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I was born in the UK. We moved to Switzerland for a short while before arriving in Australia in 1992. I have always been a singer. From a young age, as soon as I got a tune in my head (and if I didn’t know the words I would happily make them up!) you couldn’t stop me from happily humming my way around the house. It was musical theatre that ignited a great passion for performance in me. For birthdays, I wanted musical theatre soundtracks. Nothing was more enthralling to me, than watching an actor guide an audience through a story, through the beauty of her voice keeping us enraptured by her very presence on stage. I was a singer first. The acting came later.
It wasn’t until the beginning of year 12, that it occurred to me that I might actually want to take this love of mine and turn it into a career. I auditioned for the Wollongong University bachelor of creative arts in performance; unsure of whether I really was ‘‘any good’’ at performing. I did not expect that I would be one of only 22 who graduated from the performance course, after three years of full-time study, living and breathing the world of performing.
Around the end of my degree I took a trip around the United States with my partner. He and I spent an extraordinary 2 months in some amazing places, from Minneapolis, where I thought my nose might fall off from cold, to that city that makes any young actress dream big – New York. As we crossed from one side of the country to the other, we stopped off for five nights, in the middle of the desert...Las Vegas! Lights, casinos, shows. We won $400 on the first night, saw a David Copperfield magic show, dined like royalty in our stunning hotel. It was bliss. At first. I began to feel an unease. Once my eyes had adjusted to the glare, I started to look around. There it all was. Strippers. Prostitutes. Advertisements that objectified women in every possible way. I felt myself sinking into a despair at the state of the world, and the way that men and women interacted. I learned I was a feminist. I think, to be honest, I already knew this. I have an exceptional role model in my life, a true superwoman – my mother. Through years of watching my mother stand up for herself, be brave, bold and intelligent, and refuse to be intimidated by bullies, I learned that a woman has a kind of strength that can not be underestimated.
I found myself taking notes on the back of receipts. Ideas were occurring to me. These were the makings of a play that would shape my whole experience as a writer, actor and woman from that point onwards. And I got in pretty deep. I was shaken. I remember sitting at a cafe with a great friend in Washington DC, finally having escaped the deluge of over-sexualised objectification that is on every corner in Las Vegas. When she asked me how I was, I found myself overwhelmed with emotion. Not for my own struggle – really I was exceptionally lucky – but at the difficulty faced by women all over the world. So I put my mind to it. I researched. I read. I started writing. I wrote and rewrote. Edited. Scrapped. Threw things out and started over. Sometimes I felt that weight wash over me. The fear that it was too late. The state of the world was too far gone. I read about the effects of pornography and was frightened for young women. I picked fights with my patient, supportive and kind boyfriend. And then one day, I spoke to my mother about my worries, and wise as she always is, she told me to look at the men in my life, my father, my brothers, my partner and take a moment to remember that they are good, respectful and loving men. I took a moment to stop and remember that there is goodness everywhere…even in a world where there is suffering.
It was the perspective I needed to settle my mind and let the writing come freely. With the help of two wonderful supervisors through my masters of creative writing, I wrote and performed a one-woman play called Handle It, which tells the story of a young woman at university, whose life is turned upside down when compromising pictures of her are posted on Facebook. The play explores the Generation Y experience of intimacy in a world where the internet shapes relationships, pornography is everywhere and young women do their best to cope. It was a remarkable process to create a play from start to finish, to write for myself as an actor and to tackle an issue that had affected me so profoundly. After making the journey, from page to stage, I hope that Handle It serves to open a conversation between men and women, old and young, about what it really means to interact in a technology driven world. Why women are sometimes hurt in terrible ways. What we can do about it. Whether we can handle it.
Handle It will be hitting the stage on August 1, 2 and 3 at the Phoenix Theatre, Coniston, and then for a second season on September 4, 5 and 6 at the Tap Gallery, Darlinghurst, as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival. Visit www.trybooking.com/EPGI to book tickets.