The Power of Theatre

In October 2005 I took a flight from Sydney to Melbourne to see a show presented at the Melbourne International Arts Festival. From the moment I had laid my hands on the glossy programme, this one show was a stand-out and the single reason that in a matter of an hour I booked a plane, a hotel room and a ticket for one.

And I wasn’t alone. When many lovers of theatre had heard that Theatre de Soleil’s epic Le Dernier Caravanserail (Odyssees) was to have a run at the Royal Exhibition Building in the beautiful grounds of the Carlton Gardens, phone calls and emails darted through the wired cities with plans afoot to head to Melbourne.

After the presentation of The Flood Drummers at the Sydney Festival in 2001, many were head over heels in love with the stunningly unique work of Ariane Mnouchkine’s theatre troupe.

While audiences in Sydney were being wowed by The Flood Drummers, Artistic Director Mnouchkine was out each day, heading to Villawood Detention Centre to interview refugees caught within the web of international political opportunism.

Mnouchkine’s new found passion for the rights of refugees had been first sparked after meeting other refugees, usually from the Middle East, who had been interned at the French Red Cross camp in the small village of Sangatte in France.

In an interview with the New York Village Voice, she said that people she met “came from the Middle East and the Far East, and the French Red Cross set up a centre so people wouldn't have to sleep on the street. It was very controversial because the British said we were helping the refugees get to England, which resulted in the French police trying not to let the people out of France. I asked permission to go and see this place, with someone of Iranian background, who became one of our actors. I had to explain that I wasn't a journalist who could help them in the way they'd come to expect from journalists, that I was mainly interested in hearing about their lives. They said, 'Yes, but what can you do about our lives?' And I said, 'I can't really do anything but tell the stories.'"

And so, the seed for Le Dernier Caravanserail (Odyssees) was born.

Attending the seven hour show in Melbourne was a physically and emotionally exhausting experience like no other. Beginning with some projected written correspondence between Mnouchkine and a young female refugee the stories of loss, hope and dislocation start.

As Alison Croggon of Theatre Notes explained in her beautiful letter to the director, it was the stories of "voyagers which you and your company collected and shaped into this work of art. They are the stories of human beings in exile - Kurds, Afghanis, Russians, Chechnyans, Bosnians, Africans... there are so many wars, after all, and so many famines of different kinds. And you know that as well as being full of grief and love and generosity, human beings can be murderous, cruel, weak, ignorant and stupid. That they might be cruel or stupid doesn't mean that they might not be also victims of forces beyond their control. We still hold an idea of victimhood as entitlement, which is linked to the "deserving poor", the dichotomies of good and evil. But a person might be wicked, and still suffer.”

Last night, I met young man at a political forum. He was an Iraqi refugee. His father was Iranian and his mother was Iraqi. With tensions escalating between the two countries, his mother was accused of spying for the Iranian government merely because she was a Shiite. Suddenly this family were in danger.

He told me his story in a dim corner of a rowdy bar and explained the steps they took to get out of harm’s way. Suddenly images of Mnouchkine’s show came surging back.

The images of leaky boats, of people stranded on board and images of detention centres in the middle of no where.

He told me of the torture techniques employed by the Australian authorities and the mind games played by immigration officials. And again, scene by scene, the true stories that had informed Mnouchkine to create her epic theatrical masterpiece jolted me out my chair.

And again I got uncomfortable, as though I just couldn’t hear it all again. But scarily I realised that I had put my feelings about Tampa, children overboard and Woomera in the back of mind. Last night they came streaming back. Last night I remembered why I could never ever vote for the Liberal Party today.