Performance History

2006
19 - 28 Jan Sydney Festival, Blacktown (Premiere Season)
9 - 11 Jun The Dreaming Festival, Woodford, Queensland

2007 International Tour
4 - 10 Jun Harbourfront Centre's New World Stage International Performance series in partnership with Toronto's Festival of Arts & Creativity Luminato

BACK HOME
Back Home is a timely and ultimately life-affirming project unlike any other. Bristling with explosive physicality, this is a deeply emotional story that takes us through the lives of men coming to terms with their past and facing up to their future.

Set in the backyard of a house, the play reunites four friends in a night intended to celebrate old times. It seems the bonds of mateship have stood the test of time even though the past few years have seen them walk different paths. However, as the night unravels, a litany of shattered dreams and broken promises bubble to the surface.

Back Home enters the volatile world of men's business, as four men from different cultural backgrounds (Samoan, Indigenous, Palestinian, Torres Strait Islander) reckon with issues of friendship, manhood, culture and reconciliation.

Back Home was created working in-residence in Sydney's western suburbs. Originally staged outdoors in a suburban backyard, it can also be presented in-theatre. UTP acknowledges that all work has been devised and performed on Darug land.

Background

Back Home has been an idea in development for a number of years and is the third in a series of works developed by director Alicia Talbot over the last seven years. The first work, The Cement Garage, was created in 1999 when Alicia was artist in residence at High Street Youth Health Service in Harris Park, Western Sydney.

The Cement Garage started with a simple premise: What is it to belong for young people who are homeless? This work was literally made in the double garage at High Street Youth Health Service and the artistic team worked in ongoing consultation with the young people who attended the service. The consultants were invited to formally observe rehearsals and offer critical and dramaturgical feedback to material created by the artistic team. They were not asked to disclose personal stories to then be characterised on stage by actors, but invited to share opinions and observations about the world as they perceived it. The consultants were considered experts within the devising process and paid for their contribution.

In addition, there was an open door rehearsal policy. This meant that individuals who were especially interested in the work were able to drop in any time and inform the development of the work on a more ongoing basis.

This work was performed in the garage and the back lane of Harris Park. Prior to the performance, audience members were given a tour of the service by the staff of High Street before ending up in the back driveway. In writing about The Cement Garage in 2000, reviewer Stephen Dunne described this style of work as a 'fictionalised reality', invented stories grounded in everyday reality, intersecting the realness of place with the fiction of art.

The Longest Night was partially inspired by some of the feedback after The Cement Garage, as some audience members commented that the characters appeared to be stuck in a cycle. Continuing the stories from The Cement Garage and making a work about the notion of change and dreams. The Longest Night loosely followed the lives of the characters from The Cement Garage, living in public housing. The work was created in residence at The Parks Community Centre, in the western suburbs of Adelaide, premiering as part of Adelaide Festival 2002. The project employed the same process of an open rehearsal policy and working with community consultants as experts. The audience was given a personal tour of the area by residents and staff before arriving at the performance venue, an old motor maintenance shed.

The idea for Back Home developed when Shannon Williams and Alicia were making The Longest Night. Through lots of late night discussions, they began to talk about the idea of making a new theatre work about men living in Western Sydney. After years of working in the area, Alicia was very interested in a story that dealt with ideas around knowledge and becoming, leadership and honour. Banjo Clarke, in his book Wisdom Man, writes that even though some of the traditional initiation rites of passage towards manhood have changed "We adapt our Aboriginality to totally different circumstances today, but we always keep it: we always find an Aboriginal kind of answer to things."

Some of the central questions driving Back Home were: What is it to be a successful man and leader? and; How do you navigate expectations of self, family and community? Using these as starting points, the show branched out into many other areas, such as identity and displacement, loyalty and reconciliation. All of these issues, and many more, rose up as we explored the friendship of the four characters, and as their hopes and fears became apparent.

Throughout the four-week creative development (July 2005) and six-week rehearsal period (Nov- Dec 2005), we developed scenes through extensive discussions and long-running improvisations. Similar to the prequels, we would rehearse and present this material to community consultants on a weekly basis. The consultants would critically discuss the material, which in turn would cause us to rework each scene and the overall structure. Throughout the entire process we were privileged to host Darug and local elders who guided our enquiry.

The creation of theatre relies on the collaboration and skill of a great many people. Back Home was made possible through the dedication and skill of the artistic team, and the expertise of local elders and community consultants. The depth and breadth of the subject material was greatly influenced by the work of the four performers and cultural advisor Lily Shearer. The artistic team's knowledge of history and culture and their political commitment shaped the creative investigation. In the tradition of storytelling, we built this entire work without writing any of it in down. It can be a tough way of making work, but it's also exciting and invigorating.

Back Home is a synthesis of artistic investigation, a unique devising process, and subject matter that is not only meaningful to the individuals and communities to which the work is directly inspired by, but taps into broader concerns about leadership, community, spirituality and the journey of men within society.

Supporters

Back Home has been supported by Blacktown City Council, Blacktown Arts Centre, Sydney Festival, Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, The Myer Foundation, Holy Family Centre, The Shed, NSW Probation & Parole, NSW Department of Housing and Delfin Ropes Crossing.