A Wicked Matinee with a Twist
Performers are crazy.
Our job is to create this riveting, glittery and fiery event onstage live with hundreds of people watching and to lead them through a fantasy world for the next 2-3 hours. Sounds wacky huh? If a performer was asked what their main motivation for performing would be, most would express similar “theatrical” mantras; we perform to inspire, to reach out and to tell an awesome story.
Whatever our passion is, we do it because it brings us immense joy, love, harmony and purpose. However our special matinee performance on Friday, January 31 felt quite different.
The Benefit Performance made me feel very privileged once again to be able to perform in WICKED with my fellow cast mates, musiciansand crew. I felt very proud to be able to tell the audience this story AND raise money to donate to the victims of the Typhoon Yolanda (or Haiyan as we call it in Oz) whose lives are not quite a fantasy world for them right now. Nearly everyone involved with the Benefit Performance donated their fees and time on the day and the proceeds from the ticket sales also went towards this important cause.
On 8 November, 2013 the Typhoon Yolanda hit the southern islands of the Philippines at winds of 313 kilometres per hour displacing more than 600 000 people. The estimated death toll was around approximately 5 260 people. Our very own delightful WICKED ticketing lady, lost 7 of her immediate family with several members still unaccounted for.
Hearing about the sheer large numbers of people lost is quite hard to swallow. We live in a world where these disasters happen. After all, Australia has had its fair share of loss through natural disasters such as fires, floods and droughts and, when a devastation occurs in any country, the media has a ‘field’ day. We hear it on the news and somehow a few months later the ‘hype’ stops and we don’t hear much about it for a while.
However being in this country, to be able to do something of worth, something that helps the Filipino people directly , and getting the opportunity to raise a significant amount of money for Typhoon victims and survivors gives a lot more purpose to this already amazing job I am lucky enough to have.
I think it is so important for all of us to stop what we are doing, wherever we may be and give back to someone. Give to other people in need. Successes, I believe, are only really considered of being worthy, when are able to make a difference to society or to the people in it. Why wouldn’t we use this money, influence or creativity to change the world in some way? If we as individuals are given these gifts, no matter what they are, we should consider using them to make a difference in other peoples lives and show people, who may not have a voice or opportunity that we are there for them in times of need.
There you go, my philosophical spiel is over, and I am not saying that we are absolute saints and deserve to be knighted, for doing what we did, and what we have achieved by performing in WICKED. I am saying, however, that it has given my cast mates and I enormous gratitude for our loving lives, and our ability to be able to make some smidgen of difference in this world.
You can do so as well, I urge you to donate and you can do so on the Wicked website
Please stay tuned for some articles about the orphanages the cast members and I will be visiting in the coming weeks. I have already raised a lot of money to be able to buy some school supplies, toiletries and food for these orphans around the Manila area, and cannot wait to share with you what we learn about these amazing organisations.
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