Sarah Barham has always considered herself to be very confident and "out there" — she is an actor after all — so to suddenly find herself feeling as though she did not exist was "bizarre".
Yet it is that role that is allowing her to now stand up on stage and recount that experience.
"It’s my story in an alien environment."
She is one of several people who have shared their experience of feeling "invisible" in society — whether it is because of age, race, gender, appearance or sexual orientation — with Otago theatre company Sahara Breeze (SBZ).
"Some of [the stories] are quite devastating and some of them are hilarious."
The idea to turn the stories into a documentary verbatim theatre production came from SBZ co-founder and director Blaise Barham who had heard people talking about being "invisible" and wondered what it meant. After some research, Blaise found he had learned a few things.
"It made me see and be aware of people that were different to me in some way, whether it was age or gender, and of certain things they were going through, that kind of opened my eyes."
He felt it was important enough that it should be shared with the community.
"Local stories about people and experiences of being seen and unseen and what that would look like."
Having been involved in a verbatim theatre production in Queenstown and having studied it at the University of Otago, Blaise felt verbatim theatre could be the perfect vehicle to tell these stories.
He was also keen to tie in the local stories, told by local actors, with his theatre company’s use of physical movement, circus and aerial performances.
A call was put out for people to volunteer their stories. The people who did had the option of staying anonymous or owning their stories.
"Because there’s a wide range of stories, from some being really funny, to some people saying that actually ‘invisibility is their superpower’ and how they ‘love being invisible’, to other stories which are kind of painful."
He collected 12 hours of material, and with help from dramaturg Allison Horsley pulled the stories together in a cohesive script. It required a lot of work to narrow down the material while still holding true to the person’s story.
"We’ve included everybody’s story that we received in some way, even if it’s just a slight one sentence or just a few lines, because I didn’t feel it was right for any one person to send me something then not put it in the show."
Horsley says to create a theatrical and fulfilling experience they decided to follow four main stories ranging in age from a teenager to a woman in her 70s to create the script for Invisible.
"We have a guy talking about a highly physical appearance experience, versus probably what more people might expect of it — a woman of a certain age not necessarily feeling seen — so there is a little bit of that. I think we were surprised in terms of the types of stories that were received. Nothing fitted a stereotype."
They "check in" with each person periodically throughout the play, following their journey from feeling unseen to seen or reconciling how they feel about it. Peppered throughout are aspects of other people’s stories.
"I’m also looking after the emotion of it and making sure that if we have a particularly heavy piece that we’re treating it with care and that means paying attention to what we put immediately after it ... making sure we’re taking care of the audience and their hearts as well."
The actors then take the words and portray the essence of the person without copying them as characters.
"It’s quite different from doing The Tempest, for example, where you start out with a Shakespearean play ... this is starting from nothing.
Sarah says issues of not being seen are not normally talked about as there is often feelings of shame, embarrassment or guilt. When the cast was invited to share their own stories in a workshop, she found others had had similar experiences.
"You realise that this is your story, but then you hear [another] other story and you’re like ‘yeah so that happened to you as well’. Like my story is being in an alien environment and that as a woman I was not considered significant."
Being identified and telling her story is something she feels strong enough to do, but she understands why most storytellers remain anonymous.
"Some of the storytellers are very vulnerable and they want the story to be told, but they don’t want people to identify them with that. It’s about being able to share, but without exposing yourself to something you find terrifying or uncomfortable."
They have found it to be an emotional process putting the show together.
During rehearsal, one crew member burst into tears having identified with something being spoken about.
But it has also been a very collaborative one with both experienced and inexperienced members of the cast and crew having input.
"Everybody’s response to the text is valid, and then we try it and see what works and it’s a consensus every time."
Alongside the stories is the physical theatre and music aspect of the production which aims to support the stories through movement.
Blaise says the dancers and circus performers have devised the movement alongside the stories being told and to sit between them to give the audience time to breathe.
The performers are on stage for the whole time, either in their speaking roles or in the movement pieces.
For theatre student Eva Captijn, it is her first experience of physical theatre.
"It’s very new and interesting and fun. It adds a whole new dynamic to the situation."
She is enjoying the verbatim presentation as, she says, it helps people realise they are not the only ones who feel invisible sometimes.
"There’s lots of different situations with different degrees of severity or differences where people feel invisible or unseen and it’s sort of a really nice involved way to become aware of things like this."
Dylan Woods,on the other hand, is a former ballet dancer turned circus performer and actor who is excited about the verbatim experience.
"It’s a very modern piece, but this whole first-person storytelling aspect is one of the oldest traditions of storytelling and theatre."
Woods says it is challenging picking up the intonations and speech patterns of the storyteller and to then bring into re-telling the story.
"It can be fun to navigate from an acting perspective. But there is always the underlying fear of not doing the story justice, because it’s real for people, but at the same time you have never met them, we’re not going to meet them, so it’s making it true in the way that only we can."
Wellington-based Strange Case Productions is assisting with the aerial and acrobatics and helping rehearse the team in the movement aspects.
But Woods is very happy to be able to weave "two great loves" into the work even if it involves a lot of hard work.
Captijn has found the physical work to be quite eye-opening. "I never realised how much you can really add to a story, because usually the theatre is focused on a character and now, by introducing this physical theatre aspect, we’re making it about the story and the feeling and relating to it."
SBZ’s previous productions include Wonderful by Richard Huber, The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (2023) and The Tempest by William Shakespeare (2024).
To see:
Invisible, Mayfair Theatre, November 14-16, 7.30pm and November 17, 2.30pm.
