Elle Naef
Audio By Carbonatix
Eight years ago, Brittany Ballard learned that her friend’s email was filled with letters written to an ex-boyfriend. Seventeen messages sat in her draft folder, waiting for her to finally press the “send” button, but she never did. The words detailing her innermost thoughts and feelings remained unread, unacknowledged, unsent.
Ballard decided those words deserved to be heard. She gathered forty people to sit in her living room as her friend and nine others read their unsent messages out loud. And thus, the Unsent show was born.
“It’s been a beautiful, cathartic release since then,” Ballard says.
A few times a year, around a hundred people gather at the Town Hall Collaborative in Denver to listen to strangers share what they couldn’t bear to reveal until now. The readings range from love poems to angry texts to journal entries. Or in Ballard’s case, annoyed responses to a woman who left her a bad Airbnb review once. This is a venue to get anything off your chest, with vulnerability as the only requirement.
Each show follows a specific theme, such as love, money, bodies or neighbors. The next show on October 25 is the death edition, while the latest event on September 26 revolved around sex.
More than 160 people attended the sold-out sex-themed September show. The two-hour event featured tarot card readings, a full bar and a taco truck. In between each presentation, Ballard read anonymous notes written by audience members airing their dirty laundry (one particularly memorable example: “Dear John, you were in between my thigh and labia. You were never actually inside me”). For those who didn’t want the whole room to hear, a phone booth allowed participants to leave voicemails reading their own unsent messages.
Elle Naef
Ten readers shared their stories in five-minute sets. Many took liberties with the format, performing slam poetry, comedy acts and even a guided meditation. But the real standouts took the assignment literally.
One presenter read a text he had drafted for his on-again-off-again girlfriend, explaining the lore of their relationship and making fun of himself for the melodramatic message. Another shared the story of how he lost his virginity in a four-way and read a letter he wrote to one of the participants, a friend he was in love with but never told. A planned eleventh speaker fled the venue in the middle of the event, deciding they were not ready.
The closing act said she had prepared a comedy set, but changed her mind after watching the other readers be so open. Instead, for the first time publicly, she spoke about her history of witnessing and experiencing sexual abuse as a child. The audience was left in tears by the end of her story, as were her fellow presenters when they joined her on stage to bow and receive roses.
“We need to come together,” Ballard says. “I want them to feel connected, I want them to feel part of a community, I want them to feel like they’re not alone.”
The sex show is particularly popular, she says. Beginning in January, Ballard says there will be smaller sex-themed Unsent shows every other month at the Sexploratorium, in addition to four regular shows at the Town Hall Collaborative in January, September, October and an undetermined month in the spring. Organizers are also planning a tour outside of Denver.
“There’s always an outlet,” Ballard says. “We want people to share. I feel like we need to give them space to do it.”
Participants submit requests to read ahead of time on the Unsent website, with readers selected based on each show’s theme. Anyone who isn’t chosen has the opportunity to share via the show’s podcast instead.
All of the proceeds from the events go toward Ballard’s nonprofit, Three Things, which she founded with her husband, Saxon Kincy. In addition to the Unsent shows, the healing arts nonprofit runs hip-hop workshops for youth and guided life reviews for older adults.
The Unsent: Death Edition show is Saturday, October 25, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Town Hall Collaborative, 525 Santa Fe Drive; tickets start at $28.52.
