Treading Water

A room of five hundred people swelled in their seats, an enormous wave ready to drop. 

I couldn’t inhale - just held the air tight, afraid I’d swallow the sea. 

My eyes were drowned as I turned to my daughter, she smiled knowingly, taking my hand in her youthful fingers. 

Sybylla moved from the piano to front, centre stage, holding us all by the throat as her arms reached out and we were finally given permission to respire.

It was the finale of a performance that had already made me tear up more than once. The young actor, who was apparently the understudy, had surged through with unbounded energy, passion and pure talent. We had been swept with her tide and had come out unscathed.

But this wonderfully modern telling of the tale of My Brilliant Career had left its mark. On me, my fourteen year old daughter and an audience enthralled.

Moved in ways difficult to explain, it made me ponder how moved Melanie Bird was having entered this world completely and become the aspirational and inspirational Sybylla that afternoon. Did she just walk off stage and go about the rest of her normal life? Or was she still treading water? Do the characters we play remain with us? Do they change us? And what really are the implications of acting on the actors? 

I’ve never played a real ‘bad guy’, but I think they would be hard to shake. We all know the rumours about Heath Ledger playing The Joker - that ended in tragedy. Stanley Tucci recently told Variety Magazine that he would never play his Oscar nominated role of killer George Harvey in The Lovely Bones ever again, claiming it was a “tough experience”. He said that director Peter Jackson chose him because he was ‘funny’ and wouldn’t take the role too seriously - he would “throw it away…which is what you have to do when you’re playing somebody who’s that awful.”

But if Tucci would never do it again, the role must have impacted him.

I guess it’s whether the volcano actually erupts and shifts the tides within or just rumbles, produces what it needs and ultimately resettles.

I have seen and experienced both the physical and emotional seismic shifts of a dramatic role, particularly in theatre based on real events. And I do think, much like with Ledger and Tucci, the people who do the acting contribute to the size of the wave.

For The Diary of Anne Frank, I needed actors who could literally embody a cast of real humans. Even if you’ve never read the diary, we’re all aware of the horrifying losses of the holocaust and the young girl who held onto hope. 

Having just come out of Covid and its many lockdowns, the actors could ease into the familiarity of intensely close familiar contact - the laughter and jokes paired with snide remarks and heated arguments. The annoyance of a sibling and the comfort of a father. 

But to truly step into the depths of emotion, I believe it takes a certain person with certain life experience.

The kids were just that, innocent kids who adopted their roles with precision. Having never known horrors themselves, their hope shone through.

But in casting my parents, particularly the Franks, there was a necessary ripple. The experience of love. Parental love, unconditional. 

By the end of the run, my Mrs. Frank commented that it had felt as though Edith had visited her, using her body as a floodgate to tell her tale. She had grown rigid and stiff physically, needing massage therapy from holding everything in and keeping afloat while the whirlpool of war, being in hiding and protecting her girls had crashed around her. Having been a single mother for a long time, this beautiful actress had let all of those feelings wash over her. 

But she had to say goodbye. It was heartbreaking, having waded with this incredible mother for so many months. 

She has spoken since of walking and doing yoga to come back to reality, but I think Edith will always be within her. A role like that never fully drifts.

You can definitely play a character who is completely different to yourself. However, finding those links, those rafts to cling to for understanding, even if horrifying, are vital for the portrayal of a great role. I think that’s what Tucci fears within himself. 

For me, donning a black wig, historically accurate dresses and a broad Queensland/New Zealand accent wasn’t all it took to play one of the country’s most talked about mothers. 

With twenty-five verbatim monologues between gruelingly explicit mail from fans and foes, Letters to Lindy stayed with me long after the season had ended.

I’m certainly not a method actor, but it was extremely challenging to leave Lindy at the theatre. She was awash when I held my babies close and she churned when I saw injustice. She pitched and rolled through my every thought and often came through in my daily voice.

Unlike Tucci, I have struggled to throw her away. 

I hope to never face the grief of a mother that she faced. I hope to never feel the raw hand of injustice and the sting of public disdain. But her story did submerge me. And, at times, I still feel myself desperately grasping for the surface when she comes to mind.

I think actors ARE impacted and changed by the roles they play. They should be.

Acting is a gift. But not just to the actor themself. Yes, to them, it can be joyous, triumphant and thrilling, but it can also bear a weight that can engulf. 

The gift of acting is also for the audience. For the story told. 

We are the vessel necessary to ride the ocean that these stories conjure. 

I think, having surfaced many times, I now watch a performance with my heart.

I reckon Melanie Bird really IS a goofy girl on the cusp of adulthood wishing ‘the wrongness’ to go away and finally realising that in seeing herself she ‘might free someone like me.’

Her performance will wash the hearts of myself, my daughter and five hundred others for a long time to come.

So I have to believe that the actor is changed. That she won’t just go about her normal life quite the same. 

That she will tread water, inspired by Sybylla, as we were inspired by her.