04b++Interview+with+Director+and+Cast

= The following is an interview with the cast and director: =
 * C onducted during week **two of rehearsals.

It is rich with ideas about; how the actors view their characters, directorial decisions and visions, what it means to perform in a school, as well as an exploration of some of the big ideas in the play. Teachers and students may wish to read it and discuss it in detail or draw out particular comments and quotes that they feel reflect their own understanding of the play.

Letecia Caceras – Director Jodie Le Vesconte – Ricky Jacinta Yelland – Ishtar Melanie Zenetti – Jade Naomi RiikovIna – Jordan //My first question is why is this production called War Crimes? Whose war is it and whose crimes?// __**Leticia**__ - It is our war. It is the war that we are currently involved in in Iraq and it is a world war. It is a war of the West imposing itself once again on the East and so that’s a kind of global context within which this play takes place, but then I think Mel spoke about this, within the microcosm of the play, the town is at war. Its local citizens are at war against co-operations that are taking their jobs, war within the school girls against boys (the Kings) and against the teachers. Then within the tiny microcosm of the play, the girls are at war with themselves. The girls have a war inside their heads. __**Candy**__ - I feel like Lara is one of the most aggressive of all in the play and she is the most staunch at protecting her world and protecting the sanctity of that world. She doesn’t like anybody who is different coming in. She doesn’t cope with that well and she works at ensuring that her world and the world of the gang in their town stays intact and that nobody tries to mess with that. We have our lives, we have the Kings, we look up to the soldiers and there isn’t room for anybody else inside that team. For Lara life is about us and them. That’s what Mel was saying today. Who are you? Are you us or are you them? We know pretty well who they are but when, inside of us starts splintering and breaking down that’s terrifying for Lara. //What about the crimes aspect of the title?// __**Melanie**__ – There is a rape referred to in the play, and that is what happens to Jade. This is a crime committed by the local soldiers but it also represents rape alll over the world. There is the crime that happens in the town, the graffiti-ing of the war memorial and then I think there are general crimes of racism against Ishtar and Samira who come and live there. These are crimes by people who think Ishtar and Samira are different and don’ fit into ‘us’. __**Leticia**__ – There’s also crimes of the heart.

__**Naomi**__ – Yes, I think that Lara has been robbed of her best friend by Jordan. This is infidelity or betrayal, however, you think it sits. For Lara this is a personal crime and it resonates throughout the play the play. __**Leticia**__ – Jade is also betrayed by her friends at the RSL club. __**Candy**__ – I think the term terms harks back directly to Iraq between the soldiers and the Iraqi people, the people who are Ishtar and Samira. Those crimes that happen in direct parallel with the crime against Jade. Rape is a major crime of war and this is the crime we are unpacking and trying to understand from the viewpoint of the person being raped. One of the initial stimulus points for the play that Angela has written is a news article about a woman in Maribyrnong in Melbourne who doused herself in petrol. That dousing was considered a crime committed by her because there was the threat of harm to others if she was to set herself alight. Yet it was a very political statement and at the same time very personal one because she has lost her child and believed that the soldiers had come for her. __**Naomi**__ – the last crime of the heart perhaps is when Jordan tells Jade’s secret, no matter whether it’s for the greater good or not. It’s a secret that Jade doesn’t want to part with and she feels betrayed. __**Jacinta**__ – I think there is a crime against Ishtar and her mother, Samira. In Ishtar’s long speech to Jade she explains how her mum has gone through a war, and through refugee camps to move to a safe country but Ishtar has messed up and got pregnant and ruined the opportunity that her mother fought so hard for. She has such a responsibility for her mother yet is at war with the girls in the town. This pushes her to the point that she enacts her own crimes. __**Jodie**__ – Angela has included yet another layer with the character of Ricky. In essence she’s the bottom of the food chain, the bottom of the pack. You find out that her dad was a Vietnam veteran and there is references to him with regard to her fear of her father, ‘He’s gonna kill me!’ He’s obviously brought the war home to the domestic environment. //As director, what was the initial vision that you brought into the rehearsal room for this piece?// __**Leticia**__ - I felt really strongly that because the play is so loaded with politics and complex, difficult issues around the concept of power, that it could easily become a piece that would turn people off and so I wanted the girls to approach this from a very imaginative place I wanted them to feel like the politics couldn’t be depicted in a literal sense, they had to come from a very personal place, but also that we had to conjure up worlds and contexts so that audience were still engrossed in the theatrically and not just bogged down by the politics. So that was my initial vision. We needed to work physically and we needed to have lots of fun with the style. //Would you talk a bit about the form and style of the piece? Can you describe the theatrical style?