By Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves, Christos Tsiolkas & Irine Vela

A PERTH FESTIVAL COMMISSION ANTHEM BY ANDREW BOVELL, PATRICIA CORNELIUS, MELISSA REEVES, CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS & IRINE VELA

Image: Pia Johnson

Founder Principal Partner Community Partner Perth Festival acknowledges the Noongar people who continue to practise their values, language, beliefs and knowledge on their kwobidak boodjar.

They remain the spiritual and cultural birdiyangara of this place and we honour and respect their caretakers and custodians and the vital role Noongar people play for our community and our Festival to flourish.

ANTHEM HEATH LEDGER THEATRE | WED 12 – SUN 16 FEB | 2HRS 20MINS INCLUDING INTERVAL

Hear from the artists in a Q&A session after the performance on Thu 13 Feb 50

Thu 13 Feb

Fri 14 Feb

This production contains coarse language and adult themes

There is a special relationship in the performing arts between creator, performer and audience. Without any one of those elements, the ceremony of performance ceases to exist. In choosing to be here, we thank you for your act of community as we celebrate the artists on the stage and the imaginations of those who have given them environments to inhabit, words to embody and songs to sing.

Perth Festival 2020 is a celebration of us – our place and our time. It wouldn’t be the same without you.

Iain Grandage, Perth Festival Artistic Director FANFARE

You were called to your seat tonight by ‘The Celestial March’ composed by 19-year-old WAAPA student Hanae Wild- ing. Visit perthfestival.com.au for more information on the Fanfare project. LOOKING FOR SOMETHING TO DO AFTER THE SHOW?

Venture down below here at the State Theatre Centre and slide into the late-night word of Perth Festival at Bar Underground. Open every night until late. Image: Pia Johnson CREDITS Writers Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves, Christos Tsiolkas & Irine Vela Director Susie Dee Designer Marg Horwell Lighting Designer Paul Jackson Composer, Music Director & Sound Designer Irine Vela Movement Consultant Natalie Cursio Assistant Director Sapidah Kian Aboriginal Cultural Dramaturg Bryan Andy Creative Producer (2016 – March 2019) Daniel Clarke Cast Maude Davey, Reef Ireland, Ruci Kaisila, Thuso Lekwape, Amanda Ma, Maria Mercedes, Tony Nikolakopoulos, Eryn Jean Norvill, Sahil Saluja, Osamah Sami, Eva Seymour, Carly Sheppard, Jenny M. Thomas, Dan Witton

Production Manager Tony Harding Stage Manager Meg Deyell Assistant Stage Manager Cassandra Fumi Sound Engineer Jim Atkins Lighting Design Associate Trent Barclay Producer, Performing Lines Annette Vieusseux

The Anthem company would like to thank David Anderson, Courtney Barnett, Katie Besgrove, Peta Brady, Melanie Burge, Mark Burlace, Pier Carthew, Linda Cropper, Jessica Darlow, Renee Dudfield, Wesley Enoch, Tahlee Fereday, Emma Fishwick, Emily Goad, Iain Grandage, Lyndall Grant, David Geoffrey Hall, Jonathan Holloway, Pia Johnson, Darcy Kent, Takeshi Kondo, Katerina Kotsonis, Edwina Lunn, Wayne Macauley, Kath Mainland, Tehyali Malone, Brett McCallum, David McDonald, Rohan Mirchandaney, Kevin Nugara, Deon Nuku, Nick O’Byrne, Gideon Obarzanek, Gerard Pigg, Playwriting Australia, Marion Potts, Anna Reece, Megan Roberts, Anne Samson, Damian Seddon, Tatia Sloley (TS Publicity), Deanna Smart, Francesca Smith, Melanie Smith, Thom Smyth, Demi Sorono, Claire Spencer, Natalie Stewart, Sarah Walker, Kate Williams and Terry Yeboah.

