Cirrus@Austlit

'A somewhat autobiographical tale of Hmong parents, death and ghosts.   

'As Australia careened from deadly bushfires to the beginning of COVID-19, and as Hmong-Australian writer Michele Lee was working on Asian ghost TV shows, she rang her parents for 30 minutes each day.    

'Lee wanted to figure out how to talk to them about death: their death, the deaths they’ve endured here and in Laos, the Hmong perspective on death. In asking herself, ‘How do I let my parents die on their terms?’ Lee sought to reconcile vast emotional, cultural and geographical distances.    

'How Do I Let You Die? assembles an extraordinary team of Asian-Australian artists to weave together phone calls, Asian ghost tropes, Hmong horror stories, and the simple potency of an adult child coming to term with a parent’s eventual death.   

'As moments of acute and layered crisis bring mortality achingly close, this charming and tender work of theatre offers moments of humour and nuance, and moments of contradiction, to wonder on our approaches to this life and the next.' (Production summary) 

'An unflinching theatrical descent into a dark underworld of heroes, gods and monsters.

'The myth of the hero towers over western history, but what festers within that image of man?

'The twelve labours of Hercules are legendary, and reveal a man trying to prove himself more than mortal. His impossible projects tear the natural world apart and plunder the animal kingdom for all it’s worth, all the while erecting an ideal of masculinity that continues to this day. Meanwhile, the lesser-known story of his violent murder of his wife and children is all but forgotten.

'Hercules is a powerful and challenging new work from the acclaimed Daniel Schlusser Ensemble that drops a mineshaft deep into the bedrock of the Greek myths, hauling into the sun a foundational story of violence, infanticide, divinity and madness.

'Performed by a trio of fearless female performers, drawing on Euripides, pop culture and contemporary experience, this unflinching descent into the underworld of hero-worship is an urgent attempt to topple a mythic figure, by women who defy the demands of tragedy.' (Production summary)