Photograph of Helene Embling, Nguyen Duc Duy, Benjamin Law and Beverley Wang at the Wheeler Centre — Photo: Jon Tjhia

People – families – of diaspora carry the traces of change: new circumstances, different languages, uncertainty and often trauma. How do the ghosts of history and geography affect the everyday experiences and identities of people today? And what happens when the places where your parents and grandparents lived no longer exist – or you don’t share a language with your parents because you grew up in different places?

For Asia TOPA 2020, theatre director Caroline Guiela Nguyen presented SAIGON – a moving family saga tracing the paths of 11 characters across history and space. In this podcast, her translator, Nguyen Duc Duy, joins Australian writer Benjamin Law for a conversation about language, theatre and comedy, and this incredible play that places the art of translation at centre stage. They also explore the intergenerational, intercultural dimensions of their work – treasured by audiences, but largely missing from international stages. Hosted by Beverley Wang, with translator Helene Embling.

Presented in partnership with Asia TOPA.

Alison Croggon, Susie Dee, Patricia Cornelius and Nicci Wilks at the Wheeler Centre

Warning: This recording contains some repeated coarse language.

Patricia Cornelius, Susie Dee and Nicci Wilks have been making radical and confronting theatre together for decades. ‘I’ve never believed the bullshit about how audiences don’t like risk,' Cornelius has said. 'They actually really do. I’ve seen it.'

Long-term collaborators, their work has more often found a home in innovative independent companies than in establishment state theatres. Yet their provocative Australian stories, dealing especially with issues of class and power, have brought them huge admiration among audiences and critics.

Their admirers, it turns out, extend far beyond Australian shores. In 2019, Patricia Cornelius was named among the winners of the lucrative Windham-Campbell Prize, administered by Yale University. Two of her plays – SHIT and LOVE – were staged at the Venice Biennale in July that year.

Those two productions were also shown in Melbourne at fortyfivedownstairs, directed by Dee and starring Wilks. Before they hit the road for Venice, we presented a conversation with the powerhouse trio at the Wheeler Centre. Join them as they speak with Alison Croggon about politics, performing arts and the power of making audiences squirm in their seats.