// __**Leticia**__ – it’s Brechtian! In a nutshell in that the actors aren’t expected to completely embody one character. The concept of the theatrical is always at the forefront and that is we are showcasing; the way events are told but also constructed. Construction becomes a really important part of the world of the drama, that’s why you see the actors in their characters constructing the architecture through which they tell a story. That becomes essential in that there is a layer yet to be incorporated which is the media recounting events as they unfold. We have a message being conveyed about how we understand the politics that are at play, who shapes them, what view do we have of them? There are many versions to a truth. __**Candy**__ – People always talk about whether theatre is outdated. With a play like this you could very easily see it being transferred to film because it is real, its pretty, it’s right now, the voices are very clear, so why does it feel more dangerous doing it on stage? When you put things out there in a highly theatrical way it hits harder, like a poem hits when it works, both get to an essential point and these stories penetrate more powerfully as theatre. To see a violent act or rape scene in a movie, yes it is hard to watch, yet film is a colder medium, with a sense of detachment. __**Naomi**__ – If it’s live in front of you, it’s live in front of you. __**Candy**__ – and the smallest gesture means so much more and the information is sensual as well as visual. __**Leticia**__ – it is also the fact that the performers demand of the audience, to listen. They are there, they have come to the school, to the theatre, to tell you a story. They have asked you to bear witness to something terrible about the world and so through that act, that very humbling act, in the gathering of these people to tell this story and explore these politics, that demands attention. __**Jodie**__ – there is something powerful about the act of transformation in the play. The audience sees the actors transforming characters and gender. They transform into soldiers and into boys and into older people. Also, the ideas that the play explores such as war, that transforms countries and people from innocent into something else. It transforms men into monsters. So transformation acts as a metaphor in the play, yeah? __**Candy**__ - We’re representing as opposed to being in this play. As an actor that is very interesting because you are able to get to the thesis of the work straight away, such as war being about rape. The writer has written that to be highlighted within the performance. So we are representing that idea with the theatrical form. I feel it is more powerful through this representation. I think that this power, achieved through live theatre is highly under rated in our culture. __**Leticia**__ – I think also because the audience has to invest their imagination. In film we tend to provide everything and, yes, film is loaded with metaphor, but in this work we have intentionally low resources. Our set is a set of boxes! That is a deliberate choice. We want the poverty because it is in the space of the rough and the raw that you find the magic. //There are a number of ways that students can explore this work for the purposes of writing a performance analysis. They can examine it quite technically. I am very interested in the characters and how the audience might be invited to feel about them?// __**Candy**__ – I want them to cheer when Lara gets cut down. That would feel right for me in that I have created such a despicable human being that they cheer! I don’t think I hate Lara but I think that if the kids have to choose a side, and yes some would want to be on her team, but even when you are on her team I still think you cheer when she gets what’s coming to her. //So you hope that the audience feels a sense of natural justice?// __**Candy**__ – I hope so! It’s early days though! __**Melanie**__ – With the character of Jade there’s times throughout the play where she stays silent and where she should speak out such as times when people are being bullied, because of the politics of the playground and the group. Jade makes choices that from an audience point of view you could relate to. We don’t always stand up and say what we need to when we should because it is scary. We want to fit in. Jade has a really interesting journey from the beginning. After her rape she begins to seriously question her life and she begins to look for other things beyond the ‘sisters’. She feels they have betrayed her. __**Leticia**__ – in many ways we are trying to dispel a lot of assumptions and stereotypes about these girls. The girls who committed the crime in Bathurst (see resources in education notes) were considered the scum of the earth. The fact that they had a political opinion that went against the dominant paradigm, made them outcasts. These characters don’t have those politics but they are scum. They are