Podcaster, performer, health provider: Alisha Beavis

Beginning during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mrs Beavis and co-host Kelly Scorey decided to channel the chaos of working in the health industry during a pandemic into a podcast.

“We just have the best banter,” Mrs Beavis said.

“We can kind of fight about things but in a really friendly way.

“When COVID happened, healthcare was so hard ... she came to me and thought, ‘we should do a podcast about nursing’.”

Being avid podcast listeners themselves, the pair saw a gap in the market, where themes around nursing were focused on education or wellness.

Using their chemistry as colleagues and best friends, Mrs Beavis and Mrs Scorey wanted to deliver comic relief.

“There was no podcast marketed to nurses that were purely for entertainment,” Mrs Beavis said.

“It originally started with just our colleagues, and then we started an Instagram so that we could keep track and have a little community of people that were listening.

“I think we really quickly got into the thousands of downloads with only a few episodes.”

Since then, they have built what they see as a community of listeners, touching on topics that otherwise go unspoken.

“It quickly became a community of like-minded nurses who really wanted to see the funny side of things,” Mrs Beavis said.

“We wanted to do an episode on death, for instance, and I’m like, ‘I wonder if there are people out there who have died and remember this experience’ ... so we go down the Reddit rabbit hole of all these people who have had these experiences.

“Even though the topic is super serious, we would find ways to make it really light-hearted and palatable for nurses.

“The unwritten mantra of the podcast was, ‘if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry’.”

Doors have opened for the pair since started the podcast, including speaking at charity and union events, live podcast recordings and even being guests during comedian Georgie Carroll’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival show.

For Mrs Beavis, the podcast brings together two areas that she is dedicated to — her nursing career and her performance skills.

“It was almost a perfect marriage between my experience as a performer and also my passion for nursing,” she said.

Convinced by a good friend to start singing in high school, Mrs Beavis joined in school productions, including a lead role in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum when she was in Year 12.

After high school, Mrs Beavis moved to Kyabram to live with her dad during her gap year, and a career in nursing was put on her radar.

“The university in Shepp had just opened and I was working at a coffee shop in Kyabram,” she said.

“I thought about being a paramedic for a little while.

“The paramedics used to come to the coffee shop ... and they were like, ‘go and be a nurse first because you’ll get a really good understanding’.”

Taking on their advice, Mrs Beavis studied nursing and completed her graduate year in Shepparton in 2014.

That same year, she also met her now-husband, Kyabram local Michael, and they have welcomed two children together, four year-old Olive and Lachlan, 18 months.

The town feels like home to the Beavis family,

“I have married a Kyabram boy, now my kids are Kyabram kids,” Mrs Beavis said.

“I’ve got family and we’ve got a business in Kyabram as well. Then, obviously, I work at the hospital in Kyabram.

“I feel super invested in the community and the town.”

Mrs Beavis has been involved in the Shepparton Theatre Arts Group, the Tonny Little Theatre and Echuca-Moama Theatre Company, along with stage managing and teaching at Dillmac Entertainment.

Her current role is her biggest with EMTC yet, taking on the lead role of Donna Sheridan in Mamma Mia!

Donna and the rest of the 40-strong cast will debut this Friday, May 16, at the Echuca Paramount Theatre, in the first of eight shows.

To find out more about the show and buy tickets, head to echucaparamount.com/movie/emtc-presents-mamma-mia