Essay: Nobody Special knows how to be alone
A reflection on MKA’s Nobody Special and not being special
Devised and performed by Kerith and Tobias Manderson-Galvin
Essay by Charlotte Smee
I am not good at being alone. I am Year 9 Charlotte. I am starting at a new school in a new city. I am a good teacher and I help my friends and siblings with homework. I am a drama kid, I am a pianist, and I am not a dancer. My teachers tell me I should go to NIDA when I finish school. I am very good at projecting. I am worried about my mark for my English essay, my wobbly bum, and a recurring pimple on my right cheek. I am concerned about my loud voice. I am a “high achiever”. I am an extrovert, I am a Saggitarius, and I have a constant need to externalise my thoughts. I am not quite sure why I just don’t like being by myself. I am very talented. I am very good at telling myself stories. I tell myself I want to go to NIDA when I finish school. I tell myself I am somebody special.
I am nervous when I get into the Uber on my way to Nobody Special. I feel uncomfortable because I know this performance is made just for me, and I will be outnumbered by two performers. I’ve been to the theatre alone before, but never actually “alone”. I have a usually smiling face with a large block-lettered slogan across my forehead that reads: “hello, please talk to me”. Old bespectacled ladies with furry-eyebrow-ed, cross-armed husbands are quick to read this slogan on my forehead and ask me why I’ve come to this play “all by yourself!” Sometimes I say, “I am a critic!” and other times I say “I just love the theatre!” Sometimes I think about saying “because none of my friends can afford it!” Almost every time I laugh at myself when I say one of those things. In the theatre, I am the smallest person in the audience. In my theatre criticism, I am the biggest. I worry that the performers of Nobody Special will Google me to help tell my version of the story. I wonder if the performers might be worried too because I am supposed to be a big scary critic. I wonder which bios of mine they might dig out of the depths of the internet, and I secretly hope they might quote my Instagram bio back to me: “everyone’s a critic but I’m an especially annoying one”. I wonder if I am special enough or knowledgeable enough to be a critic. I wonder if my opinion on a performance made just for me is even worth writing out. I wonder if the performance will be scary, funny, or both.
I am third-year university Charlotte. I am still a “high achiever”. I am not NIDA Charlotte. I am studying writing. I am wearing a McDonald’s uniform and the smell of bad coffee and curdled milk. I am not good at being alone. I am enamoured with one of my tutors. In his lectures he makes us wear silly hats that help us understand complicated theories about art. I like this tutor’s stories because they have a bird named “Charlotte” in them. I am alone at the front of the lecture hall. Not really: there is a whole circle of other people sitting and listening intently like me. In his lectures my tutor makes us all talk to each other and figure out why we like something. I make friends with people I’d never have the guts to talk to by myself in the UniBar. I like this tutor’s lectures because I am almost always late for them and he almost always says “Charlotte’s here, it must be time to start”.
I am giggly and excited when I arrive at the new KXT on Broadway’s small red stage door. Suzanne, the Co-Artistic Director of bAKEHOUSE, is waiting for me outside, with her own smiling “please talk to me” face and long grey tresses. She is not a performer, but then, she kind of is. I tell her I am worried the performance might be scary. She tells me that people usually come out laughing and the marketing makes it seem scarier than it is. I don’t know if it’s the marketing or me telling myself stories. I put my mask on. I wait. I giggle some more. Another friendly Co-Artistic Director of bAKEHOUSE face, John, leads me into a room in the middle of being constructed. Plastic sheets, a ladder, and some windows face my singular stool. There’s a man with big black headphones on walking past the windows. I am alone. Not really: I’ve got some instructions printed on some pieces of paper in my hand. I’m a fast reader, and I’m filled with shaking energy, so I dutifully begin to read the crinkly, fluttering words in front of me:
A FALSE START
Sit down on the empty chair in the middle of the room.
Look around.
You are in a theatre.
You are in a very grand production. Just for you…
I am kindergarten Charlotte. I am a brave little girl, I am a smart little girl, and I am a talkative little girl. I am very good at reading. I am a busy little bee. I am very good at spelling. I am very good at following instructions. I am determined to be good at something. I am “gifted”. I am the smallest of the tiny people at my school. I am the biggest of the tiny people at my home. I dutifully eat my hot dog and chocolate milk at lunchtime. I am alone and still eating when the playtime bell rings. Not really: my friends are a few metres away playing on the playground. I watch them and try to wash down my white bread and red sausage with brown milk. The red, brown and white swish around in my tummy. I scrunch up my paper lunch order bag. I throw it into the green metal bin. I trip on a grey rock in the grass on the way to an unnecessarily complicated game of cops and robbers. I am not good at being alone.
