I’ll do my best to set the stage: a young boy waits nervously outside the audition room for a musical theatre production. He has lived in Manila, the Philippines (where he was born), nearly as long as he has lived here, in Sydney. That’s me. In primary school, my choir director brought these auditions to my attention. Someone somewhere was looking for young sopranos to make up the show’s boy’s chorus. I had never really given a thought to musical theatre before, but the opportunity to be paid to do something I did for free before school certainly excited me. I went in. I did my audition, sung my short piece, adequately abridged to fit the maximum time limit, but the outcome of my audition was, unusually, relayed to me before I had even left the room. It was explained to me that I could not be offered a role because they needed “all the boys to share a certain look.” Oblivious to what had just occurred, I thanked them for their time and quietly left the room. The coming years would teach me that the outcome of that audition had likely been finalised not at the end of my brief audition, but the moment I had entered the room. Then again, taking a look at the name in by-line of this op-ed, it might have even been over before it even began.

        I did not involve myself in theatre before coming to the ANU. My only insight to stories of the stage were from my high school peers who studied drama, the biennial musicals my school put on and, of course, as a reader at heart, being drawn to a number of plays and playwrights. William Shakespeare, August Wilson, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Henrik Ibsen: only a few of the names that come to mind. Sometimes, English classes directed my attention to other plays of note, but my reading into staged narratives was largely a consequence of my own interest in literature as a whole. Nevertheless, it was something I wanted to extend as I started a new life at university. Enter NUTS. In my first year alone, I was the Assistant Producer for NUTS’ first show of the year, Peter Pan, I was cast in another show the following semester, It’s Not Creepy If They’re Hot, and I was also the Assistant Director for the inaugural play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, for the newly-formed residential college, Wright Hall. At the end of that same year, I joined in ANU Shakespeare Society (NUTS’ sister-society) as the head of marketing on the production of Macbeth.

        I recall my entry, my induction, into ANU’s theatre community only to highlight one key element of my experience: that NUTS’ creative, passionate and beautifully-diverse members welcomed me into its fold with open arms. Responsibilities and creative decisions were thrown to me, a fresh-faced outsider with no prior experience in a theatrical cast or crew. Not once was I seen as anything less than myself. Did I have aspirations I hoped NUTS could realise for me but did not? Naturally. For one, I applied unsuccessfully to direct David Mamet’s Bobby Gould in Hell for NUTS’ 2020 season. The 2020 exec had their reasons, of course – there are a number of factors that contribute to the selection of directors and plays that NUTS’ general audience, or even casual members, may not even be aware of. There’s the estimation of the cost of rights, set and technical elements of a proposed play, the clarity of – or thought put into – their specific directorial vision or even the thematic synergy that any given production would have with the other plays chosen for the season, to name a few examples. In any event, I did not feel unfairly overlooked when the 2020 exec announced four powerhouses of creative talent to direct what promised to be four unique, but enchanting, plays. I need not remind everyone what 2020 turned into but NUTS saw its plays swallowed up by the closure of live theatre and the hopes of its directors and their prospective casts and crews were dashed. The hibernation of student theatre is very, very far from the worst thing that happened last year, but a whole outlet of recreation and expression was swept unflinchingly from beneath the ANU’s theatre community’s feet.

        A little hope in the dark. Tragedy and angst, amidst what beauty life could offer us. Death, even in paradise. Et in Arcadia ego. This was the theme around which the 2021 exec was assembled, and the very same theme that our directors hoped to rally behind in the nominations of their chosen plays. Caryll Churchill’s Love and Information represented this dichotomy of darkness and beauty in its extreme, a sometimes-comedic, sometimes-heartbreaking play made up of unrelated vignettes from unrelated lives. Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia more explicitly dealt with the disillusionment we feel contemplating the terrifying, but irresistible, mystery of our own existence. At the time of writing this, semester two is yet to pass. In Dancing Dogs, we aimed to tell a story of a young woman trying to find her future, living in a present to which she did not feel that she belonged while running from a past now beginning to haunt her. And, in Catch-22, we hoped, despite the play’s heavy emphasis on humour, that Yossarian’s attempts at disentangling from the absurdity of an uncompromising military culture would reflect the sheer confusion and frustration felt towards the unrest and chaos that unfolded in the past year. With the 2021 season, the NUTS exec hoped to voice the universal feeling of cautious hope, one that we, especially as young people, could relate to: that feeling of looking to the future, but with eyes intensely aware of the dire state of the world we were about to inherit. However, the ambitious sentiment we hoped to capture unwittingly served as blinders to a group of people who had been especially victimised by the turmoil of the past year. Perhaps it was the enthusiastic return of student theatre, the bombastic re-entry of loud and proud theatre kids, that brought pre-existing tensions between the ANU theatre community and standards of representation to the forefront of people’s minds. Regardless, there has been a lack of representation of people of colour in ANU theatre.

