EMAIL: Tom Frankland (Edinburgh)

The following email was sent to Nassim Soleimanpour by actor Tom Frankland after he performed White Rabbit, Red Rabbit at the Edinburgh Fringe on August 16.

Dear Nassim,

I hope that you have been receiving many, many emails over the past few weeks as your play is performed in Scotland and Canada.

I was your actor today (Tues 16th Aug) at the Edinburgh venue. My name is Tom Frankland and I am 32. I am 5'10" and have thick shoulder length fair hair and a beard, I am pretty skinny. I wore jeans and white sneakers and a brown shirt with blue stars on it. I have a very plain English accent. My ostrich impression was fantastic, but was definitely overshadowed by that of the rabbit. I drank the poisoned glass, but nobody tried to stop me. The final reader was slow to volunteer, but then did a beautiful job. She was about 19, short hair and a Northern English accent. Her name is Louisa.

I thought the play was brilliant. It was a really strange experience to be both an observer and the performer at the same time, but your voice is so strong in the piece, it felt very easy to let you lead the way. I find it hard to imagine the circumstances under which you are trying to make theatre when we have so much freedom to say what we think here (I am on my way out this evening to watch another artist perform a piece in direct opposition to the way our government is acting at the moment and I do so without fear of Bears or other Rabbits). I hope that work like yours continues to get made and to communicate what is happening to the world outside and that your situation becomes easier and safer. If I can ever help, let me know...

I am in Edinburgh performing in a play called 'Free Time Radical' about two men who isolate themselves in a flat and pretend that they are the victims of a huge natural disaster in order to escape problems in their real lives. They play games and skateboard and talk about surfing and hide from reality. For the audience, the fact that the disaster is pretend is only revealed during the course of the show. We were inspired to make the piece as a response to the many atrocities and disasters occurring across the world that we feel powerless and overwhelmed to do anything about. About our guilt for placing our own crisis points above those of others. We need to figure out ways of working together to help each other.

Anyway, thank you for welcoming me onto the stage and congratulations on the piece, you received another great review today in a festival magazine!

Many regards,

Tom