British Brazilian Australian playwright Marcelo Dos Santos on creating 'gay Fleabag'

Marcelo Dos Santos' West End playwriting debut was about to be announced when the pandemic shut down theaters worldwide. However, this setback actually led to a true breakthrough for the Latinx British-Brazilian-Australian playwright: his wildly successful work at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, "Feeling Afraid as if Something Terrible Is Going to Happen."

Dos Santos stated, "That period really made me realize, 'Okay, I'm going to use this particular time to become self-sufficient, self-directed, and create something,' and that was very empowering. For a while, I had wanted to create something more personal, about gay dating and what it’s like to be a single gay man. I hadn’t seen that represented in a way that I recognized before." He added, "I just wanted to create a play that I myself would want to watch, rather than second-guessing what the industry or audiences wanted."

"Feeling Afraid as if Something Terrible Is Going to Happen," starring Samuel Barnett (The History Boys), features a 36-year-old stand-up comedian navigating London's queer dating scene. Between dates arranged on "dating apps," the anxious and self-deprecating unnamed narrator begins dating a serious American man who doesn't want to have sex right away. Strangely, he seems never to laugh when dating a comedian.

The one-man show premiered in Edinburgh in 2022, transferred to London the following year, garnered rave reviews, and was hailed as a "gay male Fleabag." (It also helps its profile that it has the same producers as Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s original stage play Fleabag and Richard Gadd’s stage show Baby Reindeer.) As director Matthew Xia explained on ABC Radio’s The Stage Show: “It’s very explicit about sex. It shows all the flaws. It’s a confession. He holds nothing back. And that’s the same thing that happens with the lead in Fleabag.” Dos Santos sees the comparison as a compliment, even if he is wary of it.

Dos Santos explained, “There is a sadness in both, and the way that people sometimes use sex to cover up certain things. But it feels like any depiction of sex becomes Fleabag. I understand why that is, but it can be a bit limiting.” "Feeling Afraid as if Something Terrible Is Going to Happen" is currently playing in Melbourne, before touring to Sydney and Adelaide. Dos Santos never imagined he would be able to bring his work to Australia: "It's a bit surreal and really exciting."

In fact, the play about to be announced was "Sharks," at the Royal Court Theatre, where Dos Santos was once a member of its young writers group. He met Barnett while rehearsing for that play, and they quickly became good friends. When the pandemic hit, he asked the actor if he could write something for him. "It felt like our senses of humor and neuroses overlapped," he said. Dos Santos, who was living with his boyfriend during lockdown, then began mining the uglier aspects of his and his friends' dating experiences, creating "Feeling Afraid as if Something Terrible Is Going to Happen." The play delves into the impact of dating on people’s mental health, even for those who consider themselves "sexually adventurous."

The play's title comes from a National Health Service questionnaire about mental health. Consider dating moments, like always going back to a handsome doctor who, despite being a Scorpio, doesn't feel like a Scorpio, and only replies to texts with "What's up?" Or having fast-food sex with a 20-something jogger whose penis is "great," but who doesn't want to kiss. "I probably owe a lot of the success of [this play] to having the stability of a partner," Dos Santos said. "I needed that level of stability to write about that period of turmoil."

Dos Santos describes "Feeling Afraid as if Something Terrible Is Going to Happen" as a "dysfunctional love story" that utilizes stand-up comedy as a structure. It is both a useful excuse for the narrator to talk to the audience, and a way for the playwright to depict himself in a more detached way – whether it’s his past dating life, or his ambitions as an artist. "He's not a complete version of me ... If I was just reading my diary, that would be terrible," Dos Santos said. "This character is a touring stand-up comedian. He's not successful at all. He's just treading water and using sex and dating as a form of escapism."

Dos Santos stated, "I do try to create some humor in my plays, but I'm not a comedian. It felt very much in keeping with where I was in my career at certain points, when I was like, 'This doesn't feel like it's happening, it feels like it is happening, I don't know. Let's worry about something else.'" At the same time that "Feeling Afraid as if Something Terrible Is Going to Happen" was premiering in London, Dos Santos finally achieved his West End debut with "Backstairs Billy." The play he wrote is a "riotous comedy" starring Penelope Wilton (Downton Abbey) as the Queen Mother and Luke Evans (Nine Perfect Strangers) as her long-time steward. "It's very rare to get a new play straight into the West End, so that was a big deal," he said. "I'm interested in politics, but I don't always like to talk about it directly. I like to do it through character."

Although it may seem like he’s an overnight success to some, Dos Santos’ apparent breakthrough at the age of 40 is the culmination of more than a decade of writing for stage and screen, during which time he also ran an independent theater company, did transcription, taught, and edited other people's scripts. "I hope it's a good story about resilience and persistence, but it's also the story that I think is very common for writers: that it takes 10 years for people to really know you," he said, laughing. Dos Santos initially wanted to be an actor, performing in student productions and going to see musicals like Les Misérables after moving from Sydney to London with his mother.

At school, Dos Santos loved classic plays like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and the work of Tennessee Williams. "I was really obsessed with it, but I can't sing, so I never pursued it," he said. Although his mother was able to take him to the theater, she couldn't provide him with the social networks and connections he needed to succeed in the industry. "You feel like you're always knocking on the door, but maybe that made me hungry and persistent," he said. Arriving in the UK with an Australian accent (which has now disappeared) in the early '90s also made him feel like an outsider – an experience that has also fed into his writing. "Outsiders are probably where writers exist, they're just observing things," he said.

After university, Dos Santos worked as an arts journalist, but he missed the collaboration of theater. "I wanted to be involved, for better or worse," he said. Dos Santos first gained recognition a decade after graduating from university when his stage adaptation of Zizou Corder's children's fantasy novel, "Lionboy," premiered in Bristol in 2013, before touring the UK, Hong Kong, and South Korea. Both "Lionboy" and "Feeling Afraid as if Something Terrible Is Going to Happen" have led to television opportunities. But before shifting his focus to television, Dos Santos wants to have a "good body of work" in theater.

"I feel like I've done that now: I've written a big play, a big comedy that's well-produced. And with 'Feeling Afraid,' I've created a more artistic monologue," he said. Even with TV work on the horizon, Dos Santos' first love remains theater. "Theater's a funny thing. You always come back to it, even though it doesn't pay well and everyone is constantly criticizing you," he said. "But it really is addictive." "Feeling Afraid as if Something Terrible Is Going to Happen" is playing at the Arts Centre Melbourne until February 1 as part of the Midsumma Festival; at the Sydney Opera House from February 5 to 23 as part of the Mardi Gras Festival; and at the Adelaide Festival Centre from February 26 to March 2 as part of the Adelaide Festival.