        In hindsight, Arcadia, a play revolving dually around academics of Oxbridge stock and the English nobility of the Regency era, and Catch-22, with its hyper-focus on the bureaucracy of the hypermasculine American military, should have stood out to us as plays that do not, in their text, even consider the experiences of people racialized by wider society. Dancing Dogs, meanwhile, is an undertaking that we have now reconsidered due to the problematic implications that would arise should certain roles be inhabited by non-white performers. In semester one, both Love and Information and Arcadia brought in new talent to the theatre fold, and both shows sold out every night of their corresponding production weeks. NUTS had not been able to properly welcome new faces or make back any expenses paid at the beginning of 2020: semester one had blown the exec’s hopes for the re-emergence of student theatre out of the water. But these successes do not abate the severe shortcoming that the choices of plays and compositions of casts and crews exposed. Initial concerns arose surrounding the racial homogeneity of these productions’ casts, and these meetings and dialogues regarding the lack of diverse representation in NUTS’ shows began in the wake of this last semester’s productions. These forums were held between the 2021 NUTS exec and concerned parties, through consultation with the ANU BIPOC Department, for the sake of discussing the society as a hostile space for people of colour and the lack of representation. Participation in these meetings was eventually extended to the initial cast and production team of Catch-22. If you’ve had your eye on NUTS’ Facebook page, you may have seen references to these conversations and some of the amendments to our plans for semester two that were made as a result. Dialogue and consultation remain ongoing, with a push for NUTS to make the conversation about the lack of diversity and inclusion within the society public and transparent. Enter me, with the intent of laying bare the position of the current exec. I write to outline the commitment to diversity and inclusion, and plan of action, shared by the NUTS exec of 2021, Matilda Hatcher (Artistic Director), Caitlin Baker (Secretary), Anna Coote (Treasurer), Lily Pike (Head of Stagecraft) and Jacob Church (Head of Membership Engagement). I have taken it upon myself to convey their intentions, in the spirit of NUTS’ appreciation of diverse, perhaps understated, voices in our community and, more specifically, our exec. But I have also authored this article to voice my own thoughts and experience.

        In its current state, the call to change that NUTS has received risks painting a dire picture of the future for people of colour in ANU’s student theatre community. Not since that audition so long ago, not since I emerged from an exclusionary space dejected and deflated, have I felt more degraded and humiliated as a result of my background and the colour of my skin. Not since that audition have I had the differences distinguishing me from my peers so acutely targeted in a creative space. As the current discussions continue, I become increasingly aware of the uneasy, sideways glances thrown my way as a non-white member of the ANU theatre community, but also as the only non-white member of the NUTS exec. But what has confronted me the most in recent weeks has, without a doubt, been the conscientiousness I’ve glimpsed in these uneasy, sideways glances. They are the glances harbouring the genuine concern that fills the eyes of people who want nothing more than to do right by you. But they are the looks that one might give to a pet on whose paw you’ve just accidentally trod, glances given to something frail and powerless.

        I don’t want future NUTS members and future executives walking on eggshells every time they encounter non-white members or prospective members of the society. Though well-intentioned, the fretting stares of peers is not what I want any individual already racialized by wider society to live under, and concerned regard is not what I want to see on the faces of those in my theatre community. You might find my use of the term ‘racialized’ to refer to people of colour or non-white individuals in and around of the ANU’s theatre circles strange. It’s been common in NUTS’ recent discussions of race to use the term BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of colour) as a way to distinguish between groups of people victimised along racial lines. The latter term’s omission from this op-ed stems primarily from my inability to speak for the experience of black and indigenous people at the ANU. But I also coin ‘racialized’ – which refers to all people whose identity is used as a basis for discrimination, or used without their consent to justify treatment that sets them apart from the norm – to try to capture my experience of the past few months. Crew member, cast member, NUTS Head of Publicity 2021: these are all roles within the theatre community into which I entered willingly and eagerly. But some “non-white member of NUTS”? Some of the dialogue and recommendations regarding how NUTS can facilitate change unwittingly risks entrenching a value system that allows whiteness to be considered the only acceptable norm, one that positions other identities – my identity – in opposition or separation from the culture. I stand in solidarity with the concerned parties that have stepped forward to voice their consternation, and anyone else in and around the NUTS community who share similar feelings of alienation and rejection. It is very easy to want to do right by the imagined, monolithic “person of colour”. It is easy to forget that they, and I, are real people with more to them beyond their racial identity. It is something even I forgot these past weeks. Regardless of intent, the conversation around my value and well-being as a person of colour risk embedding the thinking of current and future NUTS leadership teams with the same thinking that underpins all racial discrimination: the racialization of my identity. All of a sudden, I ceased to be a member of the NUTS community and executive and became a coloured member of the NUTS community and executive. My contributions to this space are mine alone, but they were also suddenly being credited to an imagined collective of people who, other than race, I am in no way alike. I am not at all ashamed of being a person of colour in NUTS, but the erosion of my identity to fit me into that neat little box is as reductive as the day is long. I know for a fact that it is our differences that highlight and bring to life the wonderful perspectives theatre is so perfectly positioned to allow everyone to experience. But it must be made clear that the real issue is that it is the work and talent of people of colour that have been unrepresented by student theatre here at the ANU, not the fact that they are different. Their hard work and skill for stagecraft is what should be highlighted. As things currently stand, the NUTS exec is being infinitely more careful about how measurable steps can be made to facilitate the development of work and talent that we know every single one of our members hold, but this is cannot be done by embedding and insisting on what divides us.

