PRIDE REFLECTS: The Perfect Image
20.02.2024 at LOT23, Auckland
Pride Reflects is a collaboration between Rat World and Auckland Pride to document and celebrate the creative output of our local queer arts sector. Every week of Auckland Pride Month, two creatives will respond to their experiences of witnessing shows and events across the Auckland Pride Festival. We’ve given the creatives agency to respond in any way they like, which might range from traditional reviews to photoessays to anything in between.
Jake Tabata responds to Sam Brook’s latest play The Perfect Image, a romcom set at a stock photo image company.
Mixed Race Under the Microscope
It’s a Tuesday afternoon and someone makes a comment that prompts you to scream, “FUCK BEING MIXED RACE!” You’re agitated but you have an evening planned. So you pull yourself up by the bootstraps and head out. You arrive at LOT23 to a buzzing crowd and settle in to watch Sam Brooks’ newest play, The Perfect Image.
The story centres on Brit, a young mixed race model at a stock image company whose seemingly happy life with Des, is upended due to the arrival of Ryan, the charming new hire… who just so happens to be white.
Early on, you start to see what Brooks is doing. He’s giving you a sizzling love triangle that acts as a reflection of the feelings that the main character has about being mixed race. It’s hilarious, juicy and riveting. Even better, it’s anchored by stellar performances and a lovely minimalistic stage and lighting design. So, you think you know where it’s going. You’re mixed race, of course you would.
Suddenly you’re caught off guard.
Brooks isn’t rehashing the same old tropes. Brooks is here to shake everything to the ground.
See, the common narrative of being mixed race you’re familiar with is of feeling lost, ambiguous and angry at a world that doesn’t get you. Brooks goes beyond this. He turns the spotlight on the person making the complaints. He’s putting the mixed race man under the microscope. He’s putting you under the microscope.
Through Brit, Brooks explores all the self-indulgent, hypocritical and ugly behaviour capable of mixed race people. There’s the victimhood- always wanting to be seen as the victim of a world made up of binaries and over-simplification. There’s the desire to be misunderstood- always secretly hoping that someone will not see you truly, reaffirming your belief that the world sucks. Then, of course, there's a need to feel special- claiming that your experience is harder because it’s apparently more complicated. If you can think of a flawed trait of a mixed race person, then Brit will surely possess it.
This is such a refreshing take. It’s confronting, it’s brutal but it’s also beautiful. There is a necessity to this searing examination of Brit. It reveals the need to truly look at all your flaws, recognise your part in your suffering, in order to move forward. Brooks doesn’t shy away from the messiness. Brooks embraces it all.
The play finishes. You clap and cheer and you leave the theatre. You get in the Uber and start to think… Am I the problem? Am I feeding into an indulgent victim narrative? Was I right to be screaming about being mixed race in the afternoon?
It’s not till you get home, do you realise what’s really happened. That you’ve understood the power of The Perfect Image. The power of Brooks’ intricate writing.
It’s that it broke you.
It broke you in the best possible way.
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Click here to learn more about the show and other events on during the months of Pride!