Letter to a Mentor

Last week I talked business, this week I want to get personal. This is a letter I wrote to an early career mentor of mine. I hope it adequately articulates his impact on me.

Dear Ian,

If I am to start at the beginning, then it feels right to start with you. At 21, I was a shy country girl from Mansfield, Victoria who moved to the big city of Sydney with some kind of plan to break into the entertainment industry as a Stage Manager.

In a rundown tin shed of a theatre located on a back street of the Sydney suburb of Marrickville, I met you. The Production Manager of Sidetrack Theatre Company. A tall, slim man with a long grey mullet and a cheeky grin and never a cigarette too far from your lips. You were the quintessential roadie. A man that not only worked in the industrial park where Sidetrack Theatre Company existed, but also lived there, in lean-to off the side of the large corrugated iron structure we used as a performance space. A small makeshift home filled with work tools, a bed perched high out of the way of the work benches and a drum kit. You loved your drums. You loved living at Sidetrack because it wasn’t a residential area. This was convenient because at night when everyone had gone from the industrial park, you could play your drums to your hearts content and there was no one around to complain.

We were a two-person production team for the mounting of “The Uncle from Australia” a play by a Greek Australian playwright, Theodore Patrikareas. Together we would build the set, you would operate the lighting, and I the sound cues, and somewhere in there, I was called a stage manager. But essentially, between us, we had to do everything the actors weren’t assigned to do.

I did a bit of set building at university, but I really learned to build things with you. We would work out the back of the theatre in a makeshift workshop carefully constructing and painting scenic flats. You would explain to me as we built them, the ways that they could be put together, how we would use them and why it was important to be meticulous in every step of its construction. I felt a certain amount of pride in my neatly lined up nails pinning the plywood to the frame and you encouraged my skill building without ever being condescending.

Sidetrack Theatre sat in the flight path of Sydney Airport. Often as we were building scenic elements, the planes passing overhead were so low, they cast a shadow over our work.

In show performance times, it was accepted practice for the actors to pause while the airplane passed over the theatre due to the deafening sound drowning out any possible dialogue for a period of around 20 seconds. There was no use competing with an airplane a few hundred metres above you. I always thought it quite amusing that no one seemed to mind. It was the quirk of seeing a show at Sidetrack and the audience completely accepted the practice.

The “Uncle from Australia” was written in 1964 and is part of the “Antipodean Trilogy” a collection of plays that is reputed to be the first attempt ever to portray immigrant life in Australia. Being a story of Greek immigrants, the cast selected for the play were, of course, all Greek.

This I loved. They were loud and passionate, and the text resonated with them as they were the children of the generation of immigrants this story was about. You and I, Ian were swept up in the Greek family vibe as we rehearsed the show, expected to sit at the table at lunch and join in on all the daily discussions.

Lunch was important to the cast. So important that the director, Don Mamouney would allow a rostered nomination to be excused early from rehearsal each day to go prepare the food for everyone while the rest of the cast and crew finished the morning rehearsal session.

The foyer area of the theatre in non-show times was the lunch hall. A large wooden table lined with bench seats held the lunch spread. A small kitchen off the side of the foyer area was used to brew coffee, create fresh salads with olive oil, cut bread and prepare whatever the main food would be for lunch that day.

I had to learn to drink Greek coffee. The unfiltered heavy kind. The kind that blew my head off. And Ouzo. It wasn’t unusual to have a glass of Ouzo, (straight with no mixer) at the end of lunch, before heading back into the tin shed to do the afternoon rehearsal. Often, I would stumble lightheaded back to the sound desk, thanking my lucky stars I had 4 hours before needing to get in my car to drive home.

On other days, production days, where it was just you and I, I would drive down to the mall close by and grab a sandwich or a takeout for lunch. Every time I brought something back you would take out a folding table from your shed, pull out its legs and lock them to a standing position. You would get a plate, a knife and fork from the kitchen and sit down carefully unwrapping your sandwich, salad or takeaway curry placing it meticulously on the plate to eat. Such a ceremony, I would think, just to eat a sandwich.

“Got to be civilized” you would say. “I spent too many years rushing around and eating shitty take-out standing up or sitting in the back of a truck on tour, so when you have the chance to eat properly, you should eat properly”. And as if in defiance of that lifestyle, you would sit back in your plastic chair and slowly enjoy your food in the sunshine.

I liked these lunchtimes the most. I was a person always alert and ready to jump onto the next task or do the next thing just right. Always trying to prove myself worthy of being hired there. You on the other hand, were never in a rush. You had the calm steady energy of someone who had been there, done that. I admired that about you, and while in your presence, you calmed my nervous energy. In the midday sun, we used to have animated discussions in the courtyard between the foyer and the tin shed. You, sitting at your folding table, and me on a chair or stool nearby. You used to tell me that “Women are amazing” and that “Women can do anything” and over time I started to believe you.

You armed me with words that I would carry with me through the following 10 years where people weren’t so kind or supportive as I worked to cultivate and grow in my craft. For the longest time I felt like I was on the outside looking in on the industry I wanted to be a part of. Today they would call it imposter syndrome, but we didn’t have such labels back then.

You also pointed me towards things I should know. I remember your face when I told you I could only drive an automatic car. You looked at me with horror, and promptly informed me that if I ever wanted to go on tour, then I better learn to drive manual. And not just a manual car, but a van and a truck as well.

“A truck?” I said, “Look at me, I can’t drive a truck?”
“Why not?” you said.
I didn’t have an answer. There wasn’t any clear reason why I couldn’t learn to drive a truck if I really wanted to.

That’s why when I could afford to buy a new car, I bought a stick shift. I was terrified, because the eastern suburbs where I lived was not a flat area (hill starts all round) and I had no one to teach me. But I did it anyway. Nothing kicks your ass into learning to drive manual than a new car you can’t afford to crash.

And 12 months later when I went out on tour in Victoria for 8 weeks in a van, with a male colleague that couldn’t drive stick shift, I was thankful for your advice.

You opened the door for me and welcomed me into the industry at such a formative time in my early years of working. You put me on a pedestal and made me feel deserving even though I didn’t know what you saw in me. I will be forever thankful for the way you made me feel.

In one of those afternoon sunshine conversations, I remember you saying to me in one rambling discussion about life, “As long as I die with my drumsticks in my hand, I’ll be happy”.

I remembered this sentence around 5 years later the exact moment a friend told me you had passed away from a heart attack on your couch. At that time, I was working as a Stage Manager in Las Vegas for LOVE by the Beatles, a Cirque du Soleil show in the Mirage Casino. I happened to be in possession of a pair of drumsticks held and played by Ringo Starr himself. I remember holding them soon after hearing of your passing and wishing I could teleport them to Australia and into your hands before you were buried.

I like to think you would have thought it pretty cool to be buried with drumsticks played by Ringo Starr. Since teleportation was impossible, I set an intention to at least lay them at your grave when I returned to Australia. But in my travels beyond Vegas, I was parted from the cardboard box of memorabilia I had kept the drumsticks in, and I have yet to visit your grave.

There is still a hole in my heart for this task left undone.

Anna