It’s hard to know what to say sometimes. Maybe you need to tell your crush you can’t stop thinking about them, maybe you want a divorce, maybe you need to tell a past partner about a little STI you have, maybe you want to reconnect with your sibling you haven’t spoken to in five years, maybe you need to talk to your housemate about how they keep leaving their wet towels on the floor, or maybe your friend’s mum has died and you don’t know what to say. If you don’t know what to say, let me say it for you.
Who am I? I’m a playwright and theatre maker. I’m not a counsellor, or professional relationship therapist. This work is based on my first paid gig; writing sexts for my friends in high school ;) and my unfortunate family tradition of taking people’s phones out of their hands to write difficult texts for them (seriously, watch your phone around my mother; she’ll text your crush).
What you need to know:
During your participation in this work, you will have a one-on-one interaction with me, where I will help you write a difficult text message. There will be an audience but you will be in disguise for the whole time so, apart from your voice, you will be reasonably anonymous.
You will have approximately 5 minutes to describe a situation with a person that you wish you could say something to but can’t find the words. During these 5 minutes, you will hand over your mobile phone with the contact of the person you want to talk to. I will use your phone to draft a text message.
Your phone and the text will be filmed and live-fed to an audience. For this reason, I recommend changing the name of the person in your contacts, so that they can remain anonymous.
By signing up, you agree that you have permission to contact the person and that the message won’t put them in, or make them feel like they are in danger.
At the end of the allotted time, I’ll show you the text, and you can choose to SEND, SAVE, DELETE, or ASK FOR A SIGN. Asking for a sign allows you to use a ‘choosing device’ (prize wheel, or decision maker device) to decide whether you SEND, DELETE or SAVE the text. With DELETE or SAVE being two of the three outcomes, you will have a chance to reconstruct, edit, or not send the text. If you choose SAVE or DELETE the audience won’t know if you follow through.
You’ll also have a PLEASE STOP button that you can press at any time when you want to abort the mission. When you press this button I’ll hand you back your phone, all activity will stop, and you’ll be allowed to leave. You can press this button at any point in the show.