5 Questions With: Lauren Shippen, Creator and Director of The Bright Sessions Podcast
The Bright Sessions is *deep breath* a science fiction audio drama about people with supernatural abilities in therapy. What does that all translate to? It’s a deeply engrossing podcast about mental health and young people who love, think, and feel in a myriad of beautiful ways. Along the way, The Bright Sessions has captured a devoted audience that follows the lives of people like Sam, who can time travel, and Caleb and Adam, a young couple with intertwining struggles with empathy.
Now, after more than two years, the series has launched its 50th episode— sadly, the show will end after episode 56— and we caught up with creator and director Lauren Shippen about Sessions past and future.
TuneIn: How has The Bright Sessions evolved and grown since episode one?
Lauren Shippen: For a show that starts with a very simple premise and format — people in therapy — I think we’ve made an effort to evolve out of that and push what our own show can do. Audio drama as a whole is constantly pushing the medium forward, and as The Bright Sessions has moved along, we’ve evolved our own use of the medium. Episode 50 especially is something that I would never have thought possible when I started this show, but my storytelling has evolved in a way that allows for that kind of swing for the fences episode.
In a more practical sense, the show has grown beyond my wildest dreams in terms of reach and reception. I’m constantly astonished and humbled by how many people listen and how enthusiastic those people are. Our team has grown as well — and continues to grow — and I feel really grateful to have this family of creatives and listeners.
Do you consider the Bright Sessions patients superheroes? How do they fit within traditional superhero narratives?
I don’t! People often refer to them as such and, while that doesn’t bother me, I think it’s inaccurate. They aren’t out saving the world — they’re just trying to live their lives. If anything, the one character who fits into a traditional superhero narrative is Wadsworth, our central villain. Without giving too much away, she’s a physically altered person who has an agenda that she thinks is going to save the world. From our protagonist’s perspective, she’s a traditional supervillain, but supervillains have more in common with superheroes than most of our main characters do. I think Caleb has the most potential to become a “friendly neighborhood” kind of hero, using his empathy to help people, but he’s still figuring stuff out.
Abilities don’t make superheroes. While this is an idea that’s been explored in some superhero media, the thing that really made me want to write this story was the idea that having a “superpower” might actually just be terrible. Not everyone has the impulse to save the world. If you don’t have a world-saving inclination but you’re saddled with a supernatural ability, where does that leave you? Or maybe you do have that inclination but your ability controls you, not the other way around. Those are the possibilities within the superhero genre that I wanted to explore.
The Bright Sessions delves deep into mental health and depicts actual (well, fictional, but you know) therapy sessions. How did you decide on this format, and do you hope to inspire teens to pursue exploring their own mental health through counseling or other means?
The format was a natural fit for the stories I was trying to tell and the format I was telling it in. Even if you haven’t been to therapy, most people have an idea of what it looks and sounds like. Utilizing that familiarity and then keeping things simple, which can be helpful when starting in a new medium as I was, made it a little less daunting to write.
Even all of Dr. Bright’s shady agenda aside, I’m always attempting to show that talking to someone about your feelings is a good thing (just find an ethical therapist). We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from folks saying that the show made therapy less scary for them or pushed them to finally make an appointment and those notes always make me so happy. I don’t think of myself as aiming to get my audience to do something or feel a certain way, but I do hope to encourage people to take their own feelings seriously. There’s sometimes an assumption that if you’ve had an overall okay life, you don’t deserve to feel bad and need help and that’s just not true. All feelings are valid — that doesn’t mean all feelings should be acted on or listened to — but they are valid. I guess, if anything, I want to tell people that.
TBS features a teenage gay couple, Adam and Caleb. So cool! Tell us about the thought behind their relationship’s progression, and have you had any feedback from LGBT listeners on their characters, or on how the show depicts other LGBT relationships?
I wish I could remember exactly what the thought process was behind the beginning of their relationship but they were in love in my mind very early on in the writing of the show. Even before I started on Caleb’s script, I’d been thinking about him for a long time and wanted to give him someone with feelings very different from his own to interact with. The character of Adam just sort of…showed up. In figuring out what their initial interactions were, Caleb fell in love pretty quickly and then it was just about him navigating that as he grapples with his empath ability.
Since they got together, I’m constantly surprised by how stable they are. The nature of Caleb’s ability means that he has to talk about his feelings, so he and Adam communicate so much better than most adults in relationships. It’s been a really pleasant surprise, because I was expecting some degree of drama — not because they’re both boys, but because Caleb is Atypical and, at the end of the day, they’re teenagers. But Caleb had to grow up very quickly and I think a lot of our audience really enjoys that he and Adam are so loving and open with each other.
We’ve gotten some amazing feedback from our LGBT listeners. A lot of folks have told us that it’s refreshing to see a gay couple where the fact that they’re gay is pretty secondary. We get that kind of feedback a lot — LGBT listeners like seeing that queer characters are just people, because often we’re relegated to stereotypes in media. But LGBT folks are the same as everyone else — we are flawed, we make mistakes, we have trouble in our relationships, etc. Sometimes just treating LGBT characters like every other characters is a huge step forward.
People also really appreciate that we say the words bisexual and asexual, because a lot of media will sort of beat around the bush about those sexualities. For me, some of the most meaningful messages we get are the ones that say we helped someone feel comfortable about coming out to their family or explaining their sexuality to someone using one of our characters. If we make people feel understood, make them feel less alone, all the hard work is worth it.
What are your goals for the upcoming TBS TV show? Can you tease anything exciting for fans of the podcast?
My central goal with any potential TV show is to maintain the heart of the show. Naturally, things have to change for each medium: pace, format, etc. And there are certain plot points that I’ve never gotten to in the podcast or ones I felt I could have done better that I’d want to build out in a larger format. But the core of the show — the character study and emotional heart of it — I want to maintain. Thankfully, my co-writer for the TV show, Gabrielle Stanton, has been incredible in adapting the podcast into a visual medium. I can’t tease anything about the future of the show, because TV development can be a long and slow process, but I can promise that if it does end up on your screens someday, it’s going to be a show we’re really proud of.
