Dear Actor,

As an avid Theatre enthusiast, I was excited last night to see the show you were performing in.

Along with three of my peers and an array of various high school students (!!!) from different schools, I sat in the audience and waited for the lights to go down in order to enjoy something new.

The room darkened. An intense, uncomfortable soundtrack played and you appeared from within the audience.

I watched, for fifty minutes, completely mesmerised by your performance. I watched, for fifty minutes, forgetting you were performing. Your characterisations were intense and believable, your transitions immaculate.

I related to the plight of your characters through your depiction of them. I barely blinked over the course of nearly an hour for fear I would miss something. I was moved. I cried.

Sometimes performances trigger something in you that you’ve let lay dormant for too long. As your character deleted a voicemail from an already departed sibling, my throat closed over as I related to the unknowing ‘everyday’ before your life changes: the normal behaviour we exhibit toward others before something awful happens. The unkindness, the snide remarks, the lack of appreciation for ours, and their, lives.

I watched all of this and I thought to myself, ‘what an amazing woman this is on stage! What an amazing actor! What a fantastic director! What a great team’.

As the lights went down and you left the stage, I took a moment to compose myself. I blinked several times and wiped the tears from my cheeks, attempting to look casual in the hope that nobody would notice I had been blubbering and snivelling like a child for the course of at least twenty minutes.

I got excited when a woman appeared and explained that yourself, your director and costume/set designer would be taking questions.

Though I had none to ask, I looked forward to watching school students try to make sense of it all and hear your own interpretations of the events and characters.

You came out shortly after the panel started. Wearing track pants, barefooted, with the hood of your jumper pulled over your hair; you casually walked onto the stage, expressionless and sat on your chair, pulling your knees up to your chest and stretching your pants over your toes.

’You must be utterly exhausted!’ I thought to myself. ‘What a physically and emotionally demanding performance, how great that you’ve come out to answer questions after all of that!’

There you sat, as slowly, the audience, made up mostly of teens aged 16-17 built up the confidence to ask you and your team questions about the performance. It took time. A room of VCE Drama students were silent (an unusual occurrence) possibly for a number of reasons. Possibly, they had nothing to ask. Possibly, they were in awe of you (as, at that time, I was) and your talent and hard work. Possibly, they were intimidated by how intense the performance was and needed time to digest it. Or, possibly, just possibly, it was your attitude that left them completely devoid of any confidence in attempting to enquire about your process and interpretation.

There you sat, looking bored and almost offended at the idea of having to spend time with these people who had paid to come and watch your art.

There you sat, laughing at peoples questions and looking at them as if they were idiots for not understanding a particular part of plot. Yes, of course some of the questions had incredibly obvious answers. Yes, some students had not picked up on the themes and events within the story. Yes, some students wanted to know, ‘what happens next’.

In case you have forgotten, dear actor, it takes each of us time, years, to grow and develop. It takes us years to stop seeing the obvious and missing the obscure undertones of non-naturalistic performances. In case you’ve forgotten, dear actor, that is why the students were there. To watch you, to learn from you.

There you sat, completely misinterpreting one girl’s suggestion that the family in the story were working class and living in a dangerous area. Almost immediately you went on the defensive and assumed she was implying the family were living in a low socio-economic area due to their race.

Yes, ‘slums’ was not the right word to use, but who has always been articulate in front of an intimidating and obnoxious actor? However, I’m certain even if this student had said, “I understood the family were from a low socio-economic area and, as suggested by the main character, violence on the street was a common occurrence hence why people just casually walked past the police tape and mourning family’ you still would have heard ‘poor people must be black, he was attacked because of this’.

 Not once was race mentioned. Not once was it implied that a character had incurred violence or was ‘poor’ because of their race. You looked bewildered and offended for absolutely no reason, and at least three more times in the course of the interview, yourself and the director defensively reiterated to the all-white audience that that was not what the play was about and that the family were not working class.

It is indicated from debbie tucker green’s storyline, both parents are home during the day and the father sleeps in. This implies that the mother may be a homemaker, and the father may be unemployed or work late nights. Statistically, it’s fair to say that most night shift workers are employed in working class jobs. The character of the brother is not roused from his bed by parents in order to make it to school; he stops along the way enroute to school to socialise and shows up twenty minutes late. He suffers no consequence for his tardiness, clearly implying it is not as strict as a private school or a state school in a middle class area would be.

Yes, the family of course could be middle class, but from all evidence within your own performance it’s suggested the family are from a working class background.  Again, none of this relates to the race of the character. I’ve stayed in low socioeconomic, culturally diverse boroughs in London. I’ve visited public schools in these areas and heard first-hand, the experiences you touched on in your performance. And no, not all the victims happened to be black. There was just as much violence between and toward Asians, black people and white people. High unemployment rates, lack of funding in schools, and living on or below the poverty line will do that a person, regardless of race or country.

There you sat, laughing at us, your audience; and instead of attempting to enlighten us with your own ideas and interpretations, you instead often rejected the question by pushing it back on us, “well, what do YOU think happened?”

Even an articulate question enquiring as to your technique in mastering your English accent was received with obnoxious assumption and an impatient tone.

You might not think so, dear actor, and you might not care; but you are a role model for these students. They watch you, a person acting in a professional production, and they take from you what it is to be an actor. They admire you, they’re intrigued by you.

But I’m not. Not anymore. Your complete disdain for the room full of people who wanted to hear you speak (YOU, not just your characters), upset and frustrated me.

At the beginning of your performance I was jealous of you. I sat and watched you and thought of wasted opportunities. Of the fear that holds us all back from doing what we love. I sat and watched you and was completely in awe of your talent and your hard work.

By the end of the Q&A, I was not jealous anymore. I left the theatre remembering how claustrophobic acting can be. How it can engulf you and manipulate you to become a self-indulgent, obnoxious beast.

As I left the theatre with my three colleagues, we called out a ‘thank you’ to you and your panel. All of you ignored us. Though understandably exhausted, apparently even common courtesy is beneath you.

An engaging and mesmerising actor, but not a particularly engaging and mesmerising person.

I know what I’d prefer to be.