Composite: Robert Catto/Hayes Theatre Company
The year 2021 was meant to be Andrew Coshan’s breakthrough year.
The New Zealand-born Australian-trained actor had just scored the lead male role in the Sydney production of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along.
When the Sydney season was finished, he was scheduled to immediately return home to Victoria to start rehearsals for the Melbourne Theatre Company production of As You Like It, cast in the role of Orlando.
Yet he remains trapped in Sydney – unemployed, surviving on his savings, and living in a temporary share house where he confesses he has probably outstayed his welcome.
“Our first preview (for Merrily We Roll Along) was 24 June, and Sydney went into lockdown the next day,” he says.
“Everyone thought it would be for a week or so, so we were kept on contract, I had to stay here. By the time we were officially stood down on 27 July, it was too late to get back.”
Coshan is one of dozens of Victorian actors who remain stranded in Sydney with no prospects of employment or retuning home because they were not released from their performing contracts until after the New South Wales/Victoria border was closed.
The Media Arts and Entertainment Alliance has interceded on behalf of at least 18 stranded performers, lobbying the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services to grant them exemptions to return home after quarantining for 14 days.
The union has also established a petition to pressure the Victorian government, arguing that applications from members to return home have been repeatedly ignored or rejected without reason.
Michelle Rae, director of MEAA Equity, said the contractual nature of working in the arts and the incremental way the NSW lockdown began meant Sydney productions initially retained cast members on contract when the Delta variant took hold, in the belief the lockdown would be no longer than one or two weeks.
By the time NSW went into extended lockdown, it was too late for interstate performers to return home.
“They’re facing months of separation from their families, with no work and some without secure accommodation,” Rae said.
“These aren’t tourists wanting to return home. These are contracted freelancers who left their homes for work and remained employees of companies until they were released from their contracts, after the borders closed. The Victorian government must to allow those people to return back to their families and their homes.”
Under Victoria’s current travel permit system, only essential workers are allowed to cross the border from NSW. Victorians considered non-essential who had been employed in NSW but subsequently lost their jobs due to the protracted Delta lockdown have remained stranded.
While large production houses such as Newtheatricals (Come from Away) and Michael Cassel Group (Hamilton) have continued to pay interstate performers a living away from home allowance, actors such as Coshan contracted by smaller companies are now relying on their savings and government Covid-19 emergency payments, while paying accommodation costs in two cities.
Stuck in a city where he knows few people and now facing the prospect of his MTC Shakespearean role being recast, Coshan admits his mental health is suffering. On Thursday he sent his fourth application to the Victorian government, requesting he be allowed to return home on compassionate grounds.
Cast member of the hit musical Hamilton, Zelia Kitoko, has applied for an exemption to return home three times. Her mother in Melbourne is seriously ill and Kitoko is her sole registered carer.
“There’s no rhyme or reason to the way that the [Victorian] government are processing cases,” she told Guardian Australia.
“It’s just such an invalidating experience because even being a citizen with a valid reason for just wanting to get home, you’re being completely ignored.”
Come From Away cast member Kathleen Moore, who lives with her husband in Bendigo, remains in a Sydney city apartment building with other cast members.
“We got stuck here and it’s no one’s fault,” she says.
“But we’ve been trying to get home and it has been a near impossible feat to do.
“Thankfully our company [Newtheatricals] has been good enough to keep us on the per diems, to keep us going, but the isolation from family has been very stressful.”
Photograph: Robert Catto
Melbourne-based actor Deirdre Khoo arrived in Sydney in May to begin rehearsals for the Darlinghurst Theatre Company’s production of Once. After two weeks of performances the theatre closed. She has since been provided with emergency accommodation by a fellow cast member’s grandparent.
Khoo has been rejected for a permit to return home three times and was recently placed on a mental health care plan by a GP due to deteriorating mental health.
As with her fellow actors, Khoo was notified by the Victorian government that her applications to return home had been rejected because of the need to protect public health and the principles set out in the Public Health and Wellbeing act and “the relevant human rights” contained in the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities act.
“They won’t let us back into the state, but no one is telling us what specifics as individuals we need to meet, or how we were being assessed as individuals,” she says.
Guardian Australia has approached the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services for comment.
