Created by Sancia Robinson and Nick Steain, ‘Secrets’ tells the real stories of individuals battling with the shame of holding back the truth about who they really are.
Told through thirty verbatim monologues, from five actors – Zach Blampied, Yiana Pandelis, Susanna Qian, Sancia Robinson and Nick Steain – the show touches on the confronting themes of rape, child abuse, suicide and abortion while promising to provide some light-hearted moments and laughs.
I was able to sit down with Nick to chat about the show and get a better idea of how it came to be.
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How did the idea come about?
I was studying at 16th Street, in Melbourne, and I was approached by a teacher of mine, Sancia Robinson, who’s a very accomplished producer and casting director. She wanted to make a show about real people and being able to connect and break down silos of isolation and that kind of thing. Victoria was still going through a number of lockdowns at that stage and so we thought it would be a good opportunity to showcase some real stories that people haven’t been able to talk about before.
Can you provide some insight into the stories that are told in the show?
There are basically three lengths of story, or secret. There are some that are more storytelling and go for five or six minutes, some that are a bit shorter–about half that–and then others that are just one to two sentences long and they’re just this admission that they’ve never told anyone before. So, some of the longer one’s concern miscarriage, adoption, reconnection…
Are the stories all quite heavy?
They range. Some of them are quite heavy and emotional and wrapped in trauma, others are a lot lighter and funnier and are just really embarrassing admissions. So, some of them are around accidentally killing a pet, some of them are about a miss-timed fart that went wrong in a very delicate environment, others are about the shame of parenthood for example.
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How did you go about approaching people for these stories?
There were a number of different ways actually. We did a bit of a call out to people that we knew, to see if there was anything that people felt comfortable sharing and had the trust with us to treat it with respect and that kind of thing. We also sent out surveys to groups of people that we thought might have something [to say].
Why should people get up off the couch and come see the show?
Because I think it offers a good night of storytelling that is unfiltered and real. I think particularly now, in this age of information overload and the curation over things, it’s quite refreshing just to hear people talk about their lives candidly and just to go, ‘you know what, my life actually isn’t perfect’… What this show offers is an insight into thirty strangers, highlighting their imperfections, and through that we hope that if you come and see it, you get a sense of being a little bit more connected to everyone else in the world and [realise] that we’re not actually that different.
The show is directed by Ben Grant and co-produced by Tinny Pants Productions and 24 Carrot Productions.
It will be held at The Butterfly Club Upstairs Theatre – 5 Carson Place (off Little Collins Street) – from Monday 11th July 2022 to Saturday 16th July at 8:30pm.
For bookings and more information, head here.
