Second Look: A Backstage Panacea to Loneliness

I’m looking back at articles I wrote years ago on Substack to see how I feel retrospectively. This time, it’s "A Backstage Panacea to Loneliness", published in March 2021.

Re-reading my article, I’ve been reflecting on perhaps three ideas I think I was expressing.

The Theatre as Family

Four years ago, I wrote about theatre providing "a panacea to loneliness" and creating a surrogate family. I’ve wondered whether my understanding of "family" or meaningful connection has evolved. Thirty-five years ago, I thought I saw theatre communities as uniquely familial; I had no reference points or exposure to the wider world to understand that they were not unique and that tribal connections existed everywhere.

I was never a punk, a goth, or an emo. In many respects, I was a conforming, boring human. My boundaries were extremely limited. I felt no motivation to express myself as an individual or within a clan. Working backstage in theatre and music was my first and only tribe when I was young.

Today, I make an effort to be just that little bit different. I wear 8-hole Docs with rainbow laces. Unlike so many middle-aged men, I’m graced with a full head of hair, so I have long hair with a ponytail. I’m still pretty ‘Melbourne black’, so while my t-shirts are all black, my collection of fun t-shirts continues to grow.

I like to joke to my friends that when I’m 80 and wandering down the road, locals will say, ‘There goes that weird but nice old man!’

The Backstage as Sanctuary

My article described backstage as a refuge from boarding school hierarchies—"a black hole" to bullies and cool kids. On reflection, I think I was almost describing a secret society, a club with strict membership screening and entry requirements—a club that let the misfits in rather than the ‘beautiful’ people.

Now that I’ve parented three children through school and out into the world, I don’t think high school has changed that much. There are the ebbs and flows of teenage friendships and relationships, and tiny slights and behaviours become the subject of much discussion.

Cliques form, dissolve and reform, driven by all manner of diverse pressures - how rich you are, what car your Dad bought you, where you live, what sport you play, perceptions of beauty, colour of skin, the list is endless and generally irrelevant to the actual humans buffeted by these changing tides.

Today, I understand that so much of this tribalism was driven by insecurity; the ‘cool kids’ who back then I thought had their entire lives together, probably were precisely the opposite. We’ve all been teenagers, lived through varying degrees of angst and uncertainty as the hormones whizz around, and we gradually, and often stumblingly, fall into adulthood.

I found solace and safety with the performing arts. Others coalesced around other common traits or attributes, but now I know none of us had our shit together.

Leaving Backstage Behind

I ended the article by regretting leaving the "camaraderie" behind when I moved into management and never rediscovering "that unique sense of connection, support, and community."

I don’t think I ever really reclaimed that camaraderie. I ran a theatre, then segued into co-founding various small businesses, some successful, some not. I consulted and contracted in between. Working in a small business means you are part of, and sometimes leading, a team, the necessary drivers behind a company, by which I primarily mean money, and by necessity, create a different culture.

I learnt to recognise that as a founder, I have a completely different raison d’être for committing and applying myself. Your staff are motivated in other ways, of course, it is important that they are enthused by the mission and vision of the business, but the reality is that many will regard their job as just that - a job. They have families, lives and other parts of their lives separate from your company. Quite rightly, Australia recently introduced ‘right to disconnect’ laws, so whilst you might be deep in work on a Sunday afternoon, that’s not appropriate for your team.

I was chatting to some academics the other day. Everyone was a Phd, highly creative. I was introduced to one of them, a woman with a long history of designing book covers. Once she realised I was not an academic and did not work at the university where we were congregating, she asked, ‘So what do you do?’ I explained how I had recently ‘semi-retired’ from a technology company I co-founded, and that my work history since the late 1990s was founding and running businesses. Her immediate reaction was, ‘Oh, I could never do that.’

Not everyone is suited to entrepreneurship. It’s often lonely and stressful, and frequently requires sacrifices of many types—financial, family, and even health. Maybe swapping my backstage family for leadership was a sliding door in my life. My ego ignored the close tribal connections and pushed my individualism to the fore, to the detriment of what actually made me happy.

My original draft of the above paragraph said ‘sliding-door mistake,’ but I realised that’s not about mistakes, just different paths. My path ended up with co-founding EdSmart, a tech company that works with close to 1,400 K-12 schools in Australia. If I hadn’t transitioned away from the arts into working on internet companies (albeit the first one was an arts internet business), I wouldn’t have progressed, sometimes in fits and starts, to the last eleven years with EdSmart.

So, unknowingly, I sacrificed camaraderie and clan membership for a lonelier journey that lasted some twenty-five years.

Over the last few years, I’ve fallen into new communities and started to reclaim a non-work, more personal identity. I volunteer for some large events and festivals as part of a tight-knit group of people who all genuinely enjoy and love being a part of something larger, making a contribution to a community.

Along the way, I’ve learnt a great deal about myself. I’ve connected with many people who have diverse lives and backgrounds. Many are neuro-diverse as well, with stories of isolation and challenge that have helped me become a better human through listening to them relate their experiences of being ‘different’ in a homogenised world.

There's something profound about how belonging to a group can transform our emotional landscape. When people volunteer, join communities, or embrace cultural identities like punk or emo, they often find something deeper than just social contact—they're discovering shared purpose, values, and understanding.

The magic happens on multiple levels. There's the immediate relief of not being physically alone, but more importantly, there's the psychological shift from feeling isolated to feeling seen and understood. When someone finds their punk community or connects with friends at a book club, they're experiencing what researchers call "social identity" - that sense of "these are my people."

What's particularly interesting is how these connections often provide what psychologists call "weak ties" - I’ve written about this previously. These relationships aren't as intense as close friendships but create a broader network of belonging. The person serving meals at a homeless shelter might exchange brief conversations with other volunteers. Still, those interactions create a web of familiarity and shared experience that can be remarkably powerful against loneliness.

Working as part of a team, such as backstage in a theatre, offers community and a framework for understanding one's place in the world. Theatre has language and rituals that help people make sense of their experiences, including their experiences of alienation or difference.

However, the "panacea" aspect is worth examining carefully. While these connections can be transformative, they work best when complementing rather than replacing deeper interpersonal skills and self-understanding. Sometimes people feel lonely even within their chosen communities if the underlying patterns that create isolation haven't been addressed.

I’m still on my journey into my new communities. While my new connections and friendships sometimes feel quite transformative, I’m conscious that loneliness can still exist within close-knit communities, and I must continue to address underlying patterns of isolation. I’m learning that the most sustainable relief from loneliness often comes when group belonging helps me develop confidence and skills that enrich all my relationships, not just the ones within that specific community.

Backstage may have been my first tribe, but now I know the real panacea is learning to carry that sense of belonging forward, wherever I go.