PERFORMANCE HISTORY

2008
5-19, 22-26 January 2008 Sydney Festival, Bankstown(Premiere Season)

THE LAST HIGHWAY
The darkness of a western Sydney highway. A 24-hour service station with a doner kebab van, neon lights flashing. A broken down taxi, women working the side of the road.

As part of the 2006 Sydney Festival, Sydney's Urban Theatre Projects (UTP) took audiences on a wild night out with their refreshing and gutsy take on mateship with the smash hit Back Home. The Last Highway promises to be another provocative journey into the heart of Sydney's south-western suburbs. Set in an isolated service station, The Last Highway is a gritty and hypnotic new performance work that exposes the fragilities and fearlessness of six late night workers. As the night unfolds, we witness the resilience of people often forced to navigate danger on a daily basis, the risks they take and the beliefs that keep them going.

The project was initially inspired by the increased presence of sex workers on western Sydney highways and the ensuing moral panic from local political leaders and residents. Consequently, the workers were moved to a less visible area of greater isolation and personal risk. What do people risk in negotiating their daily lives, and what are their guiding philosophies that get them through?

The work also looks at complex issues embedded within notions of contested territory, dispossession and belonging, beliefs and aspirations. Underpinning these themes is an increasing invisibility of marginalised sectors of contemporary Australia.

During the making of The Last Highway, UTP has worked in consultation with community members and industry professionals employed as script editors to inform the work's authenticity and ensure that it captures the opinions and observations of real, lived experience.

The performance continues UTP's reputation for staging work in unconventional settings. The company has presented theatre in backyards, railway stations, abandoned warehouses and suburban streets. Audiences for The Last Highway will meet in Bankstown before being transported to the final destination. Through its intercultural cast, The Last Highway explores some of the cultural stereotypes associated with late-night work - a South Asian service station worker, a Lebanese kebab van operater and a Greek taxi driver.

Warning: Contains sexual violence, nudity and strong language.

DIRECTOR'S NOTES

Alicia Talbot
Why make a show about a service station in the middle of the night? When making theatre I am always trying to grapple with stories and images of contemporary life that exist all around us. Stories about the world that we do not often hear or see, and people whose opinions about the world are often disregarded, as the people themselves are often disregarded. How people survive the constant struggles of this world is always impressive and inspiring.

The Last Highway is a new performance work exploring glimpses of people who are positioned at the edges of our society. Who by circumstance and choice, live in the recesses of the night. People carve out existences for themselves that are bound by codes of honour and ordered by logic. Quite often people such as taxi drivers, kebab guys, sex workers and service station attendants don’t occupy our minds unless they become a headline. But this world is governed by the rules that we all operate within.

Set in a late night service station the work deals with six relative strangers who are disconnected from each other and, to a certain extent, themselves. The work grapples with the reality of daily transactions within the surrealism of late night desolation. Just as day becomes night in the work, the lives of many people are increasingly pushed away from our gaze and also our compassion.

One of the key questions that has driven the creative investigation of this work is: What gets you through the night? In dealing with this central question I am interested in creating a work that explores the macrocosm of our contemporary social and political environment through individual transactions and interpersonal relationships. With inspiration from the writer and philosopher Ghassan Hage, this work also deals with the premise that good people can act in ugly ways and that small acts of kindness can transcend vocabularies of difference and cultural isolation. I am also interested in ideas surrounding territory and belonging – who has the right to be on this land at this moment, and how do we negotiate territory and vocabularies of hate, indifference and fear?

This work has been turning around in my head since 1999. At that time, we were three years into the new conservative government and the push to socially tidy up before the Sydney Olympics. I was working as an artist-in-residence at a homeless service for young people and the increase in people’s poverty was already tangible. In western Sydney, women who were working along the Great Western Highway and Canterbury Rd were moved from the relative safety and visibility of the major roads and pushed further into industrial estates. I remember thinking at the time – I wonder what these women think about the world we are living in? What are their opinions about the current state of affairs?

The Last Highway has been made through a number of stages of development and an inspiring process of artistic collaboration and community consultation. A two-week research and development phase with performance consultant Lee Wilson and designer Mirabelle Wouters in late 2006, a four-week creative development in August 2007, followed by a seven-week rehearsal process in November/December 2007. Throughout these last two stages, the performers and artistic team have been improvising material to build scenes that make up the show. During this process we have presented these scenes to community consultants who have discussed the material and offered critical feedback. This would cause us to reconsider the material and look at ways of refining and developing the dramaturgical ideas and creative languages of the piece.

The performers, artistic collaborators, production team and community partners have ensured that The Last Highway has undergone a rigorous process of questioning and refining. This unique combination has led to an exciting synthesis of art, ideas, people and place, enabling us to tell a story that acknowledges the complexity of living in this world.


Supporters

The Last Highway has been supported by Sydney Festival, John Holland, Bankstown City Council, Bankstown Sports club, Arts NSW, NSW Users and Aids Association, Sex Workers Outreach Program, Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, OZCO, Sydney South West Area Health Service NSW, Frankel Lawers, J Boag & Son.