boisterous, loud, they occupy space, they’re rude, they’re opinionated and these things are considered a ‘problem’ for the community, particularly if these things are embodied by females. So this play showcases five characters that don’t often appear on a stage and are rarely given voice and it aims to present them as they are. For all their questionable politics we want them to come across as complex human beings. __**Candy**__ – Another thing to consider is that the social injustices that have been committed against these girls are what have left them so reactive. Everything they do is triggered by what the structure has done to them and they are desperately trying to claim some space and have some power. They are trying to find out who they are. Most of them have been treated with violence and contempt or at least disrespect for their entire upbringing, everyone for different reasons. //Would you talk about the concept of how the ‘other’ is represented in the play? The characters// //of Jordan and Ishtar seem to embody this most strongly.// __**Naomi**__ – I think because we are mainly performing to younger audiences, I imagine that Jordan may come across as somewhat extreme. She isn’t straight down the line, heterosexual, from a happy family living in the ‘burbs. I hope there will be students who will relate to her and see that they aren’t weird and strange simply because they aren’t like other girls they know. We speak about Jordan being almost mythical and almost from Jade’s imagination. Her ultimate fantasy… __**Leticia**__ – …a manifestation of Jade’s hurt and love and power… __**Naomi**__ – …but Jordan is very strong and the bravado that Jade has, that is the thing that Jordan doesn’t have and that makes her powerful. She is the silent contender who can cut you down but doesn’t. Then when Jordan does lash out what might that be? It is the mythical other who has control of themselves even after experiencing the troubles of her own life. __**Candy**__ – There is a really strong theme of trust and loyalty in this play. The girls, the ‘sister’, have been friends for ever but this loyalty and friendship is broken. Lara breaks it in a large way by leaving Jade at the RSL club. In Jordan, Jade has found somebody, after they sus each other out, where a new trust is born and it can be strong. With this new trust, the other that goes with belonging to the ‘sisters’ isn’t there. And for Jade this is a pivotal moment and she realises that the gang’s loyalty is false but what she has or could have with Jordan is real. I hope that the audience will be confronted by their own friendships and relationships. Are these relationships and friendships real or false? We spoke a lot about the friendships we had at high school and the friends you keep and the friends you lose and the definition of true and false friends. //Jacinta do you think that Ishtar is also ‘the other’ in the play?// __**Jacinta**__ – I think so. I think there is a lot of fear in the community at the moment about the burkha and the hijab and the negative reactions to these representations of Islam. The media is presenting this in a really negative way. I think that Ishtar will be the outsider at the beginning of the play but by the end I hope that she will come across as a young woman trying to find her place in the world. I think her actions with the desecration of the war memorial will be seen as disrespectful but I hope that her motivations and reasons will be acknowledged. We discovered in rehearsal the other day, that as the play starts in the present, and then we go back to the past, Ishtar has come to an understanding for the other girls and sees some similarities. __**Candy**__ – I think that it is amazing the way that Angela creates the world of this play. I think that many audiences will know this world very well. I think for young audiences it will offer much because they have an open imagination. I think some adult audiences may hold on to their walls and their ideas and not perhaps want to let them go. We ask this. We ask that they witness it then let go of some ideas and embrace others. __**Leticia**__ – The world also includes characters that often don’t exist for us. At the end of the play we may very well cry for some of these characters even though we have never met them before. We talked a lot about the costumes for these characters, trying to find out something that can be worn and changed to create those other characters but not be all the same. Then Candy said, we can all wear the one thing because we’re all the same. And that was it! That’s the point of the play! We are all the same. Deep down we are trying to do exactly what Ishtar and Jade and Jordan are doing, trying to find our place in the world. __**Candy**__ – That’s what came out in the Leaky Boat documentary which was great timing while we are rehearsing the play. If Australians think or consider that we are all the same and are all human then we will have compassion. Compassion will then drive policy and practice change. The irony is that the Australia is at war in Iraq and the asylum seekers, such as Ishtar and her mother Samira, are victims of the people the Australian soldiers are fighting so we are on the same side! In Iraq, Australian soldiers are fighting to save people like Ishtar and Samira but so many of our policies and practices reject these people when they try to come here. We are all afraid of terrorism and persecution. We need to keep asking ourselves that if we were placed in a similar position what would we do? If we were witnessing death, rape and torture you would try to get on a boat and get the hell out of there. //How are the adult characters represented in the play? Who are they?