We sat down with Bonny Lane, Founder of Little Train Creative, to learn about her work as a publicist turned director. She’s in the U.S. for the premiere of her show Popera: Sex, Death & Politics, which opened in Australia and will be coming to the U.S. with five performances before heading to London.
Popera merges two passions — pop and opera — to create a brand-new game show. The one-woman comedy cabaret show encourages audience participation and makes for a fun night of laughs, music, and more. Bronny Lane teamed up with Australia’s favorite cabaret singer, soprano, and actress, Uma Dobia, to create the show. The duo, who both attended the Melbourne University Conservatorium of Music, co-wrote and co-produced the show.
“Get ready for feminist jokes, a crash course in the history of opera, and plenty of pop music sprinkled in. This show is high energy, fast-paced, absurdist comedy and definitely not for the faint of heart or those easily offended,” says Bronny Lane, Popera Director & CEO of Little Train Creative.
The show premiered in Australia to rave reviews and will play five shows on its U.S. tour stop in Los Angeles as a part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival, which runs from June 12-30.
Bronny Lane, who also attended UCLA, is best known for her work as an entertainment publicist. Uma Dobia is fresh off a hit, sold-out show titled “Intolerant,” which played the Adelaide Fringe, Melbourne International Comedy, and San Diego Fringe Festivals.
For this production, the pair worked closely with Simon Reich to arrange, produce, and write new songs, including rap songs coupled with opera titled “Popera Mash-up” and “Sex, Death & Politics,” as well as a touching ballad titled “Opera Did The Girls Dirty.”
Grit Daily: What inspired you to create Popera, and why now?
Bronny Lane: I’ve always felt guilty about not doing anything with my music degree and years of piano study and singing in choirs. I’m a degree-educated, trained concert pianist and musicologist, and I started playing piano at age 4. I had completed all grades and was ready to do my letters by 13, which also means that at that stage, I could have studied piano at the university level. Doing that would have meant leaving my (single) mother and little brother, who had special needs, neither of which I wanted to do. So, I waited until I had finished high school and ended up studying at the elite music performance school at the time. My goal had always been to study at Julliard, and I was on that trajectory until a series of misfortunes.
The environment at my University was extremely misogynistic (I was 1 of 2 female piano students in my first year of university out of 12 across the whole group). I remember being told by a visiting Russian professor, “You can’t just sit there and look pretty.” Add to that my first-year university piano teacher subjected me to horrific bullying on a weekly basis. This was after I rejected the invitation to “come and drink red wine.” The end result was debilitating stage fright that sent me to the “white room” every time I performed. Goodbye dreams, hello job behind the scenes.
I continued my studies but was never the same performer in front of an audience. I just couldn’t shake the stage fright. Fast forward, and I ended up finding my feet as an entertainment publicist with my own business, which seemed to fill the void of not following my creative dreams for a few years. It wasn’t long before I was enrolled in the Sundance film-making courses, making short films, writing children’s books, DJing, and presenting a radio show — anything to keep my foot in the creative door.
It was when I worked with Uma as the publicist for her show Intolerant in 2023 that we realized we had a shared love of singing pop songs in an operatic style for fun. It was here the germ of Popera was born. “I’ve always wanted to make a show about that,” she said. “So have I,” I said. And the rest is history. Popera: Sex, Death & Politics had arrived.
Grit Daily: As a female entrepreneur running a PR and marketing company, what have been some of the biggest challenges you faced from stepping into the creative space and getting the show to fruition?
Bronny Lane: It’s juggling the load. I can do the creative easily, and I can run my business easily, but doing them both together is time-consuming and difficult. Plus when you own the business you really work 24/7, it’s non stop. Add to that I’m also still in production on an indie feature film I wrote, and it’s hectic, to say the least. The only way to do it is to really have no social life whatsoever, which is also hard as a mum with a young family.
Uma and I essentially worked in our spare time to create the show. I would compose music while out walking the dog — singing into my phone and sending that to Uma. I would constantly dream about Popera while we were in the writing phase. I’d improvise on the piano, record that, and it would get sent to Uma. I would wake up and write notes on my phone. Most of the songs themselves came from waking up with an idea, writing it down, and then workshopping with Uma.
I fully immersed in the world every spare chance I had. To write, you just have to write, so I opened Final Draft and just started writing. Uma and I would then get together and bring our ideas together for some of the most creative fun I have had in years. All in all, we pulled the show together pretty quickly from that first conversation, and I love it. For me, a big achievement has been writing the songs. As a classically trained pianist, I really thought that I could only play other people’s music, not create my own! How wrong I was.
