the show, it's journey, and what audiences can expect when they come to the Explosives Factory next week.

The stars are falling but what the hell are they supposed to do about it? It’s like every other nightshift for Sam and Frankie. They clock in, stock up the chips, steal some for themselves, bet on whether they’ll get one (or even two!) customers, and ignore the dying star outside. Everyone’s gotten used to it by now, one even fell through a neighbour’s shed the other day. The world’s going to end. Probably. At some point. But that’s not their fault! They’ve done all they can do. Right? As the night progresses, Sam and Frankie realise they sit on very different sides of what it means to be a good person in the face of global crisis, and neither will come out unscathed.

Q: Welcome back to Theatre Works! What sparked the idea for I Thought You Said? And how has that idea evolved from its original inception point to where it is now?

Studying at The University of Melbourne during 2024 and 2025 meant being witness to activist action in a variety of ways and then the subsequent crackdown from the university. There was constant discourse both online and in person, locally and across the world about how to be a good activist, who was and wasn’t to be trusted, how and why to boycott, how to organise protests, and the cost of solidarity. And as I watched everything unfold from afar at university, seeing sit-ins and talks, I was constantly avoiding asking myself the question of why wasn’t I doing anything? It stayed on my mind constantly – much like you would hope an activist issue should. 

Around the same time I also had this image of a five-point star punctured into the ground that I couldn’t shake. It was pretty small, outside a service station, and somehow antithetically normal. Then suddenly one night the image combined with my constant internal discourse around activism and the idea was born. 

I’d already been wanting to write a two-hander simply because it scares the shit out of me. I’ve never written anything like it before – I like a decent cast size, lots and lots of scenes – so I decided to do the hardest thing I could think of by doing a two-hander set over one night. 

A two-hander made sense as I wanted to interrogate relationships to activism from two different perspectives. The cynical, which I found myself and many of my friends falling into again and again, along with the virtue signalling type person who would post online frequently about boycotts and then go for a Maccas run at a party. I wanted to put these two types of people in conversation where neither of them are actually correct, neither are truly altruistic, but that everyone will unfortunately see themselves in.

Q: In a conversation as fast-moving as activism in the digital native era, rarely does a work get to speak so clearly to the here and now. In the current political climate both in Australia and abroad, what role do you think theatre like I Thought You Said plays in helping us unpack the world we live in? What questions do you hope to provoke?

The intimate and confronting nature of theatre means people can’t avoid what’s being said. They can’t scroll, or pause it or walk away (well I guess they can, but it’s a lot more awkward). It forces people to reckon with hearing their own hidden thoughts and fears and to engage with them critically. 

I want people to ask and interrogate themselves on why they are inactive when it comes to the issues they supposedly care about. Why do they draw the line in order to avoid doing anything? It is so easy to be nihilistic as it feels like the entire world is so far out of our control as an average person. We don’t have many resources, our governments don’t care about popular opinion, and we spend our time online arguing about stupid shit. But does that mean suddenly we should give up before we even start? 

I’m less interested in talking about the logistics of activism – what is and isn’t effective – but rather what kind of person do you want to be at the end of the world? 

Q: How has the team done at interrogating the text that, as you say, "leaves no hypocrisy unquestioned"? Has it sparked much reflection? 

It’s been super interesting watching people react to the text and find themselves relating in a context that they do not want to be relating. Most people tend to skew more towards Sam or Frankie and can’t help rooting for the side they’re on while they’re also being attacked by the other. They often spend the first half of the play thinking the other character is an idiot or an asshole, while trying to avoid the critiques being levied.

I think guilt and shame around lack of action is so peculiar because we jump to justifying it, saying it wouldn’t help anyway, that it’s impossible for us and so on while being well aware and insecure next to the people we do believe are doing good things.

Doing this show has made it harder for me to let things slide. Having put my hypocrisies and reasonings on display means I can’t just pretend I don’t know what I do about myself. I’ve exposed my own tricks and therefore can’t just sit back anymore. I want to attend more rallies, donate, figure out ways to help on a community level and I believe that urge has been sparked in other people in the production and I desperately hope it will resonate with the audience in the same way.

Q: What will surprise audiences about this work?

I think people will be surprised about the amount of humour in the show. We literally have a piss joke five minutes in. You can’t get far without one of the characters saying or doing something stupid. I’m always a big believer in seeing comedy as a vehicle for pathos. If you don’t care about these characters, if you wouldn’t want to hang out with them, then it doesn’t hurt nearly as much when they’re upset or do something harmful. 

So am I using comedy for emotional manipulation? Yes. But I think it might be the first time it’s been done via attempting to catch chips in your mouth. 

Q: What has been the most memorable moment in the process so far?

I think one of the most memorable moments was when we had our first major production meeting and we were discussing the type of content that will go into our projections that are dotted throughout the show. Everyone started slowly revealing the ultra specific genre of slop content they were addicted to on Instagram. Some people got car edits, barbershop beard reveals, queer discourses revamped for the 17th time, people talking about being in their Chinese era despite not being Chinese, and Minecraft parkour videos with AI written and voiced reddit stories. It was so bizarre to find out the rabbit holes people had fallen into that everyone else was entirely unaware of. Don’t even get us started on YouTube shorts. 

It got us in a great zone where we all really got to grasp some of the themes in the show from our individual experiences and get into the strangeness of social media algorithms. It made us incredibly excited to see how everything will come together. 

---

I THOUGHT YOU SAID plays 25 Febrary to 7 March at Explosives Factory. It is Double Billed with NOW.

Click here to get your tickets!