This project was initiated by Arts Centre Melbourne. This project has been assisted by the Australian Script commissioned by Arts Centre Melbourne Produced by Performing Lines in association with Government’s Major Festivals Initiative, managed by the and generously supported by Linda Herd, Mr Derek Arts Centre Melbourne. Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, Young AM and Mrs Caroline Young. in association with the Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals Inc., commissioned by Perth Festival, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Arts Centre Melbourne and Sydney Festival. Image: Pia Johnson A NOTE FROM THE CREATORS We first came together in 1998 to create a work to mark the ten-year anniversary of Melbourne Workers Theatre. The company was not expected to last beyond its first project at the Jolimont Train Maintenance Yards, so there was truly something to celebrate. Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? told the story of a group of characters whose lives were impacted upon by the rise of economic rationalism. It caught the zeitgeist and articulated the shared anxieties of the end of the 20th century. Twenty years later we have come together again to try and capture the mood of our times. As in the earlier work we sat around the table and thrashed out our ideas. We argued and yelled and laughed and when we got sick of the sound of our own voices we ventured out into the city. It was winter in Melbourne. It was bleak. The world seemed tough. We caught trains out to the end of the lines and into the city again and brought the stories of what we’d seen back into the room. Slowly, we began to build a picture of a city, a place, a country, a time of fractured identities, racial tensions and economic hardship. Our play is set largely in the public domain, particularly on trains where our conflicting identities around class and race and gender and sexuality clash and compete for ascendency or simply for space and the right to be seen. What became apparent is that we are not one nation brought together by a single anthem. Our country is not “fair” in any meaning of the word as our Anthem proclaims. We are riven by difference and disagreement, and the arguments around our national identity are acrimonious and dangerous. Our political leadership has failed to provide a vision that could unify us and instead, seems only to entrench our differences. The nation’s a powder keg waiting to blow. “The Fire Next Time”, says a character in the play quoting James Baldwin. As in the earlier work, class remains our shared and urgent theme. In Uncensored Andrew creates a chorus of commuters caught on the endless cycle of having to make ends meet. In 7-11, A Chemist Warehouse… A Love Story, Melissa tells the story of two low paid workers who set out on a Bonnie and Clyde like mission to take on capitalism. In Terror, Patricia tells the story of three women who face increasing economic uncertainty. Here, it is not only class that places these women in jeopardy but their gender. In Brothers and Sisters, Christos tells the story of a successful man returning to Australia from Europe, hoping to transform the lives of his three siblings who never escaped their tough upbringing. As in the earlier play, the individual stories are interwoven and held together by Irine’s score, Resistance. She also riffs on some of Christos’s characters, including an elderly Greek woman on the train, reminding us that political struggle has a history and that those histories are a part of our ongoing national narrative. In Who’s Afraid ... we softened the blow of its tough stories by finding moments of connection and intimacy between strangers, which reminded us of our shared humanity. Anthem is a tougher work. There are no moments of redemption or reassurance. It is unrelenting in the conclusions it draws. But it is a true account of what we found the state of things of things to be. We’d like to thank Daniel Clarke for bringing us back together. We all said it probably couldn’t be done. He didn’t listen and just made sure that it did. And we’d like to thank Bryan Andy who has joined us as a sixth voice as dramaturg and consultant. He has provided a wise and encouraging presence throughout the process. Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves, Christos Tsiolkas & Irine Vela Image: Pia Johnson Q&A WITH ANDREW BOVELL Why did you and the team decide to revisit the themes of Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? We were invited by Daniel Clarke and Arts Centre Melbourne to create a new work to mark the 20th anniversary of the original play. The brief, as it was then, was to test the political temperature of the nation. How did you all manage to come together again to create Anthem? We have all remained friends and collaborators over this 20 years working together in a number of different ways and sharing our concerns for theatre and the country. As in the original work we came together in a series of workshops in Melbourne. We had to know that we still had something vital and relevant to say as a group. We talked and argued and wrestled with the ideas we wanted the work to contain. There were a lot of conversations about race and class and identity. How do we tell these stories with respect and honesty? It took a long time for each of us to settle on the story we wanted to tell. We travelled a lot on public transport and started to collect stories of people we had seen and incidents that we witnessed and out of this the stories of the play emerged. What has changed in the last 20 years – for you, in theatre, in society? When we wrote Who’s Afraid … the consequences of Neo Liberalism and economic rationalism were only beginning to be felt and understood. Twenty years later we understand how this has impacted and shaped society. The social fabric of our society is weaker than it was 20 years ago. Australia seems like a more divided nation and the things that divide us seem sharper. The way class identifies us and unifies us has become less clear. Identity politics are a stronger influence than class now. We have retreated into our separate tribal identities. It is difficult to talk about race and identity at the moment unless your experience is directly from that particular identity. Who tells what stories is contested at the moment. We are a country that is at odds with its identity and its colonial past. Social media has become a dominant and social force. Both Who’s Afraid and Anthem are very much set in Melbourne, what parallels or messages does this new work have for Perth in particular? The play is set in Melbourne but the stories that it tells could take place in any city and I think Perth audiences will be able to relate to the characters and ideas of the play. It is all about who we are as a people, as a country. It identifies the key points of contested identity and the conflicts that divide us. Young people, the future generations will remake the country, remake the world in the future. They will make the political and social decisions that will redefine the county. This play is a snap shot of where we are now. We need to understand that in order to move forward. BIOGRAPHIES

