You’re browsing the library shelves downtown when you come across a white envelope wedged between a two yellow-paged classics. There’s an owl stamped in black ink the top left corner and “open me” in old-fashioned typeface across the front.
What do you do?
If you open it, you’ll find a letter from Scott Florence, Cora Eckert or Haritha Popuri.
For the past year, the three theatre artists have been working on The Letter Project: writing unaddressed letters and leaving them downtown for people to find, and hopefully, answer back.
Now they’re getting ready to share their findings at a free event this Thursday, April 26, at 7 p.m. at their official partner, the Greater Sudbury Public Library’s, MacKenzie Street location.
The Letter Project started when Florence, an actor, had some spare time and began thinking about a way to engage Sudburians in non-traditional theatre.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the intimacies we have with strangers,” explained Florence. “It was based on this idea of ‘What would happen if people found letters and responded?’ ”
He describes it as “part The Human Library, part The Confessions Project, and part A.R. Gurney's Love Letters.”
He recruited Eckert and Popuri without much difficulty; they were intrigued from the get-go.
“Everything I get in the mail is bills, or letters to people who used to live there, and I’m not allowed to open those!” said Eckert. “This project was very intimate.”
They set about to write a few letters, running the first few by each other for feedback. They might be about a rainy day, about having to send thank you letters after a wedding or about something more serious like addiction or depression. Each is simply whatever one of the three authors had on their mind that day.
They stuffed them in hand-stamped envelopes with a second enveloped stamped and ready to return. Part of the magic was the handwritten nature of each note.
“It’s not just another font that’s been created in Word,” said Eckert. “I noticed my writing in caps looks like my brothers’ and my dad’s, I never would’ve known that otherwise.”
They scattered the letters downtown starting with the 2017 Sudbury Pride celebrations in July, and then expanded distribution to local businesses like One Sky and Old Rock, and of course, the library.
“Around 50 letters were sent, and about eight were answered, for a 15-per-cent return rate, which is pretty good for a direct mail marketing campaign,” laughed Florence.
It took up to five months for some of the letters to come back, and Florence suspects there are a few letters sitting with people who have every intention of replying but just haven’t yet. Such is the nature of snail mail.
They said that of the responses that did come in, some were disbelieving, but almost all of them were kind.
“People responded very compassionately,” said Eckert. “People were choosing to do something kind, and it’s not something they had to do.”
The project was funded by the Ontario Arts Council, and with the success of the first run, they’re looking at what’s next. Considering the secret’s out, the next round will have significantly more promotion and more structure.
“My co-conspirators would have rather I promoted it, but I wondered what would happen if people didn’t know about it,” said Florence. “We feel this has been a great success!”
For more details, and to hear about how you can get involved in future rounds, hit up the Greater Sudbury Public Library’s Main Branch at 74 MacKenzie Street at 7 p.m. this Thursday, April 26.
Ella Jane Myers is a freelance writer in Greater Sudbury.