// __**Leticia**__ – Well I suppose the most redeeming adult character is Miss Cutcliff, a teacher who shows compassion for Jade and offers her opportunities. But she acts in a landscape that is quite desolate and it feels that nothing can come from what she offers. So, Miss Cutcliff becomes her first victim, they break her down in class and then when they are older they haunt her and destroy her classroom almost as a way to say, don’t even bother, don’t try to save us. __**Candy**__ – She gives them a bit of love and Jade seems to say that love and her don’t mix. __**Melanie**__ – They don’t know how to receive what Miss Cutcliff offers because it hasn’t been part of their world or their vocabulary __**Naomi**__ – Even if they want it they can’t receive it. Jade has been hurt by Miss Cutcliff saying she could do what she wanted and it doesn’t come to pass and she feels betrayed. __**Jodie**__ – Ricky’s dad is another absent figure. In Ricky’s life he is ever present and Ricky has zero power and the suggestion is that she is beaten regularly. At school she becomes the class clown in order to get people to like her. She is like a street dog you can kick and still comes back for more. For me Ricky’s moment is at the end when she stands up to Lara and shouts ‘Shut up!’ //This production is touring to both schools and having an in theatre season so, what are the challenges and opportunities that both productions will offer you as performers?// __**Candy**__ – You can’t do anything naff in front of kids. __**Naomi**__ – They aren’t a polite audience and will tell you so. __**Melanie**__ – You have to be totally truthful. Young people’s bullshit metre is very high __**Candy**__ – Many adults might think, hmmm, that was lame but maybe there is more to it. __**Jodie**__ – If you want to an effect politically with this play then it is pitched at the right audience. Many adults have already made up their minds but there are more opportunities __**Jacinta**__ – I think the schools performances will challenge us to ask why we are doing this piece and challenge us about the themes and ideas. The kids might ask, why is this relevant to us? __**Candy**__ – There’s also the ongoing impact that performing in schools can offer. Both teachers and students might be totally confronted but in those moments there is room to discuss and talk about the ideas. __**Naomi**__ – I think there will be lots of questions about the kiss between Jordan and Jade, and how two female actors can do that. Do you have to be a lesbian? Is it just acting? __**Leticia**__ – I think there is always lots of noise and vocal response and this is a difference between young audiences and adults. Young audiences are much more vocal __**Melanie**__ – One of the challenges is that we are going into the students’ environments, I always find that going into schools the students own the place and demand of us to be good cause it’s our place. __**Jodie**__ – And that’s the thing we can’t send up these characters because we may be performing to these girls! __**Naomi**__ – Playing Jordan is worlds apart from who I actually am and I think I am going to be a little unprepared for some of the questions that may occur, whereas, theatre audiences will applaud and talk elsewhere. There isn’t necessarily a wanting to know. But I am imagining that they will want to talk to me about being gay and wanting to get personal and know about my life as opposed to Jordan, the character. __**Candy**__ – I’ve been trained at NIDA and we created characters that I didn’t necessarily care about and that is weird for me as a performer. What is interesting for me about this work is that I can’t be inside it and not care, and deal with the politics. So as actors we have become political, if we weren’t before. //What about boys as an audience? Will the gender politics in the play impact on their experience?// __**Candy**__ – Sometimes I think that the girls we portray will be our hardest audience. They may be really defensive and we will need to massage that defensiveness out. With boys, it may be really confronting for them and they may go bananas and respond really strongly. We will really have to nail them with this play. The gender politics are very strong – male and female and power – so the male story isn’t being explored and from my experience even from being in the hip hop industry, when you don’t explore a male story they think that it isn’t relevant to them. Whereas women watch men’s stories and tend to be more open. On the other hand, they may see five chicks and say, yeah, excellent! //Are there any redeeming male characters in this play?// __**Leticia**__ – Yes! Finn, Ishtar’s boyfriend. He is spoken about in a very positive light even though he hasn’t done the best thing by Ishtar. He is cool and good looking and well liked, although the other girls aren’t happy about Ishtar taking him. __**Candy**__ – One of the questions that the play raises is ‘How are these men, these soldiers, heroes?’ and it is Ishtar that asks it. How is it heroic to go to war? This may be something that might spin around young men’s heads. __**Leticia**__ – Who acts heroically in this play? What does it take to be a hero? Is Damo a hero? //I really like the motif of running in the play and I asked myself who is running, from what, towards what, to what end? How does it work as a symbol in the play?// __**Melanie**__ – We’ve talked about the huge parallels between Jade and Samira. It is actually textually parallel as well as saying that they have similar stuff in their head, they have had to run from their own country, or escape from people within their own community. Both women are haunted by their separate experiences with soldiers and the suggestion is that Samira was raped as well. //How does running act as a physical release?// __**Melanie**__ – It’s about control, why some people enact other types of things. It’s release and escape and through it you can control the physical act. If you engage with the physical you don’t need to dwell on what is in your head. __**Candy**__ – It’s the flight mechanism in us as well. Whereas Jordan is about fight and this is why they are good for each other. Fight and flight. //Could we talk a little about the design and how it may help create the world of the play?// __**Leticia**__ – Well the boxes are about being ‘boxed in’, but are also they are very liberating for transforming spaces and locations and we needed a solution that was quick. They allow for a suggestive constructive of where we are in space and time. RealTV has always incorporated sound into its work as a way to quickly create mood and it is the same in this piece. Pete Goodwin, the sound designer, often samples unusual songs or instruments that played in a particular way make a strong comment. He wants all of the running sequences to be injected with commentary around current news events including the bodies of soldiers coming home, real boys. I also want other stuff that is being reported in the media across the world that deals with sexual politics, racism and other themes that appear in the play. //Would you talk a bit about the transformational devices you use to change characters?// __**Naomi**__ – The costuming will be important here. __**Jodie**__ – There is an accent written into the script, quite a strong regional Aussie accent and we use this to create the girls. __**Candy**__ – There is Arabic language used and the use of an Iraq accent. I found it really interesting to actually return to a very Aussie accent. In some ways it is like working on an Iraqi accent because it is quite new to me as an actor. I had to rediscover the Aussie accent because it was squashed out of me at drama school. __**Leticia**__ – Sometimes transformation will use tempo and rhythm, slowly morphing into a character and at other times the girls will snap. //Some of the big ideas in this play are the beach, racism, our relationship with indigenous Australians etc. Would you talk about the ideas in the play?// __**Candy**__ – Territory is a good one I think. Ownership, this crazy concept of owning things and saying that this country is mine, I own it and you can’t have it. __**Melanie**__ – It goes further as well including owning each other. We own Finn! __**Candy**__ – In Saddam Hussein’s Iraq there was a clear difference between the Suni and the Shiite tribes and territory was claimed by the Sunis exerting power over the Shiites. This type of tribal feeling exists in this small country town. We are one, you’re Jade but you are also one of ‘us’. If anyone tries to break ‘us’ up then there is going to be trouble. If people try to be individual then there is trouble. Lara is all about ‘us’ and ‘them’. Anything you do to ‘them’ then that is fine and there isn’t any morality around that. It’s interesting at a war crimes tribunal level where a soldier will defend their actions by saying, ‘I was given an order’. I would argue that you still have your own morality, but in war it seems that morality doesn’t always exist and there is killing and torturing and raping. Then, at the end of the war there is a tribunal and it seems that some of these actions are now crimes! __**Leticia**__ – What I love most about what Angela has done with this play is call the town Cummergunja which came from one of someone who helped develop the play with us. She is an aboriginal person and told us that this word means ‘home’. This is a play about how hurt, when not acknowledged, becomes the means for terrorism and violence and the characters in the play have this hurt. Within this country there is also a deep hurt that is not acknowledged and it is our relationship to the indigenous people and the cave in the play draws on this relationship. //Naomi, why is the cave important in this play?// __**Naomi**__ – The Cave is a safe haven and has been for many people. It was for the indigenous people when they saw the ships come around the coast, it is for Jade, it is for Ishtar and Finn and then for Jordan, and the cave is not a building, it’s a natural site, part of the earth that Jordan goes to. It is underneath and if everything above you is breaking up you return to the earth, like the womb. It is the home that many of the characters don’t often feel they have.