Look at any major theatre company or performance venue in Melbourne, and you’ll find graduates from Monash and their Centre for Theatre and Performance there working at every level and with great professionalism. Our staff, students and alumni need support from our community now.

Our students and graduates have been your assistants and interns, done unpaid work at a level above and beyond those being paid, just for the experience to be in a room with you. They have been trained to be kind, generous and inquisitive. Our city will be lesser without them.

They are also given the tools to think boldly, imaginatively, dream big, conceive of a future they can and should help shape, not just in the arts but in the wider community. The alumni have produced are staggering. It’s inconceivable that there now won’t be more in the future.

I had hope for the future of Melbourne theatre after this pandemic, because I knew we would be producing innovative, inspired young theatre makers for years to come. Now we’re not. Now I don’t know what the future of Melbourne theatre is without them.

I will never forgot what @FleurKilpatrick said to me when I started working at CTP - “We teach our students to go out into the world with kindness.” That is an attribute so lacking in the theatre community in Melbourne. We are all so proud that our students see it as a priority.