About the Book
'While the theatre stands up for the despised, Australian culture and decency are not yet dead.' — Thomas Keneally
The first of its kind, this timely anthology brings together six contemporary Australian plays that offer a range of narratives and perspectives on asylum seekers. A vexed issue within the Australian community—particularly among politicians, who often use asylum seekers to further their own ends—this collection contributes to Australia's ongoing discourse on unauthorised asylum seekers, immigration detention, border control and the right to belong.
This eclectic collection includes CMI (A Certain Maritime Incident) by version 1.0, a smart, ironic verbatim work that deals with the Children Overboard Affair and the SIEV X disaster; The Rainbow Dark by Victoria Carless, a surreal domestic satire about immigration detention; The Pacific Solution by Ben Eltham, which takes armchair cricket commentary as a point of departure for a farce about the Howard government's excision of migration territory; Halal-el-Mashakel by Linda Jaivin, which looks at the friendship between two detained asylum seekers; Journey of Asylum – Waiting devised by Catherine Simmonds, a series of vignettes based upon the personal experiences of asylum seekers and refugees living in Melbourne; and Nothing But Nothing by Towfiq Al-Qady, an autobiographical play about childhood and war.
With a main Introduction as well as separate introductions to each play by editor and drama lecturer Dr Emma Cox, Staging Asylum recognises the crucial role that theatre has played—and continues to play—in one of Australia's most hotly debated and urgent contemporary issues.
About the Author :
EMMA COX is a theatre and performance scholar based at Royal Holloway, University of London. Originally from New Zealand, she received her PhD from the Australian National University (ANU). Cox's research focuses on contemporary refugee-responsive theatre, film and activism, as well as cross-cultural commemorative performances involving Indigenous and migrant communities, and postcolonial museum ceremonies. Cox is the author of the books Performing Noncitizenship: Asylum Seekers in Australian Theatre, Film and Activism (Anthem 2015) and Theatre & Migration (Palgrave 2014). She is the editor of the play collection Staging Asylum: Contemporary Australian Plays about Refugees (Currency Press 2013), an anthology of six Australian plays about and by refugees and the first collection to recognise the role theatre has played in one of Australia's most hotly debated and urgent issues. Cox is currently developing an interdisciplinary project on the ceremonial and theatre histories associated with human remains, repatriation and cultural memory.
VERSION 1.0 is a Sydney-based group of artists who make devised performances that are both political and intensely personal, based on strong research, and that engage with significant political and social issues using innovative theatrical strategies. version 1.0 is acclaimed in Australia for its innovative, accessible and entertaining blend of documentary theatre, contemporary performance, and media spectacle. Previous performance works include The Disappearances Project, The Table of Knowledge, the Green Room Award-winning The Bougainville Photoplay Project, A Distressing Scenario, seven kilometres north-east, the Helpmann Award-winning THIS KIND OF RUCKUS, the Drover's Award-winning Deeply Offensive and Utterly Untrue, The Wages of Spin, CMI (A Certain Maritime Incident), From a Distance and The Second Last Supper. Founded in 1998, version 1.0 was granted Key Organisation status by the Theatre Board of the Australia Council in 2009. Its team is made up of Dr David Williams as CEO, Jocelyn Payne as general manager, Sandy Collins as producer, Cara Anderson as development manager, Emma Bedford as production manager, Rebecca Saffir as media and marketing officer, and Sean Bacon, Irving Gregory, Jane Phegan, Paul Prestipino, Dr Yana Taylor, Kym Vercoe as the artists.
Victoria Carless has performance writing credits with Backbone Youth Arts, Queensland Theatre Company, Just Us Theatre Ensemble, Mudlark Theatre, The Young Company, Brisbane Writer's Festival, ABC Radio National, New Holland Theatre, Creative Regions, State Library of Queensland, White Rabbit Theatre Ensemble, Short and Sweet, Melbourne, Gold Coast Art Centre and Full Throttle. In 2006, Victoria received Queensland Theatre Company's George Landen Dann Award for The Rainbow Dark, published in Staging Asylum in 2013 by Currency Press. Victoria holds a PhD in theatre writing and currently works with the Social Inclusion team at State Library of Queensland, delivering projects in partnership with public libraries throughout Queensland. Ben Eltham is a writer, journalist, researcher and creative producer from Melbourne, Australia. He recently completed his PhD in cultural policy at the University of Western Sydney's Institute for Culture and Society. Throughout his 20s and 30s, Ben worked as a freelance arts journalist and critic, as well as a producer and festival director at a series of experimental and fringe arts festivals in Newcastle, Brisbane and Melbourne. He is currently a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development and Research Fellow at Deakin University's Centre for Memory, Imagination and Invention. Linda Jaivin is a novelist, journalist, translator and author of non-fiction who has recently begun writing for the theatre. Seeking Djira, her first full-length play, was read at Playbox's Theatre in the Raw in 2002 and produced in Melbourne by Essential Theatre at Forty-Five Downstairs in 2003. Halal el Mashakel, her first short play, was produced by Pesto Manifesto and performed in 2003-4 in Sydney, Canberra, Wollongong, Newcastle and the Adelaide Fringe. Her short story Lucky to Have Them was performed as a monologue at the Short and Sweet Festival in Sydney in 2005. Her most recent publication is the novel The Infernal Optimist (2006). Her previous four novels - the international bestseller Eat Me, Rock 'n Roll Babes from Outer Space, Miles Walker You're Dead and Dead Sexy - have all been published overseas as well as in Australia. Her non-fiction titles include Confessions of an S & M Virgin and The Monkey and the Dragon. She has completed an unproduced libretto about the journey of an asylum seeker to Australia, A Better Life, for which she won a Varuna/Playworks fellowship. Catherine Simmonds is the founder of Brunswick Women's Theatre, guiding its growth as artistic director and writer of several major projects and productions since 1991. In 2001 Catherine received a two year professional development Fellowship from the Australia Council for the Arts to study in Brazil and Italy.