        No quotas were in place when I joined the NUTS exec at the beginning of the year, and yet the society’s leadership is guided by a predominantly female-identifying exec, with our shows helmed by an able selection of Queer* and female-identifying directors. The community has been able to enable and celebrate their contributions and accomplishments without forcing their identities under a microscope. While I will never wish for the contributions and potential of talented people of colour to be overlooked, I cannot be compelled to mandate changes or demands that propel such individuals into the spotlight as, while some might benefit greatly from this treatment, I live in fear of the likelihood that they might experience the same feeling of intrusive scrutiny that I have. Forcing quotas and empirical requirements on shows and directors are steps that will reduce people of colour to numbers and statistics; a director’s employment of the acting talent of a non-white actor will have diminished their participation to a box successfully checked, and the contributions of non-white crew members will not be welcomed organically but nervously required. It is for this reason, the result of my experience, hopes and anxieties, that I am hesitant to endorse any proposals to NUTS’ plan of action that encourage further racialization of ANU theatre spaces. It is NUTS’ role to nurture, not to conquer or claim, the work and talent of people of colour.

        To those who brought forward their concerns about the state of representation in NUTS, I ask for your consideration and patience. I have thought long and hard about this issue, both as a person of colour and as someone who wants ANU theatre to blossom into the most welcoming, inclusive space it can be. The line between the self-replenishing nature of our community and an insistence to revitalise a culture risking becoming entrenched in repeated oversights is, unfortunately, both treacherously thin and dangerously blurred. The barrier to entry to this community, and any inaccessibility prospective members face, is symptomatic of rooting our society’s culture in our productions and the inherently competitive and selective practices of the audition space. Ultimately, our initial steps towards remedying the imbalance of representations in our shows were too swift. On behalf of this year’s exec and, if my background makes this somehow more important to you, on my own behalf, I promise you that change, not haste, is of paramount importance to this community. NUTS is committed to nurturing an open, inclusive space for everyone, though this extends specially to people of colour, people with experiences of disability, Queer* individuals and the female-identifying members and prospective members of the theatre community.

        NUTS is more than the people who are fortunate enough to be selected for the casts and crews of our productions. Our future aspirations are underpinned by a deemphasis on the four shows of the yearly NUTS seasons, and revolve around the commitment to holding official and casual events that will sustain those not involved in the ongoing shows. Amidst our roadmap are talks and workshops designed to help our members develop performative and technical skills (playwriting, lighting and sound design, and directing, for example). All of these future functions (as well as our future productions) will be actively informed by guidelines around creating a principled space, guidelines that we hope can expedite an atmosphere less alienating to people of colour, people experiencing disability, Queer* and female-identifying individuals. This means that, as we look for voices to lead and realise these workshops, the exec will uphold a conscious commitment to honouring the expertise ( and normalising the celebration) of all the traditionally marginalised voices that make up NUTS’ chorus, the voices of our non-white members especially. With informal, theatre-oriented social events (which can be as simple as regular coffee chats to outings to local theatre productions), our exec plans to undermine what can be perceived as an overemphasis on the four plays prepared every year. In acknowledging that our productions are often the means by which new members navigate their way into the NUTS community, we hope that NUTS can become more casually accessible. We hope our plans can catalyse a departure from our shows’ auditions being NUTS’ de facto barrier of entry, minimising the physical and emotional pressures that anyone attempting to enter into ANU’s theatre space might face. NUTS promises to take steps to more actively engage its members in a way that we feel is more conducive the kind of positive, personal and open relationships we want to build in our community. We are not only a group of students who put on theatre and dramatic material, but also students who talk about theatre, enjoy it, critique it and create it. A more detailed outline of the plan of action currently being engineered by this year’s exec will be unveiled within the fortnight following the publication of this article, but I hope that I have been able to convey the broader motivation and reasoning behind our schemes moving forward.

        Rest assured; I have made the rest of the exec peer carefully over every word of this article. I have voiced my concerns to them, the very same concerns written here, and they have voiced theirs to me. As far as a commitment to anti-racism and diversity in theatre goes, we are willing to put in the work and discernment needed to promote the beautifully-inclusive culture we want to see in our theatre community. I thank you for taking the time to read this. Have I written too much? Perhaps, but know that it is because I, and the rest of the NUTS exec, do not deign to handle this issue lightly. We at NUTS aspire to premiere a theatre community rich in quality, yes, but not at the cost of its wealth in spirit.

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Sincerely,