Nicholas Brown & Sam McCool On Challenging The Whitewashed Entertainment World

Australian actor, writer, and singer Nicholas Brown says his formative years growing up in Sydney's western suburb of Greystanes were blissful - if a little confused. "My parents were both half-Indian and quite fair and they pretty much told my sister and I, who are very brown, that we were all white and Aussie, so it didn't make any sense," he laughs. "We grew up in this strange atmosphere of looking like one thing but feeling something else."

It wasn't really until he graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) that Brown realised his skin colour, as one of his final year teachers warned, could prove a barrier to landing acting gigs. "I played leading roles right through high school and NIDA and then suddenly I was out of acting school and playing taxi drivers and refugees," he says. "I showed up for one commercial and the casting agent got angry at me because, with a name like Nic Brown, they presumed I was white. It was upsetting, to be honest, very awkward."

"The casting agent got angry at me because, with a name like Nic Brown, they presumed I was white. It was upsetting, to be honest, very awkward."

Brown lost patience with this cavalcade of casual racism, leading him to pen a movie script about his frustrations. That got filed in a drawer for a few years while he took a time out in India, appearing in several Bollywood movies including one of the most internationally successful Indian movies of recent years, Kites. However, even here whiteness was considered a valuable asset in the entertainment sector. Many of the stars he met in India used skin-whitening lotions, which equally perplexed him.

Now he's back in Sydney, this long-gestating project has found form on stage as the Griffin Independent show Lighten Up, directed by Shane Anthony and co-starring stand-up comedian Sam McCool.

"The play's about being stuck in between black and white and the grey areas of life, so it's quite poignant, I suppose, in hindsight that I grew up in a place called Greystanes," Brown chuckles.

Brown stars as John Green, a man not entirely unlike himself who desperately wants a role on his favourite soap Bondi Parade, but his look doesn't quite fit the whiter than white, blonde hair and blue eyed surfie profile. John's skin-bleaching mother wants him to marry white, but he duly falls for an Aboriginal girl, causing a familial ruckus.   

Co-written with McCool, Brown says his writing partner came to the script with a different energy. "He just brought this clever, hilarious humour that's just lifted it. Before it was quirky, but it wasn't laugh-out-loud funny. Now, with Sam's involvement, it's just hysterical.

"People there would say 'you're lucky you're white'. Which is ridiculous. I'm not white at all, but in their eyes, I was."

"Hopefully people are laughing to the point where they're going to piss their pants but then they think, 'oh my goodness, perhaps I shouldn't have laughed at that? Is that racist?' It's this awkward area that hasn't been explored much in comedy here."

While Brown has been truly heartened to see big progress in Indigenous representation and hopes that continues to be the case, he says other minorities are still lagging far behind. "Multicultural Australia isn't really represented on our screen and stages, so Lighten Up is a way to celebrate that in all its messy greyness."

It turns out, some truths are universal, particularly when it comes to parental interference. "When we did the initial STC development, I had a Greek girl come up to me and she said, 'oh my gosh, my family are exactly like that,' and I was so excited to hear that," Brown says.

A master of many accents in his stand-up routines, McCool immediately adopts a stereotypical Indian intonation when asked to sum up his contribution to Lighten Up. "I brought everything basically," he laughs. "Nic didn't even have paper or ink when I first met him. He was just a poor impoverished boy on the streets of Calcutta."

Reverting to his real accent, McCool says he hopes the play pushes audiences to think about cultural representations. "It's not a wishy-washy piece. It's very much let's go straight to the heart of it and get people talking about these issues."

McCool lived in Bali for a few years and was amazed to encounter similar issues there. "The lighter you are, the more attractive you are and the more opportunities you get," he says. "People there would say 'you're lucky you're white'. Which is ridiculous. I'm not white at all, but in their eyes, I was."

Adopting multiple roles in Lighten Up, including a Bollywood director, a French photographer and a Maori father, McCool's knack for accents will get a workout. "To counter-balance that a little I'm also playing an Aussie-Indian doctor with an Aussie accent," he says, broadening to ocker. "Gotta watch a bit of Mick Dundee or something."

Griffin Theatre Company presents Lighten Up, 30 Nov - 17 Dec.