Mary Coustas, who played the popular character Effie in Acropolis Now and Wogs Out of Work, has opened up to The Daily Telegraph ahead of extra performances of her latest stage show, This Is Personal.
This Is Personal is Coustas’ first show where she plays herself. She described the show as her “step[ping] away from the puppet and expos[ing] the puppeteer,” but said she was “terrified by the idea of not having those other things to hide behind.”
“Effie has been my most public character and I have been happily putting Effie forward for all of these years because she has bought me a lot of privileges – I get to say whatever I want, unfiltered, I get to be really theatrical…” Coustas told The Daily Telegraph.
The “privilege” of saying “whatever [she] wants” is something Coustas worries about today, namely, she said she worries about the “shrinking of rights and people becoming so afraid to say what they really think.”
“I think there is fear involved in being cancelled and I don’t think fear brings the best out in anyone,” she said.
“We need to be able to make mistakes as human beings, we need to be able to evolve as human beings and understand that it is not okay to do certain things that evoke hate or that make people feel diminished or powerless but at the same time, we still need to have playfulness around things and I think humour is the greatest carbonator of all things heavy.”
You can find more information on Mary’s upcoming tour, starting on May 4 in Adelaide, here: https://maryandeffie.com/tour/
Source: The Daily Telegraph
