Outer Urban Projects and La Mama
14 November 2019
La Mama Courthouse
to 24 November
lamama.com.au
outerurbanprojects.org
 |
| "The Audition" Peter Paltos, Sahra Davioudi. Photo by Darren Gill |
Last night, the door prize at La Mama was a copy of No friend but the mountains by Behrouz Boochani. Where I was standing, there were murmurs of "the guy on Manus from Iran" and everyone wanted it. After all, we were at the opening night of The Audition, a new multi-writer work by Outer Urban Projects about the experiences of asylum seekers and immigrants in Australia.
This book won the 2019 Victorian Prize for Literature. This is Australia's richest literary prize; it's one writers aspire to win. Boochani is a Kurdish refugee from Iran. He has wasn't at the ceremony when he won because he was still incarcerated on Manus Island. The book was written by text messages; the same way he written for The Guardian in recent years. (Links are to Guardian stories.)
Directed by Irine Vela, The Audition project has been developed by working with and sharing stories with artists who are also asylum seekers. With contributions from writers Patricia Cornelius, Tes Lyssiotis, Sahra Davioudi, Christos Tsiolkas, Melissa Reeves, Milad Norouzi and Wahibe Moussa, it's a not-miss before it even gets seen.
There are theatre in-jokes as it compares the power imbalance of the theatre audition process to how immigrants have to audition to be "good Aussies", and personal confessions and stories that affirm that so much of Australia's attitude and government response to refugees and asylum seekers is racist and ignorant and the cause of so so much suffering.
While each has it's own strength and emotional drive, the theme feels forced at times and the strength and power of the writing varies, as do the performances; the writers Davioudi and Norouzi also perform and are joined by Mary Sitarenos, Peter Paltos and Vahideh Eisaei.
None of which takes away from why this project is on our stage. But I left wondering how a work like this reaches anyone who doesn't already believe everything it's saying.
Then this happened last night.
Behrouz Boochani is free because of a writers festival in New Zealand. A writers festival.
So, let's keep telling, writing, reading and seeing stories, even if no attitudes change, because telling stories is how the world will get better. Telling stories is how creative minds find solutions to horror and work towards humanity. Telling stories – even if no one except the inner-city leftie woke read the book – is how Behrouz Boochani is finally FINALLY out of the hell that Australians put him in.
From this story.
