Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to the theatre we go – although this time, the path there is a little less worn.
Theatre has traditionally concentrated itself in specific districts – think Broadway in New York, the West End in London, the Arts Centre precinct in Melbourne’s Southbank, the Opera House and Walsh Bay areas of Sydney.
But there is a strong argument for the decentralisation of theatre – particularly in Sydney. The west is where the people are and so it makes sense that the arts should follow. Parramatta is the geographical centre of Sydney and Campbelltown, 51km from Sydney’s CBD, is experiencing rapid growth. Yet, as my colleague Steve Dow reported this week, western Sydney might be home to one in 10 Australians but attracts only 1% of national arts funding and 5.5% of New South Wales state cultural arts, heritage and events funding.
The Sydney festival program this year has a strong line-up of events in western Sydney. While many of the people I spoke to at these events were from the region, people also travelled from all over Sydney to attend exhibitions, circus and the theatre. It’s good to shake off your normal theatre-going habits and getting to venues you may not be familiar with is part of the fun.
Campbelltown
It’s a 90-minute train trip from Central to Campbelltown, then a 10-minute cab for the exhibition at Campbelltown Arts Centre, Another Day in Paradise, by the late Myuran Sukumaran. It’s opening night and the room is packed with people, including many that helped him with his case. Although all the works displayed were painted in Indonesia when Sukumaran was on death row for drug smuggling, he was a western Sydney local.
I love this gallery space. Each time I go there it is transformed; it seems to take on the character of the art. How different it looks from my last visit in 2014 to see TV Moore’s excellent sensory overload Rum Jungle, with the walls in bright pinks, jelly greens and fluoro yellows. For Sukumaran’s exhibition, walls are white and lined with portraits at first, followed by the powerful paintings he made in his final hours.
Afterwards, a group of us go across the road to the Campbelltown Catholic Club – a sprawling leagues club – and then to the Rydges where there is a lovely outdoor area serving food and drink. We finish up around midnight and the only difficulty is getting back to the city late. An Uber ride, as we find out, costs $140 from Campbelltown to Surry Hills.
On Saturday I return to Campbelltown by train to chair a forum on Sukumaran’s art and the death penalty. It’s a free event and it’s packed, having been booked out for weeks. Campbelltown Arts Centre director Michael Dagostino tells me later that many of the people at the forum he hadn’t seen in the gallery before. Sukumaran’s show is already proving incredibly popular.
Blacktown
Y’know how the weather forecaster says things like, “it’s 37 degrees in the city and 47 degrees in the west”? Well, they aren’t kidding. We start off hot, sweaty and uncomfortable at Central Station and when we get off the train at Blacktown the heat has been dialled up. It’s dry, windy and searing, and feels more like Melbourne heat than the tropical climate you get around Sydney’s beaches.
The show, Home Country, is being performed in a car park. It’s too hot to walk so we take a cab from Blacktown station. “We need to go to the box office in the car park,” we tell the confused cabbie. Finally, we spot a ragtag group of sweaty people walking around the perimeter of an empty carpark looking for the play.
Produced by Urban Theatre Projects, Home Country is a piece of promenade theatre, in which the audience follows the action through the performance space. This production also includes a feast part-way through. We are given plastic chairs and a headset and then are spilt up into groups depending on the colour of our chair.
One group sees Peter Polites’ Steps into Katouna, in which a young Greek-Australian man’s very lyrical interior monologue is played to the audience through headphones, while the next group perches on the edge of the upper level of the carpark, where the action takes place on the balcony of an adjacent building. Gaele Sobott’s two-hander, Zaphora and Ali, is about cross-cultural relationships and communication: can an Algerian man can ever understand what it’s like for a woman from Sierra Leone? Then there is Andrea James’ Blacktown Angel, which follows the recollections of Indigenous man Uncle Cheeky, called by the siren song of a woman sitting on the edge of the car park, her legs dangling over the edge, her lament in the local Darug language.
The action then moves through the car park until we are on the roof. A dozen tables are laid out with Middle Eastern and African food – and a view which stretches out to the Blue Mountains. At our table are two couples, both from western Sydney. One man is raving about the festival and the western Sydney offerings. He rarely goes into the city – and why would he when he gets great theatre right here in his own neighbourhood?
Parramatta
Saturday night, and we’re off to see Humans in Parramatta. It’s hot (again!) but thankfully the Big Top has air-conditioning.
The circus show is in the Prince Alfred Square precinct. It’s lovely but there’s not much in the way of shade or places to sit while waiting for the performance to start. The festival site in the city at Hyde Park is definitely an improvement on this. It’s licensed; there are tables and also food options and plenty of shade.
Humans is a 65-minute trapeze and gymnastics show by Brisbane-based circus troupe, Circa. These guys seem more like dancers than circus performers. The show features human pyramids, somersaults and aerial work but, in between, the performers dance and leap, fall into each other’s arms from great heights and move across the stage like punk ballerinas. They are gorgeous and graceful and mesmerise the audience, many of whom give them a standing ovation.
Afterwards we wander around Parramatta and its great restaurants until we find a place in Church Street that does wonderful Middle Eastern food at a fraction of the cost of eating out in the city.
A canny programmer would move even more events to western Sydney in the future. There is a readymade audience here but, if there are great shows playing, it’s clear that people are also prepared to come from all over Sydney to see them.
• Myuran Sukumaran: Another Day In Paradise is showing at Campbelltown Arts Centre, Campbelltown, until 26 March; Home Country is playing at Colo Lane Car Park, Blacktown, until 22 January
