Alternative Media Group

THEATRE: S-27

Author:

Angela Bennetts

Posted:

Monday, 8 March 2010

You might recognise Caroline Craig from favourite Aussie TV shows Blue Heelers and Underbelly, or maybe you caught her ditzy twirl as Cunegonde in the recent Sydney Festival remake of Voltaire’s Optimism … You won’t see much of Craig in S-27, but behind the scenes she pulls all the strings. The Griffin Theatre show marks her debut as a director and one of the first outings of her local theatre production company, Two Birds One Stone.  From reading it on a train in London to first taking the script to fellow NIDA graduate Emma Jackson over a coffee in Bondi (both are locals), S-27 has captivated; “This was a really exciting play, really thrilling and dramatic, with heart-wrenching moments, but it’s actually about something. We thought maybe it’s time to do something kind of challenging  that will make people feel first, and then think about the choices they make in their own lives.” Written by playwright Sarah Grochala, it won the Amnesty International Protect the Human Playwriting Award in 2007 and followed her 2006 Edinburgh festival hit Waiting for Romeo. “It’s a play about a prison photographer who is working under a totalitarian regime, and prisoners are being brought in every day and they are going to be killed … right, pretty dark!” acknowledges Craig. Each prisoner has a different tag – S-1, S-2, etc, and the play focuses on the 27^th of each day, hence the title – and the sixth one that comes in is actually the photographer’s lover. “She’s forced to choose whether she’ll save herself or someone she loves. It’s survival or freedom – the big ones!” laughs Craig. But along the way, each prisoner allows the audience to view the bigger picture in a corrupt world the photographer helped create. “You don’t really see the violence or the atrocities that are occurring outside … each scene happens [spaced out over four years with months apart] and it’s like this fresh battle, and you see this window into the world through their eyes.” While it could be set in any stark, state-run terror camp – “S-27 could be a suburb in London, a postcode … it could almost be an Australian school but it’s become this Gattaca, future prison” – it is based on a true story of a Cambodian high school that was converted into a prison they called S-21 during the Pol Pot regime. Seventeen thousand prisoners went in, most being punished for crimes that weren’t even crimes – and only eight came out. “It’s about moral responsibility. Does she have to save herself or should she save someone she loves, what will she sacrifice? You think, well, what would I do? I like to think that I’d be really altruistic or compassionate …” But, as history proves, you never know. And that is why we keep choosing to revisit these stories.

Mar 18-Apr 10, Griffin SBW Stables Theatre, 10 Nimrod St, Kings Cross, $23-30, 8002 4772 or griffintheatre.com.au

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