I am unsure of where to put my feet when I have read all of my instructions twice, and the second double-sided piece of paper behind it that has an “order of events”. Nobody special comes to rescue me from my stool by myself. They make me hold up a plastic sheet and shoot something at me, but only after I figure out that yes, in fact, the sheet needs to be in front of my face. I follow the person down the stairs. They are wearing a little white dress. I am wearing my new denim shorts and a woollen rainbow vest. When we get to the bottom of the stairs and enter the vault, there is another person standing on top of a stool. He is wearing a navy curtain and some face paint and he explains that because it is so humid they aren’t allowed to have fog in the vault, so I need to use my imagination and pretend there is fog. He takes off his curtain and he is wearing a suit with writing on it. Later in the performance when there is supposed to be quiet and fog, he says “Fog”. I giggle. I sweat a little bit more into my woollen vest. The two people tell me stories. They are good at telling me stories. I like the stories because they have a character named “Charlotte” in them, and the person who is telling them has a nice laugh and a pretty smile. I recognise something familiar in the way they dutifully switch between pronouns when telling the story of the imagined Charlotte. I later find out their name is Kerith. I later find out that the navy curtain man is Tobias.
I am freshly single still-kind-of-heartbroken Charlotte. I am living in a new city. I am still a busy little bee. I am a recovering “high achiever”. I am on the bus to my new job. I am alone. Not really: there are rows and rows of other people on their way to their old jobs. I am wearing a bright pink suit to match my bright pink hair. I am wearing some big dangly earrings with flowers on them. I am watching people on the bus because they are too busy to be watching me. I am not good at being alone. One time, a bespectacled old lady reads the slogan on my forehead and asks me if the little white things in my ears mean that I am listening to music. One time, I tell her yes, but sometimes it means that people are listening to podcasts and I don’t really like podcasts because they mean I have to concentrate too hard on the bus. One time, I tell the old lady to have a good day and I step off the bus with my cheeks so high they are pushing the little white things out of my ears.
I giggle at myself (again) when Nobody Special turns into an unnecessarily complicated game of cops and robbers, and the performers tell me to put my head against the wall. Of course, I have forgotten how to follow instructions after being interrogated for 15 minutes and only allowed to answer “yes” or “no”, drinking a cup of tea that I forgot I asked for, and having a different ridiculous bio of mine quoted at me, so I put my forehead against the wall and put my hands above my head. For good measure, I stick out my wobbly bum. Kerith laughs with me. I turn around and sit on the concrete ledge of the vault. I put the back of my head against the wall. I sit for a long while figuring out if I actually need to stand up and follow the robbers into the second room of the vault, and feel embarrassed about my decision to put my forehead against the wall. A money gun fails to shoot. I giggle again. I go into the vault and I am handed two pieces of money with pictures of me printed on them. I giggle again. Kerith takes me for a walk and there are more pictures of myself next to pictures of Kerith and Tobias. In the pictures, we are alone. But not really, because we are next to each other. When I sit down again, I am alone. But not really, because now it’s time to sing along to some songs Kerith and Tobias have written. I don’t know the words, but I ask for some anyway because I love karaoke. I can’t decide whether I need to sit down or stand up. We yell:
BIG CHALLENGES!
BIG CHALLENGES!
BIG CHALLENGES!
BIG CHALLENGES!
I am theatre critic Charlotte. I am sitting alone in front of my computer. My housemate, Emily, is in her room across the hall, behind a door, her phone emitting a mish-mash of TikTok noises. My other housemate, Isla, sits behind me at her desk with headphones in. I wonder if she is annoyed by the clickity-clack of my keyboard. The clickity-clack stops for a few moments while I think about what to write next. I wonder how to say that Nobody Special made me remember that I had all the friends in the world. I wonder how to say that Nobody Special just shows you which buttons to press in a person to simulate a relationship. I wonder how to say that Nobody Special was fun and I had a good time. I wonder how to say that Nobody Special is nothing really that special, but then, it kind of is. I wonder whether my opinion is even worth writing out.
This was theatre-critic-still-kind-of-heartbroken-little-Sydney Charlotte’s experience of Nobody Special. If you’d like to know more about Nobody Special you can click here.
This version of Nobody Special played at the Vault, KXT on Broadway from 11 - 21 January 2023.
Collage by Ceridwen Bush, production images by Yang Wu
Charlotte is the editor of Kaleidoscope Arts Journal, a little enby and a big mess. Their friends regularly worry that they might overdose on theatre.
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