Grit Daily: It is a big achievement. What advice do you have for other businesswomen who want to expand their career goals?
Bronny Lane: I think it’s really easy to fall into the pit of what we think we are “supposed” to be doing. Supposed to get married. Supposed to have children. Supposed to support everyone else rather than living our best lives. I’m a big fan of making lists, setting your goals for the year, and then working towards those goals.
I had a long-term goal I set myself in 2014. I was eight years after finishing university studies, I had a 5-year-old, a business, and I knew that if I didn’t chase my dreams, I would never truly be happy. I took a Demartini class which helped formulate how I would go about setting out my intentions. Then I wrote out a 3, 6, and 10-year plan and put goals all over my office walls along with the very hippy vision board, which I update every year based on how I am doing. I wrote my company name on the blackboard, and then underneath this, I wrote, “Melbourne, London, Los Angeles.”
Having studied at UCLA, I knew I wanted to do more there as I have always had a real love of the city. I also lived in London, and naturally, as a creative hub, that’s also the place to be. I then wrote PR and marketing, productions, and publishing under this. I set out my short-, medium-, and long-term intentions and then set out from there. I had already ticked off publishing with my children’s book series, I was well on the way to achieving PR and marketing, and so it was in 2014 that I started getting productions up and running. By 2016, a short film I had produced was in Dances with Film, and a comedy show I had produced and co-written was touring Australia.
Every time I undertook a new endeavor, I went back to my goals to make sure I was on track. As I was booking the tickets to fly to LA for Hollywood Fringe and started investigating flights to London for Camden Fringe, I realized I had achieved my ten-year goal. My main advice is to stick to your guns, keep educating yourself, talk to anyone and everyone, and never be afraid to ask for what you want. Even if you get a no, that is one step closer to yes. Attend industry events and always be true to yourself. It can be hard sticking to values and beliefs in the entertainment industry, but I think it’s worth it in the long run, just so you can go to sleep at night and feel good about who you are as a person.
Grit Daily: How do you approach the roles of entrepreneur and director/creator differently? Do any skills translate to both?
Bronny Lane: Entrepreneur and creative are very closely linked in terms of making something “new.” You have to have a kind of out-of-the-box thinking in order to believe that you can create something and find an audience for it. I think you need a healthy ego, too, in order to be able to believe in yourself and your idea and then set your goals and achieve them. I think entrepreneurs and creatives also need to be pretty good at selling themselves, which is really just sharing a story of your vision and getting people to come on board.
By the time I started Little Train I had already started four other businesses and I guess cut my teeth in an entrepreneurial sense. Both require goal setting, planning, creative vision, brainstorming, and, most importantly, other people. People are so important in the journey. It’s who you surround yourself with that will prove the true reflection of your achievements.
Grit Daily: Where can people see Popera next? And do you already have next steps in mind?
Bronny Lane: We are showing Popera back in Melbourne in July at The Butterfly Club and then taking it to the Camden Fringe Festival in August. We will then do a Christmas version back at The Butterfly Club in December (which requires new songs and a rewrite!). We are hoping to take the show to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2025. And my bigger long-term goal for the show is to turn it into a musical. Uma and I have already started brainstorming what that will be like.
As soon as I get back from Los Angeles, I go back into filming for my debut comedy feature film I wrote and directed called I Wanna Be Famous. I also have two comedy feature films in development that I am really hoping will progress to a green light soon. One of them is a rom-com road trip chick flick called Four Girls and a Motorhome that has been in “development hell” for around 8 years, and the other one is called Homeless Passenger, an LA story about a stressed-out businessman and a homeless guy. Believe it or not, I got the inspiration for that one when I was in LA for work and couldn’t believe how much they fine people for driving in the HOV lane if they don’t comply with carpooling. My husband and I started talking about how that could be the basis of a good story, and then, of course, once you have thought of the story, you have to get it out in some way, shape, or form. I’m very lucky in the sense that I’m surrounded by an extremely supportive family, particularly my mother and husband, who really do support all the very silly ideas I have.
As soon as I’ve completed filming, I’ll be back into writing mode on A Very Popera Christmas, which we will present in December in Melbourne. I’m hoping to finish the year with a distributor and sales agent for I Wanna Be Famous. A green light for one of my filming projects would be the icing on the cake! And, of course, I’ll be setting my goals and intentions for 2025.
For more information and to purchase tickets, visit Popera at Hollywood Fringe.
