'It’s Ladies Day at the Broome races and the divinely beautiful Mike is the toast of the track. But amongst the froth and festivity, a brutal act of violence reminds us that life is not just all swishy hemlines, debonair gents and fascinators galore.
'Alana Valentine is one of Australia’s best playwrights. Known for her incredibly successful verbatim works, she takes her interviews and research with individuals and communities, and mixes them with a healthy dose of drama. The result is powerful, thought-provoking theatre in which the voices of her protagonists ring absolutely true.
'Alana spent months interviewing the gay community of Broome to create a play that asks questions about tolerance, isolation, love, hope and the right to have your story told. Griffin is proud to present the world premiere of Ladies Day - a vivid, richly evocative play with a big heart, directed by Darren Yap.' (Production summary)
Presented by Griffin Theatre Company and performed 5 February - 26 March 2016 at SBW Stables Theatre, Kings Cross.
Director: Darren Yap.
Designer: James Browne.
Lighting Designer: Hugh Hamilton.
Sound Designer: Max Lambert.
Cast: Matthew Backer, Wade Briggs, and Lucia Mastrantone.
'The process of creating verbatim theatre often involves interviewing a community of storytellers, documenting these conversations and using the stories to inform the creative development of a play. These practices prompt the act of personal storytelling, and the material generated in a verbatim theatre process often includes the core features of belonging, such as identity narratives, people making sense of their experiences and discursively identifying their sense of self and how they belong in their community. I suggest that these features, in combination with the common verbatim conventions of direct address and diegetic theatricality, form a dramaturgy of belonging. I propose a dramaturgy of belonging and suggest that the sense of community belonging experienced by audiences is a direct result of the practice of community immersion and interviewing in a verbatim theatre process.' (Publication abstract)
'The process of creating verbatim theatre often involves interviewing a community of storytellers, documenting these conversations and using the stories to inform the creative development of a play. These practices prompt the act of personal storytelling, and the material generated in a verbatim theatre process often includes the core features of belonging, such as identity narratives, people making sense of their experiences and discursively identifying their sense of self and how they belong in their community. I suggest that these features, in combination with the common verbatim conventions of direct address and diegetic theatricality, form a dramaturgy of belonging. I propose a dramaturgy of belonging and suggest that the sense of community belonging experienced by audiences is a direct result of the practice of community immersion and interviewing in a verbatim theatre process.' (Publication abstract)