SUSIE DEE MELISSA REEVES Director Writer Susie Dee has worked Melissa Reeves is a Melbourne extensively in the theatre playwright whose most recent as a performer, devisor and play is an adaptation of An director in Australia and Enemy Of The People for overseas. She has been the Belvoir St. Other plays Artistic Director of Melbourne include Caravan (which Workers Theatre, Union premiered at the 2017 House Theatre and Institute Melbourne Festival), Happy of Complex Entertainment, whose projects Ending, Furious Mattress, The Spook (awarded have won various awards and received many the 2005 Louis Esson Prize for Drama in the accolades for their ground-breaking site-specific Victorian Premiers Awards and two AWGIES for work. She recently directed Patricia Cornelius’ best new play), Sweetown (1993 Jill Blewitt Memorial plays, SHIT and Love, both touring to the 2019 Playwrights Award), In Cahoots, and Road Movie. Venice Biennale Theatre Festival. CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS ANDREW BOVELL Writer Writer Christos Tsiolkas is the author Andrew Bovell is the writer of of six novels: Loaded, The the plays Things I Know to be Jesus Man, Dead Europe, True and When the Rain Stops The Slap, Barracuda and Falling. His adaptation of The most recently Damascus. Secret River was seen at the His other writing work Edinburgh Festival and the includes the short story National Theatre in London collection Merciless Gods, in 2019. Other plays include the dialogue Jump Cuts: An Autobiography and Holy Day, Speaking in Tongues and After Dinner. a monograph on The Devil’s Playground for the He is the writer of the films Lantana, Head Australian Screen Classics series. Tsiolkas is also a On, Blessed, A Most Wanted Man and Edge of playwright, essayist and film critic, and many of his Darkness among others. novels and stories have been adapted for the stage and screen. PATRICIA CORNELIUS Writer IRINE VELA Writer & Composer Patricia Cornelius is a playwright, screenwriter Irine Vela is a composer, and novelist who has written librettist, creative producer over 25 plays, including The and director whose work House of Bernadette, adapted emphasises the validity, from Lorca, Big Heart, Shit, necessity and excitement that Savages, Do Not Go Gentle, diverse voices and forms bring Boy Overboard and Slut. Her to the Australian arts. She prizes for stage work include the 2019 Windham- has collaborated with many Campbell Prize for Drama, the 2011 Victorian and of Australia’s finest performers, writers, directors NSW Premiers’ Literary Awards and 11 AWGIES. She and theatre companies. Her film and TV credits co-wrote the feature film Blessed, based on the include Head On, Remembering Country and The play Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? Slap. She performs with the Sevdah Sephardic ensemble Saray Iluminado and is founding member of the ARIA award-winning haBiBis. this energy is live

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